One Family, Many Revolutions: From Black Panthers, to Silicon Valley, to Trump
“I know all the songs from there,” Ben said, and as proof, started singing the
old gospel hymn adopted by the Panthers, “We are soldiers in the army …”
David said: “Ben is practically black.”
Ben laughed when this was repeated to him, something he does frequently when talking about his father.
“I hate it when my father talks, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
Mr. Andreessen, the more histrionic side of Andreessen Horowitz, recently said the tech community is so “extremely left-wing, extremely liberal”
that a lot of people there could not even articulate a case for Mr. Trump, much less agree with it.
“It’s a great handicap to be talking like accountants while the opposition are making moral indictments.”
Having politics so deeply part of your identity used to be unusual, said Daniel Oppenheimer, who wrote “Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left
and Reshaped the American Century” about David Horowitz, Ronald Reagan and a few others.
The son said his father “has a nose for freedom and is absolutely relentless about pursuing it,” and announced
that he and Felicia were giving the center a $25,000 donation.
“Every now and then, I had to help him better understand how to navigate,” said Ken Coleman, his SGI mentor
and one of the few black executives in the tech industry.