Glenn Beck Apparently Hasn't Read Anything In His Adult Life

[WillyT]

From MediaMatters (w\Video):

Beck compares Fox News to Jews during Holocaust, other news organizations to silent bystanders
October 13, 2009 10:36 am ET

BECK: When they're done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, "first they came for the Jews, and I wasn't Jewish." When you have a question, and you believe that something should be asked, they're a -- totally fine with you right now; they have no problem with you.

When they're done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they're going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? Do you really think that a man who has never had to stand against tough questions and has as much power as he does -- do you really believe after he takes out the number one news network, do you really think that this man is then not going to turn on you? That you and your little organization is going to cause him any hesitation at all not to take you out?

If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you've missed the point of many brutal dictators. You missed the point on how they always start.

Link: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200910130016

:wtf:

[left coaster]

1. Beck and Palin..

Birds of a feather, in more than one way..

[WillyT]

2. LOL, Except I Haven't Seen Palin Cry Yet !!!

Curious, eh ???

:hi:

[left coaster]

4. True..

..but that's only because nobody has told Palin about Vicks Vapo-rub yet..

A little dab will do ya.. :)

[JBoris]

3. It's hard to read when your eyes are always tearing up. nt

[opihimoimoi]

5. Beck and Bachmann oughta bring in the votes...

[CJCRANE]

6. Beck only quoted the last line. The whole poem makes it clear that the Nazis were right wing:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came

On edit: So of course this is where Beck's logic falls down because

* Hitler went after socialists
* so if Obama is like Hitler then he too would go after socialists
* but he can't because (according to Beck) he is a socialist!

[Djinn]

8. while Beck is clearly a complete tool

and a massively offensive one at that if he actually thinks the President pointing out that Fox is a pile of shit is even remotely comparable to oppression, the point of that poem wasn't that the Nazi's were right wing, but that it's up to everybody to look out for each other - it's applicable to any stripe of government.

[onager]

10. Logic?

Boneheads like Beck point triumphantly to the name "National SOCIALIST Workers' Party" as proof that Hitler was a left-winger.

By that same weird logic, "The People's Republic of China" must be a real republic.

History Geek Rant:

The original Nazi party (which Hitler infiltrated as an army spy in 1919) did have socialist leanings.

Most of the socialists had been silenced by 1933, with three powerful and influential exceptions. Two of these were the Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto. Forced out of the Nazi Party by Hitler in 1930, they set up the more socialistic Black Front, which aimed to split Hitler's followers.

The third exception was a much bigger problem: Ernst Roehm, leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), a/k/a Brownshirts. Roehm was always talking about "hanging the capitalist bosses," "putting the workers in charge," etc. etc. (To borrow another right-wing phrase, Roehm was also a militant homosexual - very unusual in that place and time.)

Roehm could mobilize thousands of well-armed SA goons on short notice. IIRC, by 1933 SA membership was about 100,000, which terrified both the Nazi leadership and the German Army.

Hitler solved all these problems in June 1934, with "The Night of the Long Knives." Gregor Strasser was murdered, along with Ernst Roehm. Otto Strasser went into exile.

[Mendocino]

7. He would have to be an adult to do that.

Nothing but a petulant man-child, living in a make-believe world where he is always right, and everyone else is poopy pants. WAH!

[gleaner]

9. Beck probably thinks you don't have to read ...

he seems to get most of his information through his tin foil hat via the voices of his "people" like most other psychotics.

I wonder when we degenerated to the point where people like Glenn Beck are given a cushy media forum to spew his hatred and where some people actually take him seriously?

The thought of listening to Beck makes me break out in hives.