Glenn Beck - Populist Demagogue
76Watch this video.
Glenn Beck later did a 180 on the topic of FEMA deathcamps, claiming that there was no good evidence for them. He did not retract his statement that the US is headed for totalitarianism, or that there is a special battallion of troops ready to oppress Americans (5:18).
This is a pattern.
In this video, Beck refers to the New World Order and a coming one world currency:
In the video on this page, Beck says "Our sovereignty is being sold to the highest bidder" by "global politicians and the international banking community... international bankers..."
Compare Beck's words to these:
Although the... Governments appear to operate independently, they are merely puppets of the International Financiers who stealthily coordinate their agendas. These governments rule our lives with a common aim: to institute tyrannies which can suppress any criticism of their treasonous policies. Their aim is the establishment of a nationless world.... We are hurtling towards the Millennium and the New World Order.
That's from the Nazi website skrewdriver.net.
And it's not just Nazis who share Beck's views.
Compare those statements by Beck to this comment on his blog, on this page:
we are living in our last days and Jesus is coming soon. Why are so many people worried and think that things can go back to the way they were, because they can’t. There is not much time left and soon there will… yes there WILL be a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT, CURRENCY, and RELIGION and a NEW WORLD ORDER. And there is nothing that man can do about it, because what is written in the Bible MUST COME TO PASS.
So does Glenn believe in the antiChrist?
In this clip, he laughingly brings up the possibility that Obama is the antiChrist, only to be told by John Hagee that he is not:
Beck rejects the coming of the antiChrist, but makes a big deal out of one world currency, a shadow world government - the same things that evangelical Christians believe the antiChrist will bring. (Did you notice the slip at the beginning? "The evangelical jo - uh, Vote...")
What about Racism?
Obama, according to Beck, hates white people, or "white culture."
Beck refused to say exactly what he meant by "white culture" in a subsequent interview, but maybe our friends at the racist website Stormfront.org could answer that for us.
I did a google search for:
"white culture" site:http://www.stormfront.org/
and found 8,140 results.
I'm sure that members of the Klan and Aryan Nations knew exactly what Beck was talking about.
Frank Luntz was a Republican strategist and speechwriter for the Bush Campaign. He knows a few things about communication. His mantra?
"It's not what you say, it's what people hear."
It's not what Beck says - it's what people hear.
Beck is a master of using code words. He uses the language of the radical right while he disavows any actual connection. Because he is an "entertainer" and not a journalist, he can simply claim he was making a joke. But the seed has been planted.
Those viewers who believe the antiChrist is coming hear him talking about one world currency and the apocalypse. The conspiracy theory nuts (especially the racist ones) hear him talk about the New World Order and international bankers. The militia members hear about FEMA deathcamps and a mystery battallion of the US Army for use on American soil.
Beck attacks the Obama administration for being socialist or fascist - but he uses the same code words that racist and fascist groups use. He attacked Van Jones for signing a 9/11 truth petition, but he warns of conspiracies that would make Alex Jones proud.
So what is going on with Glenn Beck?
To answer that question, I must first say that I agree with Beck on many issues. I don't like the bailout of the big banks. I don't trust the G20. I don't trust my own government. I don't believe that government should control my personal life. I believe in the power of individuals and entrepreneurs to do what needs to be done. I believe that top down solutions fail more often than not, and what we need is more solutions from the bottom up.
And that's a big part of my problem with Glenn Beck.
Beck intersperses lies with truth. He uses racist code while stating facts about the corrupted system we live in. He puts the blame for our problems at the feet of a newly elected president, or the international bankers, or shadowy marxist conspiracies.
In short, Beck appeals to a great swathe of Americans, while misdirecting their attention. Anyone with eyes can see that our nation is at the mercy of crony capitalists - but Beck calmly pulls the curtain to cover their retreat, while he gestures wildly at the 8 month old Obama administration and declares "they have destroyed our country!"
Cui bono?
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Thank you bgamall. Beck is doing this country a disservice. I think there is a need for citizens to get angry and make some noise - but we all need to step back a take a long hard look at who the real enemy is first.
Nice Hub! Here's a link to a column in my morning paper by Leonard Pitts entitled "Stop Lying About Health Care!" which is pertinent to your Hub
Thanks for the link Ralph!
love it! Beck and his followers are are following the rhetorical style of fascists everywhere.
As I posted on another hub on Glenn Beck, my parents (who live in Canada) used to watch him... for his entertainment value... This, perhaps, speaks volumes
... calmly waiting for you to skewer Olbermann in the same manner...
Olbermann could stand some skewering too. They all could (though at least Olbermann seems ok with criticizing Obama, now he is in power, rather than being a Democrat lackey irrespective of policy issues... not that I'm defending him; they all get up my ying-yang)
Honestly I haven't ever watched Olbermann. I've seen one or two video clips of Rachel Maddow and I think she's also biased, but in a direction I agree with.
I think Glenn Beck is best compared with John Stewart. They both might make good points (depending on your political leanings) but they are both entertainers, not journalists.
I also think that Beck is much more dangerous to this country than Stewart. Beck plays on fear and rumors of totalitarianism, and actively worked to organize the tea party protests.
Still, would you rather have people with his opinion doing what they do behind closed doors, or for all the world to see?
I'd go for the latter.
Things going underground usually ends up bad. As long as freedom of speech is preserved in a country, then at least you can disagree loudly and vocally, because you know what people are actually thinking (and of course, that goes for Democrats and Republicans, both).
William,
I knew the word "racist" was going to appear eventually. Never have I heard a racist word come from his mouth.
I wrote an artice once and a lady commented; I can see your racist code words all over. I had to ask her which words were code? I specifically remember one. I had written "our America." She said that was code for White peoples America.
I was stunned, I meant all Americans.
Who knows what code is?
Harvey: "white culture" is a racist code word. There is no such thing as white culture. There is Russian culture, British culture, Irish culture, Jewish culture, but "white culture" doesn't exist - except for people who think in terms of race.
Excellent response. Glen Beck is a uneducated media production with no real grasp on reality. He will fan any flame possible in order to maintain his ratings. If you actually listen closely to the things he spouts, you can tell that half of it is made up on the fly.
I think you are right about that SOBF - that's why he puts his foot in his mouth so much.
Ratings are more important than facts!
Thanks for stopping by.
There was a time when I had some respect for GB. When he first started out on CNN I saw him as a Conservative who had battled life and won. Now I just think he is demented and out of his mind. Really! Some of the real garbage he spews forth reminds me of of a dictator's propaganda minister. And he is not a journalist and should stop acting as if he is. He is just a talking head with very little brain matter within.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
Right on Jeff!
When I saw the movie "V" I was immediately reminded of some of these commentators, which I am sure was done of purpose by the writer of that flick.
Cheers! Remember, remember!!!!
Chef Jeff
Yeah, I never recall hearing Glenn Beck say anything that made me think he was racists. I guess when you share thoughts that are of a non-racial caliber with a radical organization you also have to sympathize with the rest of their views as well.
White culture: care to define this for me What's news? Care to defend Beck's statement that Obama hates "white culture"?
That was a racist statement - Beck was playing the race card.
I think when Beck made the statement that included the term 'White Culture' he may have meant to say something along the lines of the 'white population'.
Obama made quite a few references to white people in his book 'Dreams of My Father'. I will include a few here and I think this maybe what Beck meant by 'white culture'.
It sure looks like Obama makes it out to be cultural differences that seperates him from white people in this country.
Obama - Dreams of My Father: "I found solace in nursing a pervasive sense grievance and animosity against my mother's race"
Obama - Dreams of My Father: "It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names"
Obama - Dreams of My Father: "White People — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives."
So - if Obama hates white people because he said these things, does this mean that other black people who feel these things also hate white people?
Because what we are talking about here are feelings. I think it is a very brave and admirable thing for Obama to publish these feelings for the whole world to see. If we do not acknowledge the undercurrents of racism in our society, how will we ever come to grips with it?
Have you actually read Dreams of My Father, or are you just requoting someone else? I have not read it myself, to be honest. But I have a feeling that if you read these quotes in context they would mean something a little different from what they appear to mean here.
I can't speak for African Americans, but I have a feeling that many of them would report similar feelings. Racism is real in America. You don't feel it because you are white, and most racism is directed towards nonwhites.
Take a look at this gentleman's hub:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Seeing-Race
Do you get the sense that he hates white culture? Or is he just relating his experience?
I believe that Obama was speaking about his youth, when he had these feelings, and later he goes onto explain that he changed his mind once he learned that things were not as simple and defined as he once thought. We all go through a time when our ideas are challenged and our knowledge increases, and old prejudices seem to fade away.
When I was young it was common for the White people I grew up with to hate and distrust Blacks and Mexicans. Later, only later, did I learn the foolishness of this notion.
To believe that all Black people are somehow devoid of anger toward the people that have made their individual and collective lives miserable would be to ignore the humanity of others. I have met with and remain friends with many people of various ethnic backgrounds who once hated people of my skin color but who have seen, as I did once long ago, that you judge a person on the content of his or her heart and the character of his or her being, not on the color of the skin.
As far as I know no one is born a racist. One becomes one when the experiences of life are such that one believes that all people of a certain color are evil, or inferior, or even superior but not nice. The old song I believe from the musical South Pacific said well - you have to be carefully taught.
Look to Nelson Mandela's life experiences and tell me he didn't have every reason to hate White people, and yet he lead his nation out of racial hatred and into a new day of equality & respect for all.
However, when Beck speaks it is in the present, and he does so with a charming sort of cunning, smiling, weeping, making the case that all of this has somehow changed the country he once loved. Well, change is the order of things. I am certain that whenever a nation has undergone a tremendous change, there are people who lament the change. They look to a recent or distant time when, in their eyes, all was right with the world. Again, they seem to forget that their experiences are not universal: Others may have had opposite experiences and would not agree with the analysis that things were somehow better in the good old days. To hate, to fear, or cause others to hate and fear change just for the sake of ratings seem both disingenuous and wrong.
Last week or so I watched Glenn Beck denounce Obama as "treasonous" for allegedly threatening to close Offut Air Base in Nebraska if Senator Ben Nelson didn't change his vote on the health care bill. The story was simply made up by a blogger who admits he hates Obama and would do anything to cause him political harm. (This blogger was no better in my eyes than the one who started the false rumor about Sarah Palin's son not really being hers).
Beck reported the story as if it were true and never even checked the story out, and if he would have, he would have seen that his so-called "3 sources" were all feeding off each other. In other words, one person blogged, another picked it up, followed by yet another, and there were suddenly "three independent sources" that actually were all based upon the same falsehood. This is why Beck and others need to get off the repeating of incredulous stories and start acting like professional journalists, which he is not as he freely admits. Therefore, he makes the same mistakes most of us would in believing the most ridiculous of rumors and spreading them around as if they were true. My stand is that if he is not reporting news, then he should be stopped from reporting rumors as if they were news, because they are not and they do actual harm to others. Just once I would love to see one of these people, Left or Right, get sued and lose over this kind of garbage.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
I will say this for the right-wing position, however -- the liberal position only seems to criticize Fox News and their ilk, whereas at least right-wingers criticize ALL media (except Fox, admittedly). What I am saying is that, even though I think the accusation that mainstream media has liberal bias is nutso (or, at least, partially nutso), AT LEAST someone is criticizing ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN News. If there was no right-wing criticism of these organizations, there'd be none at all! And this would be very, very bad indeed.
There is criticism of the media from the 'left' but it is mostly academic, not popular. Chomsky is the main example. Adbusters would be another.
I think most leftist critiques look beyond the simple politics and into the underlying dynamics of the media system. You've seen my other hub on what causes media bias?
I was going to mention Chomsky actually, but I don't imagine too many people pay attention to him, whether they should or not (or even know what he says...).
It is absolutely scandalous that America was dragged into Iraq with almost no critique from ANY mainstream media outlet in the US. In Britain for example, Blair did a long, one-on-one tv interview with members of the public, taking critical questions from ordinary people to explain his position...
...Not that it matters, because he was going to war no matter what anyone else thought. And I am sure this would have been true of Bush-Cheney-Perle-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld too.
Come to think of it, when you have pig-headed people in power like Blair or Bush-Cheney, perhaps it is irrelevant what the media does...
Yes - the supposedly liberal New York Times played right along with Bush, publishing fake intelligence to show that there was a threat.
Our government excels at PR and propaganda. We are a free country with a free press, and thank god for it, but there is plenty of manipulation going on.
I think the writing is on the wall (in a good way). With the Internet, and communities like Hubpages, it will be increasingly more difficult to manipulate people -- this is why the Nazis, China, etc., control(led) media outlets.
I notice that the level of intelligence is high among conservatives on Hubpages, for example. Before the Internet I would have had nothing but stereotypes (unwittingly perpetuated by Glenn Beck) of conservatives as dough-brains; this clearly is not the case... the Internet has taught me that.
You used to have only small communities where hiding things was difficult. Then mass societies developed where hiding things became easy. Now, finally, we have mass public-access and instantaneous communication, so this is truly the dawning of a new age -- even Iran is not immune to the age of Youtube and the cellphone...
I never thought Conservatives were dough-headed, and I point to the late William F. Buckley as a case in point. The man was a genius, even if I seldom agreed with him. He could expound his position with startling clarity and could argue with the best of them.
The problem we often have is that we villify the "opposition" and raise people who agree with our positions to the higest levels. As with the sad case of Tiger Woods, things outwardly are not always what they appear to be when it comes to making idols out of mortal men or women. Each of us has flaws, some more serious than others, and some more dangerous as well.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
Do I really need to see some progressive review Glenn Beck? Nothing worse than watching progressive's lament Beck's success with b.s. claims about his intent and/or motives. Just say it - you hate what he says. He's not racist. He's not a demagogue. He's just a libertarian-leaning constitutionalist in an increasingly progressive world. To progressives he may look like the anti-christ, but to conservatives he's one of the few voices yelling to slow up and stop this march to fundamentally transform our country into something it's not supposed to be. These progressives have a bigger problem with Glenn Beck's show than they do with the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and our Republic. But keep doing what you're doing, because the tea party movement is growing because of it. Progressivism versus libertarianism. We're going to finally have it out I think. Now that Obama is starting to lay his fascist cards all out on the table.
LOL buygold.
I dislike Beck because he lies and distorts the truth, and because he has a national show on Fox News to do so.
There are some conservatives I like - the reasonable ones.
Thanks for dropping by anyway. Take care.
Glenn Beck merely interprets certain political leaders and their policies much differently than you do. Oh heck, maybe I'll write an article on this. You got me riled up. lol.
Okay, thanks for posting my comments. Here is my article in response to this one. http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Lefts-Hypocrisy-On-Bec
wheretobuygold, I did not find your hub at the address you listed above.
Beck does indeed interpret certain political leaders much different than many other people do. But when he makes stuff up, that is not interpretation - that is just out and out lying. I don't like that from the Left and I don't like that from the Right. To me this is not a political issue as much as it is an incompetence issue. Beck is no journalist, no reporter, and he says things without proper verification of the facts. Indeed, when necessary, he seems to just make up info to suit his point of view.
I hated when people made up stuff about Bush, such as his allegedly being AWOL when he wasn't, or that junk about the Skull and Bones Society. Or when someone made up stories about Palin's youngest son. Again, pure garbage. These"stories" all came from bloggers, who don't have to get it right, and so seldom do.
As far as TV news - Reporters, not talk show hosts, should be telling us about the news and events of the day. Since Beck appears never to have anyone on who could contradict him or at least get the facts straight, I have to class him with John Stewart, whom I also do not depend upon for actual news. BTW I find both of them to be better commedians than actual sources of real news.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
What Jeff said.
Also - I have a problem with the fact that Beck consistently lies and yet has a primetime slot on a major network as a platform.
Like others who worry more about ratings than reality, I dislike Beck because he seems to me to be just another blogger, although FOX News pays him a lot of money to do what he does. I blame FOX and any network that allows talking heads to do things like this.
While it may be envigorating to the follwers of Glenn Beck to listen to him daily, it is really sad that people would take his word for it after so many times when he has been caught telling either less than the whole truth, or has simply lied. What ois worse for people to put on blinders about "their guy" and exonerate him for the same things they so willingly blame those of a differing point of view. This is not a Left vs Right question: It is a truth vs lies question.
It is also sad that people use these types of shows to get their "news", which in turn supports their views, which, unfortunately, must be said to be based upon half-truths and lies. No matter what anybody might claim, Beck, and Limbaugh, and others, do not often get it right and we certainly deserve better than these performances meant only to build up ratings at the expense of truth.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
Dropping by late on this, as I have been busy with my fiction writing. But great hub. I am always impressed with your research and logic. I added my two bits with this hub http://hubpages.com/hub/liarglennbeck, and then found yours. I like your hubs on global warming as well.
In general, your povide a logical (sane) counterpoint to hubs by others... such as James A Watkins.
Thanks for reading Jeff. Some broken links here sadly.
I do try to act as a counter to the ideologues on here. Most people here can still have a decent conversation instead of a shouting match.
What a bunch of trash. You cannot find a single lie. You say he is bad for assuming the government has fema camps that they have no use for and cannot find any legitimate reason for them. Can YOU? You think that they NWO conspiracy is not true? Are you asleep? This whole article is so typical of the left. A bunch of opinion with no facts.Maddow and Olbnerman are such lying assholes. Rush Limbaugh might tout the Republicans constantly, but Glen Beck is NO Limbaugh. I dare you all to actually WATCH his show. He always backs the information up with FACTS and shows his sources. He has been showing exactly who the president is and who he is surrounded by. They are ALL Marxists. REALLY. In their OWN words! The LEFT wants you all not to watch him and think he is a freak. Watch the show yourself and see for yourself if he is saying his opinion or a bunch of BS.
When anyone mentions the 'new world order' I know I'm talking to a lunatic and I end the conversation as quickly as possible. My dad who is in his 80's likens beckerhead to Father Coughlin of the 1930's. How did ideas that just a few years ago seem loony become mainstream? I mean really-Cleon Skousen, Elizabeth Dilling?? The john birch society. I am inclined to believe what an old German immigrant said when she likened becks minions to the people that supported Hitler during the Weimar Republic. Marxists? Socialists? I see a few people could use a remedial course in legitimate political science. How does an administration full of wall street insiders qualify as Marxist? Give me a break!
bgamall Level 4 Commenter 2 years ago
Interesting hub. I have come to many of the same conclusions about Beck. He either can't or doesn't want to understand that the best friends of the bankers are the war mongers. So then, the neocons, who have replaced the slow to war conservatives like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, have taken over the Republican Party and now seem to have a great influence on the Dems as well. The bankers like those who increase debt, and the neocons increase debt with illegal wars of empire building.