Glenn Beck Is Pushing A Dangerous Political Climate

There is a new ethno-nationalism in America and the world. This phenomenon is dangerous, very real and, in America, Glenn Beck is at the center of it.

I’m going to say this as seriously as I possibly can. If Glenn Beck continues on the path of rage and hate that he is on, calling Barack Obama a “racist” and “the devil” or hosting a thinly veiled neo-white nationalist festival on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, there is going to be blood in the streets. This is not hypothetical. It has already started happening:

On his Monday radio show, Glenn Beck highlighted claims that before he started targeting a little-known, left-leaning organization called the Tides Foundation on his Fox News TV show, “nobody knew” what the nonprofit was.

After that, we’ll go here:

And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He’s the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution.

Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn’t able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger — fueled by the TV news he watched — about how “Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,” as his mother put it. Williams wasn’t able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization “nobody knew” about until Glenn Beck started targeting it.

Penn Jillette, a great libertarian guy, mistakenly compared liberal arguments that Beck is creating a dangerous political environment with blaming video game creators for shootings or the Beatles for the acts of Charlie Manson. This conclusion has logic to it but it doesn’t hold water since Beck is flirting pretty strongly with ideologies and figures that are knee-deep in genocidal movements of the past and have not been brought out of the attic and into the mainstream for decades, while bragging about making people aware of organizations that fans like Byron Williams have attempted to take out.

Video game creators and the Beatles are doing no such thing and simply creating products for enjoyment.

Beck surely is aware of these events and has not toned it down, instead upping the anti by trying to use the legacy of Dr. King to boost himself. I’m refraining from labeling him a “racist” or “bigot” but there’s alot going on with Beck that is very uncomfortable.

For example, one of his favorite Twitter profiles is that of “MalevoFreedom,” who said “Embrace White Culture!” (“White culture,” whatever that is, being something Beck has accused Obama of having a deep hatred for.)

The sort of climate that Beck is fostering is the sort that will not end pleasantly. Some of the unpleasantries were seen at his “Restoring Honor” rally on August 28, and would have been even worse if he hadn’t forbidden signs:

Signs touting links between Martin Luther King and communism are something this country hasn’t seen since the 1960s. The resurgence of such sentiments, and at a rally held on the Mall on the anniversary of his “I Have A Dream” speech, is profoundly disturbing.

Anyone who cares about this country, civil rights, race relations or a culture of decency should be deeply concerned about the hate that Glenn Beck is selling.

Even Bill O’Reilly, another host at Fox News who has Beck regularly on his show, has said that he is weary of the approach of Beck to combatting Obama:

MY COLLEAGUE GLENN BECK thinks that the forty-fourth President of the United States is a subversive, a man bent on changing America into some kind of socialistic nanny state that might, God help us, actually resemble France. Beck passionately believes that Barack Obama is a danger to everything Beck values. So Glenn has moved aggressively to challenge the President by using his daily radio and television programs to illustrate the radical stuff he believes is being promoted by the Obama administration.

Rush Limbaugh and many other conservative radio commentators believe pretty much the same thing: that the President is a force for pernicious change, a committed socialist in a two-thousanddollarsuit.

These guys pound President Obama into pudding just about every day, and millions of Americans are spooning up the dessert.

But I’m not so sure this scorched-earth strategy aimed at the President is good for the country. I favor a more surgical approach.

There’s an old quote by James Baldwin that is very appropriate. “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” Glenn Beck would be very well advised to keep that quote in his mind. I will refrain from judging Beck personally but it is quite clear that his rhetoric is attracting some of America’s most unattractive and long denied elements.