David Horowitz’s distinct voice echoed with enthusiasm and passion as he spoke to a full room of about 40 people at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday afternoon.

Horowitz is known for his frank and opinionated nature, his writing of numerous conservative books, and his strong opposition to the left-leaning politics.

In a speech titled, “Treasons of the Democrats,” Horowitz spoke for an hour at Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management on behalf of the College Republicans at UMN. Horowitz referenced the numerous problems with progressive ideology and why he—as someone who has experienced Communism from an insider perspective—believes progressives and socialists really just want Communism under a different name.

“I grew up in a Communist family, and it was part of the new Left…so I know where I speak; I don’t see anything different on the agendas of people who call themselves progressives today and the Communist party,” Horowitz said in an exclusive with The Minnesota Republic.

Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, has captured the hearts of many liberal college towns. Conservatives on the same campuses, however, question the legitimacy of Sanders’ ideas and wonder if many of them are attainable.

“(Progressives and Communists) are decent people; my parents were decent people; my mother never had a traffic violation! But their agendas…it’s an impossible agenda. Socialism is an impossible agenda,” Horowitz said.

Throughout his speech, Horowitz referenced inappropriate behavior demonstrated by some Liberal Arts professors on campuses dominated by liberal faculty. Horowitz said that these professors try to instill a progressive political agenda in their students and never shy away from expressing and spreading their personal political opinions.

Horowitz said that when he went to school in the 1950s, “My professors never expressed their political views in class, ever. It was just proper (to keep quiet). You wouldn’t know what their politics were…their mission was to teach us how to think, not tell us what to think.”

Horowitz has been vocal in his severe criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole. He explained that when he was young, the symbol of the Civil Rights Movement was Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy brutally killed in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman in 1955. Horowitz acknowledged that what happened to Till and many others like him was terrible. He said that today, however, Black Lives Matter’s symbols are people like Michael Brown, whom Horowitz called “career criminals” and “thugs.”

“(Black Lives Matter was) involved in burning an impoverished city—Ferguson—down, because they wanted a white cop lynched before they knew the facts, after they knew the facts, or after the facts were known and had been established,” Horowitz said.

According to Michael Brown’s 2014 autopsy report, Brown’s wounds were consistent with Officer Darren Wilson’s claim of self-defense.

Horowitz explained that he no longer believes racism is a problem in the United States. When he was growing up, Horowitz said, only four percent of people in the United States approved of interracial marriages.

“Today, 87 percent of people approve of interracial marriages,” Horowitz remarked. He added that interracial couples are all over advertisementsand that if our society was racist, that would not be the case.

“(Advertisers) want to appeal to as many people as they can to sell their product!” Horowitz exclaimed.

After his speech, Horowitz engaged in a question-and-answer session with both conservative and liberal attendees. He touched on political correctness and—of course—Hillary Clinton’s emails.

In a particularly tense exchange, Horowitz was criticized for not engaging in a debate. Horowitz challenged the attendee to find him a single professor willing to debate him.