David Horowitz, Far-Right Mentor Who Shaped Trump Advisor Stephen Miller, Dies at 86

David Horowitz, the rad­i­cal left­ist turned far-right ide­o­logue who guid­ed Trump Advi­sor Stephen Miller’s ear­ly career, has died at age 86 from can­cer at his Col­orado home. Accord­ing to an April 30, 2025, New York Times report:

David Horowitz, a rad­i­cal left­ist of the 1960s who did a polit­i­cal about-face to become an out­spo­ken con­ser­v­a­tive author and activist, writ­ing that Barack Oba­ma had “betrayed” Amer­i­ca, and an ardent cheer­leader for Don­ald J. Trump, died on Tues­day. He was 86. The David Horowitz Free­dom Cen­ter, a think tank he found­ed in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, said the cause was can­cer. His wife, April Horowitz, said he died at his home in Col­orado. Once a self-described Marx­ist, Mr. Horowitz exe­cut­ed a dizzy­ing tran­sit from the extreme left to the extreme right. His wife, April Horowitz, said he died at his home in Col­orado. Once a self-described Marx­ist, Mr. Horowitz exe­cut­ed a dizzy­ing tran­sit from the extreme left to the extreme right. He argued that the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment had fueled racial hatred; he opposed Pales­tin­ian rights; he denounced the news media and uni­ver­si­ties as tools of the left; and he false­ly claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 elec­tion, which Mr. Horowitz called “the great­est polit­i­cal crime” in Amer­i­can history.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/david-horowitz-dead.html

Key Points

• Horowitz met Miller when the future Trump immi­gra­tion archi­tect was a Cal­i­for­nia high school stu­dent crit­i­cal of multiculturalism.
• The men­tor helped Miller estab­lish a Duke Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Stu­dents for Aca­d­e­m­ic Free­dom and coor­di­nate “Islamo-Fas­cism Aware­ness Week.”
• Horowitz facil­i­tat­ed Miller’s career path by help­ing him secure a posi­tion with Sen­a­tor Jeff Ses­sions before join­ing Trump’s 2016 campaign.
• The for­mer left­ist authored mul­ti­ple pro-Trump books claim­ing the 2020 elec­tion was stolen and describ­ing Democ­rats as “total­i­tar­i­an” ene­mies with­in America.

How David Horowitz Shaped the National Conservative Agenda of Stephen Miller and Trump

David Horowitz can be viewed as an influ­en­tial pre­cur­sor or adja­cent fig­ure to the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), rather than a core mem­ber. His decades-long cru­sade against left­ist influ­ence in acad­e­mia and cul­ture aligns with the GNCA’s empha­sis on nation­al iden­ti­ty and resis­tance to glob­al­ist ide­olo­gies. Like many with­in the GNCA, Horowitz opposed transna­tion­al insti­tu­tions and cham­pi­oned nation­al sov­er­eign­ty. His ideas helped shape the ide­o­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment that allowed Trump-era nation­al con­ser­vatism to flour­ish, par­tic­u­lar­ly through fig­ures like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.

Horowitz also played a cen­tral role in the anti-Islam move­ment in the Unit­ed States. He found­ed the David Horowitz Free­dom Cen­ter, which spon­sors Jihad Watch, a plat­form direct­ed by Robert Spencer that pro­motes the view of Islam as inher­ent­ly vio­lent. Through cam­pus cam­paigns and fund­ing of media ini­tia­tives, Horowitz helped frame Islam and Mus­lim advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions as exis­ten­tial threats, a nar­ra­tive that sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced U.S. right-wing dis­course and pre­fig­ured GNCA-aligned rhetoric in Europe.

More recent­ly, Horowitz’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Review podcast—hosted by Daniel Horowitz—was iden­ti­fied by Brook­ings as one of sev­er­al right-wing plat­forms that gave cre­dence to false bioweapons con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries regard­ing U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine, align­ing with a broad­er pat­tern of nar­ra­tives that have been ampli­fied by Russ­ian and Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts.

How­ev­er, Horowitz diverged from the GNCA in key areas: he main­tained a staunch com­mit­ment to free speech and sec­u­lar­ism, iden­ti­fied as an agnos­tic Jew rather than espous­ing reli­gious nation­al­ism, and he did not par­tic­i­pate in flag­ship GNCA events such as the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ences. While many GNCA lead­ers pro­mote an illib­er­al mod­el of gov­er­nance (e.g., Hungary’s Vik­tor Orbán), Horowitz retained ele­ments of clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism that were more con­sis­tent with ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism. Thus, he occu­pied a dis­tinct space with­in the broad­er right-wing ecosystem—closely aligned with GNCA themes, but ulti­mate­ly stand­ing apart from its insti­tu­tion­al and ide­o­log­i­cal center.

Ref­er­ences:

• https://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/about/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_Watch

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz

• https://www.timesofisrael.com/david-horowitz-radical-american-leftist-turned-right-wing-firebrand-dies-at-86/

• https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/david-horowitz/

• https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/remembering-david-horowitz

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.