Glenn Beck does not just participate in your average, every day, run-of-the-mill stupidity, such as the “God sent this hurricane to punish the wicked” or “who did we fight in the Civil War?” type. No, Beck likes to mix his know-nothing tirades with insidious lies. Lies that serve a purpose. He doesn’t just get a few facts wrong; he turns history on its head. Nazism and communism become indistinguishable from one another. Hitler, who happened to have killed intellectuals and liberals along with Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, trade unionists, people of color and others, is being painted as a liberal himself. This is no accident; he is switching the labels of the good guys and the bad guys. Because as George Orwell said, "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."
The year 2006 is when Beck started his television career on CNN Headline News. He was already known a kind of dimwitted hatemonger who made statements such as, “I didn’t think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims,” talking about the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But his career in his special kind of moronism, a blend of idiocy and malice goes back to the 1980’s when Glenn Beck was working at the Phoenix station, KOY 95. Beck, always the class act, called a rival radio jock’s wife and mocked her recent miscarriage.
For decades the conservatives have worked at changing the definition of the word, liberal. The real definition according to Webster’s: “a : one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways b capitalized : a member or supporter of a liberal political party c : an advocate or adherent of liberalism especially in individual rights.” Or, according to Oxford: “1 willing to respect and accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own. 2 (of a society, law, etc.) favorable to individual rights and freedoms.” Sounds a lot like Thomas Paine – arguably the most liberal founding father - who Beck likes to think he is comparable. That should send people into fits of laughter, but unfortunately, some believe him. Now he’s working on changing the meaning of the word, progressive. The meaning of that word is as obvious as its history, from the progressives who worked on ending child labor and giving women the right to vote, to the progressives of today who are working towards equal rights for all, along with a living wage for workers. But somehow, just like Beck has managed to tarnish Thomas Paine’s image with ludicrous comparisons, so has he managed to paint Hitler and Mao Zedong as progressives.
The inverting of history and language should be as laughable as saying World War II caused World War I. But we have a portion of the public that is very gullible and a media that is more than happy, not only to let lies stand, but also to give the liars a microphone and all the publicity they can muster. It is beyond just irresponsible to give Beck a platform, given that in just the past few months Beck has talked about progressives and Obama while showing clips of Nazi Germany in the background. He has claimed a snowstorm on the east coast debunks global warming, he said that, yes Obama is heading toward eugenics. He said on February 5th that progressivism is the type of thinking that brought on the Holocaust, and that the first people in the gas chambers were done out of compassion. He has asserted progressives started Prohibition, when it was the left that ended it and the religious right of the day that pushed it into being. Plus, in his Star Trek like evil universe – minus the goatees - he claims the separation of church and state is a myth.
The biggest problem is, it’s starting to work. Any time within the past few decades if someone had suggested Hitler was a liberal, that person would have been laughed at. And rightly so. Now, a simple Google search with the combination of words, Hitler, liberal, Holocaust or killed in the search bar, comes up with numerous articles about how Hitler was a liberal, and liberals have killed more people than Hitler, etc. Reality is changing before our eyes. And while I believe Beck is eventually going to go the way of Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy – he is just too idiotic and egotistical to last – it does not excuse those who are giving him a platform in the meantime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf33g9ep4YU
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