Apr 1st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Beck: We’re Marching Toward Fascism
Every time I watch Glenn Beck I think to myself, “the next time I watch Glenn Beck he’ll be saying something less crazy than this; he’s hit the bottom of the barrel.” And yet:
Ali Frick notes “Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean ‘Adolf Hitler kind of fascism’ and that he was talking about ‘fascism with a happy face,’ he illustrated his point with more than a minute’s worth of Nazi footage, played dramatically on the full screen behind him.”
Beck not only manages to get good ratings, but serious players in the conservative movement appear on his show regularly. It’s enough to make you pine for Rush Limbaugh.
106 Responses to “Beck: We’re Marching Toward Fascism”
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April 1st, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Tomorrow on Glenn Beck: the heterosexual white male is the Jew of Obamafascism.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Tomorrow on Glenn Beck: we’ve got to kill the black baby that the Jew and the pope had together.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Tomorrow on Glen Beck: Why are all those liberals staring at my psychiatric record?
April 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Wow.
I feel sorry for Colbert at this point. He was having a hard time keeping up with the crazy during the Bush years. Colbert cannot do a routine this far over the top — it’s so innovatively bizarre.
I have to say, it’s a lot more fun than Limbaugh, though I’d enjoy it more if I was sure he wasn’t being sincere.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Tomorrow on Glenn Beck: Using big words that I don’t understand.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:57 pm
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Fascism? Fascism? The right likes to use Fascism and Socialist Communist in the same sentence. They do know that Fascism is the polar opposite of socialism right?
Fascism = radial right wing
Communism = radial left wing
I think the pot’s calling the kettle black with this one. There’s only one party that’s acting Fascist now. Ultra conservative religous zealots….. Hmmm… who can that be?
April 1st, 2009 at 7:58 pm
“the next time I watch Glenn Beck he’ll be saying something less crazy than this; he’s hit the bottom of the barrel.”
You need to get over that kind of thinking. Glenn Beck is an entertainer, so he operates on the same principles that Hollywood does. Whenever Hollywood does a sequel, the sequel is always more outrageous and implausible than the previous release. If they didn’t do that, you wouldn’t go see the sequel, would you? Beck operates on the same principle. Nobody watches Beck to be informed, they just watch to see how he’ll top yesterday’s performance. That said, the guy’s got some real talent. He’s already moved beyond the absurdity of The Onion, and he tops himself every single day. Not many entertainers can do that.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Beck’s insanity is increasing exponentially … he is now forced to escalate his rhetoric over time to feed the “fans”. But, it’s only a couple months into a Dem administration … how much farther can he go? At this rate he’ll be leading a torch-bearing mob through D.C. by the summer. If he pulls back a bit and acts reasonable (whatever that is for him) his ratings will plummet.
He’s stuck … should be fun to watch.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I blame Jonah Goldberg who, in his cold, cheeseburger-clogged, cynical heart knows that his book and his whole shtick is complete bullshit. The question is: does Beck know that it’s bullshit? And if he doesn’t (or if his audience doesn’t), when does this go from goofy-creepy to spree-killers citing the wisdom of Father Glenn?
April 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Everytime I think that conservatism has entered its Baroque period, they always do me one better.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:03 pm
It’s just a real-life version of Network. Eventually Faye Dunaway will have to arrange a hit on him.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Tomorrow on Glenn Beck: Liberal Fascist Communists from the East Cost Ivy League elite, funded by George Soros and ACORN, allow French and UN internationalists to seize control of the Fed and abolish the US dollar, replacing it with the Euroatheistyuan.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:05 pm
“They do know that Fascism is the polar opposite of socialism right?”
I don’t buy that. I view the political spectrum as a circle, not a line. That may sound crazy, but it’s actually true. In pure fascism, the corporations have total control of the government. In communism, the government has total control of the corporations. But, from a practical standpoint, both systems involve a complete merging of government and corporate interests. And those in power are not elected by anyone and exert absolute authority. The only real difference is in rhetorical style. But let’s be honest, neither of us want to live in the hellish realities proposed by either Karl Marx or Ayn Rand.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I always thought it was stupid when people on the left started comparing just about everything to the Reichstag fire, but at least folks doing that didn’t have a cable news show. I can’t believe Fox’s contract with Beck doesn’t give them some editorial control.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Oh God, I just got to the Mercury dime. Oh Woodrow Wilson, you Fox.
This conspiracy theory clearly undermines your contention that commerce secretaries in the early 20th century were powerless.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I should have inserted “far left” and “media” somewhere in my previous post…
April 1st, 2009 at 8:14 pm
But let’s be honest, neither of us want to live in the hellish realities proposed by either Karl Marx or Ayn Rand.
Like there is any equivalency between the two? Karl Marx said near the end of his life that he was not a “Marxist”. He would have disapproved of many Lenin’s policies, and harshly criticized Stalin’s crimes.
Marxism is the foundation of modern left-wing parties, and unions. Some of his ideas were proven wrong, but most of what he wrote is the basis of what liberals and progressives think today.
On the other hand, Rand is “stupid” and has no real legacy today.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I may be misremembering my history but wasn’t the word fascism coined by Mussolini using the symbol of sticks bound together 20 years after the Mercury Dime was in circulation? It would have been some feat for Woodrow Wilson to have circulated the symbol before the term was coined. Quite clever
April 1st, 2009 at 8:20 pm
This stuff is truly groundbreaking political theater. Never in my life did I guess I would ever see (without the benefit of recreational drugs) a gargantuan Ben Bernanke poised with his bearded maw behind a commentator, ready to eat him whole.
Gilliamesque is what this is.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:21 pm
I bet there’ll be a significant case of right-wing, OKC/McVeigh-style domestic terrorism by the end of 2011. I hope not, but that’s what results from the kind of paranoia Beck is trying to foment.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:22 pm
There does seem to be this weird trend lately where conservative writers will call such-and-such Obama policy “fascism,” and when everyone piles on they immediately will claim, “No no no! We don’t mean Nazi’s! Everyone knows not all fascists are nazis (or phalangists, or whatever)! We’re using fascism in the strict corporate-state-political sense; fascism is a form of government like any other. People who think ‘fascism’ is some sort of libel don’t know what they’re talking about!” I never read the Goldberg thing, so I dunno if that’s where it started, but it’s all pretty cynical.
Calling someone a “fascist” is a libel, just face it; if people aren’t be shot by the thousands, there’s no fascism here. Fascism has always been accompanied by purges, nationalism, and imperialistic militarism (and usually racism or clericalism).
April 1st, 2009 at 8:24 pm
a gargantuan Ben Bernanke poised
That’s not Bernanke. That’s Emmanuel Goldstein. Glenn Beck is now hosting the “two minutes hate” on FOX.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Tiny tiny tiny penis. That’s all this is about.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
The difference between Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter, other then sex (maybe), is that Coulter doesn’t believe 90% of the crap that comes out of her (his) mouth. Beck believes everything that comes out of his mouth.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:30 pm
“Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.”
Does this sound more like the American Right or the American Left?
April 1st, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Go read about Father Coughlin. The founding transmitter of mixed up white nativist populism by electronic media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
Everyone just knows he was a right winger. Till you try to get your mind around this.
“In 1935, Coughlin proclaimed, “I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world’s goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world’s happiness.”[13] He accused Roosevelt of “leaning toward international socialism on the Spanish question.” Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice, an organization with a strong following among nativists and opponents of the Federal Reserve, especially in the Midwest. As Michael Kazin notes, Coughlinites saw Wall Street and Communism as twin faces of a secular Satan. Coughlinites believed that they were defending those people who cohered more through piety, economic frustration, and a common dread of powerful, modernizing enemies than through any class identity.[14]”
Setting aside the virulent antisemitism, which is what really killed him, his crazy mixed up ideas are similar to Beck’s. Similar in that they are so scattered and hard to pin down on the ideological continuum.
Populist left and right have always been against Wall Street. This is now causing a head exploding problem for the new professional populists.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I was creeped out by the gigantic blinking Bernanke. Seriously. I’m glad I have a job, and don’t have time to watch that crap.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I’ve never watched this clown before, I haven’t got cable tv. Oh, what I’ve been missing.
Beck’s idea might be a little unusual, but there’s no denying the persuasive power of his logic and the overwhelming amount of evidence he cites to buttress his case.
My only concern is that many of his viewers probably lack the sophistication to understand this is a man whose ideas are to be taken seriously. It’s a deeply frightening thought that there are probably millions of people out there who watch his show and aren’t smart enough to take him seriously.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
The bundled sticks are called “fasces”, a term originating in Latin, which was a language spoken in Rome over 2,000 years ago, by a people who made liberal use of the symbol. (There: see? Liberal fascism in action). Any well-intentioned idiot with internet access can learn that employing fasces as symbols did not make the user a proto-fascist. It ought to be obvious now that Glenn Beck is a greater threat to democracy than the designer of the Mercury dime.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Why don’t we just start a boycott of that clown’s advertisers? Comparing Obama to Hitler, that’s a piece of cake.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Is it just me or did Glenn Beck only go crazy when the black guy got into office? I remember him being mildly cogent and reasonable on CNN…now…well now is just what you saw.
k1
April 1st, 2009 at 8:50 pm
You see, mark, there you go again. Slyly invoking “Latin” when what you’re really implying is Italian, i.e., the fascist language.
Also, the word for a bundle of sticks (fasces) in English is a faggot, as I’m sure you know. Because of that and because you invoked the language of ancient Rome, I’ll try not to assume anything about you. Ahem.
(sorry, mark, it’s 4/1, nothing personal)
April 1st, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Beck believes everything that comes out of his mouth.
C’mon, did you see the alligator tears Beck was shedding on his show? I’ve never seen such horrible acting outside of a Madonna flick. He’s full of crap and he knows it. It boggles my mind that anyone takes him seriously. It would be funny if it wasn’t so frightening.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Glenn Beck is not the REAL Issue. The REAL issue is that the Democratic Party can get close to $1 BILLION in an election cycle and STILL not have ONE SINGLE FUCKING SPOKEMAN who can refute Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O;Reilly.
WHAT in the fuck is the DNC , DCCC and DSCC doing with our fucking money?
April 1st, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Let’s just agree that it’s corporatism. Ok?
April 1st, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I find the idea of “non-violent fascism” hilarious. I suspect that Mussolini, d’Annunzio, Millán-Astray, etc, on the other hand, would have found the idea offensive and tortured Beck to death for even mentioning such a concept.
I suppose Beck, at some point in high school or something, read 1984. Most people have. He must have forgotten it completely though. I never read it in high school, so I just read it a few months ago. Protip: Oceania was not non-violent, nor was it fascism with a happy face. Maybe he was thinking Brave New World or something. Oceania was a society based on war and torture in which the overwhelming majority lived in material poverty. Superficially utopian societies with a dystopian underbelly are a common theme in fiction. 1984 doesn’t fit that pattern: it was dystopian from the superficial level on down.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:29 pm
OK, a couple of things. One, fascism and communism are not polar opposites, but rather two forms of extremism with different emphases. Most importantly, they share deep paranoia and hostility toward outgroups – Jews, the bourgeoisie – and seek to remake the world in their image (conservatives, take note…the abyss stares back, after all).
Also, the symbol on the mercury penny is the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol of political authority. For obvious reasons, Mussolini appropriated the symbol when he was building the Italian Fascist movement.
None of this is rocket science, it doesn’t take much to understand the basic terminology. Which is to say that Glenn Beck is not just a hysterical ranter of the Father Coughlin school, but he’s so achingly ignorant. And that’s the most dangerous combination of them all
April 1st, 2009 at 9:33 pm
WHAT in the fuck is the DNC , DCCC and DSCC doing with our fucking money?
I’m pretty sure they used it to win the election.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I’d watch some of these fellows more often if they had recipe segments (as well as if my satellite package included Fox News; HBO or Fox News, you decide).
(Did you see Linus? The Oliver fellow cooked that dinner over there.)
Oh yes: Scottish salmon, Welsh lamb, Jersey potatoes (are Irish ones still a faux pas?), some kind of tart.
(What’s Linus eating?)
Thanks for asking, of course. As it happens I made grilled salmon burgers with swiss cheese, lemon cilantro mayo, mixed greens, red onion, and tomato with sweet potato fries. It was delicious.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Agreed. I said this the other night and I’ll say it again: Rush is just a dick. A big, fat, sweaty, betittied dick. But he’s not crazy. Glenn Beck is capital C Crazy. Out of his fucking mind.
And also a dick.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
If you don’t like what you see, it’s just another reason not to pay for cable tv.
If you want shock entertainment, you can still listen to Savage for free on the radio.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I’m not a huge fan of Beck for various reasons, but he sure seems to be getting a lot of attention recently. Is he getting warmer? Infringing on someone’s territory? Threatening to cost some people money or power?
April 1st, 2009 at 10:43 pm
k1@32 — it’s just you. Beck has been completely mad ever since I’ve heard of him. Here he is in 2007:
Remember that scene [in A Beautiful Mind] where Russell Crowe has pasted up a number of newspaper stories and is making associations and drawing connections between them by running strings from one story to the next, and then that story to another, and so on? You could easily do the same with the stories here. It’s not a great leap to see a certain synchronicity between them.
As Dave Noon points out at my link, Russell Crowe’s character in ABM is a crazy person. Not as in a wingnut, as in a schizophrenic whose string manipulation is a manifestation of his madness. This is how Glenn Beck thought you should think about politics in 2007.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I’m curious – if the country is rejecting Obama for the likes of Beck, shouldn’t the GOP be able to win an election in conservative upstate New York?
April 1st, 2009 at 11:11 pm
You can’t refute them, not in the sense of deploying better argumentation, because you can’t refute a theology — it depends on Revealed Truth.
That’s what the stake, and a box of kitchen matches, and a whole lotta kindling was for in the old days.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Beck holds up the symbol that appears on the back of the mercury head dime. On its reverse side is a symbol that beck says was the symbol of Nazi Fascism. And he is correct. However it was originally used as a symbol of the Roman Empire. Its called the “fasces”. The fasces symbol is also used on the insignia of the US Nataional Guard and appears above the entrance to the US House of Representatives and the official seal of the US Senate has one. Many more examples abound. But to Beck this is all a part of the secret conspiracy to turn the US into a fascist state. Beck is an extremely paranoid and delusional person with an awful lot of power. A very frightening combination indeed.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:12 pm
интересное…
Every time I watch Glenn Beck I think to myself, “the next time I watch Glenn Beck he’ll be saying something less crazy than this; he’s hit the[...]…
April 1st, 2009 at 11:21 pm
“On the other hand, Rand is “stupid” and has no real legacy today.”
Tell that to the Republicans who are promoting Ayn Rand today. Yes, it’s stupid, but that doesn’t mean they can’t gain power. Ayn Rand’s legacy still lives strong in the Bush family machine and the neoconservative movement. And last I checked, they were in power not so long ago. They can and will come back.
But when you look at the fallacies of Marx and Rand, they can be considered to be the same. They both rely on charity. In Marx’s delusion, workers will always work as hard as they can regardless of compensation. In Rand’s delusion, people will always give away their money as long as nobody forces them to do so. But from a practical standpoint, work and money are equally valuable concepts. Either way, those on the other side of the circle are saying that people inherently want to give away that which is valuable. And that is absurd.
I would agree that Marx proposed a more reasonable solution than Rand, but only because he was less of an extremist. I would have been more correct to compare Rand to Stalin. And Stalin really is a lot closer to Republican mentality than Marx ever was. The reason is that he was more radical, and therefore closer to the other approach on the circle.
Maybe this old Soviet joke will help:
Stalin is talking to his aide and say: “I seem to have lost my pipe.” The aide replies, “I’ll get on it, sir.” An hour later the aide comes back to Stalin’s office. And Stalin says: “don’t worry about that pipe, I’ve found it.” And the aide replies: “But, sir, five people have already confessed to taking it.”
Now replace the word ‘Stalin’ with ‘Cheney.’ Does the joke still work? Of course it does. This is the problem with extremists on both sides: they are the same side.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:21 pm
What a f***ing retard – anybody that ever suggests that “fascism” can be “non-violent” is talking out of their butts. If they were literate and had read ANY intelligent book about fascism, they would know that violence is endemic, it is ELEMENTAL to fascism. Glenn, you f***tard, pick up some Robert Paxton (_The Anatomy of Fascism_). I mean, I get it, it’s the paranoia, the hysteria that he’s trying to whip up for ratings, but as an educated person that regularly spends three weeks in college history classes talking about fascism, this drives me NUTS. DTM (#35) has it just right above – otherwise it’s just totalitarianism (though Total States too most often have an endemic violent streak).
And Nick, #38, uh, no, fascism and communism kind of ARE polar opposites. They are fundamentally two different types of communitarian identity – fascism is hyper-particular and exclusive (the _volk_, la razza) versus communist, which is universalist (”workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”) The whole Comintern thing…(which also helps explain why the fascists fought the communists in Spain, why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union…) Communists want worldwide revolution. How do you think the NSDAP got started in Germany? Beating up communists…
April 1st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Could this be Glenny’s very funny April Fools Day Prank sort of Colbert Report satire of himself gone over the top?
April 1st, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Have no fear! M. IOZ says Beck is as harmless as Metamucil.
Though w/superior production values.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
The more I look at that clip, the weirder it seems to me.
I actually hear him trying to dial back some of the more explicitly right-wing, vigilante stuff, in an effort to craft a more generically paranoid-populist, Howard Beale-y tone.
That would actually be a healthy development, though I bet it turns out not to be good for his ratings.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
“Non-violent form of fascism…put it another way, 1984″
1984 is based on the premise of inherent, permanent, state-sponsored violence.
For god’s sakes, Beck is an embarrassment to my conservatism.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 am
“Non-violent form of fascism…put it another way, 1984.”
As his viewers scratch their heads and ask “what happened back in 1984 that’s so special?”
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 am
I’ve never noticed before . . . but if you take Ben Bernanke, turn his picture into a personality-cult-sized banner, and sepia-tone it — he’s a dead ringer for Karl Marx!
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:23 am
I know we’re tossing around terminology haphazardly here, but the idea that Ayn Rand = fascism or neoconservatism is more than slightly off.
Ayn Rand is for antisocial idiots who think that arguments along the lines of A=A justify an ethics of property and self and nothing else. If Strauss bothered to read Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, he just would have laughed at it ten pages in and realized he had better things to do with his time.
And neoconservatism isn’t the same as fascism! (Though that is a more interesting argument to take.)
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:11 am
Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean ‘Adolf Hitler kind of fascism’ and that he was talking about ‘fascism with a happy face,’
No,no,he ment Mossoulini with a happy face!
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:57 am
On the other hand, Rand is “stupid” and has no real legacy today.
She may be stupid, but she certainly has a legacy. We’re drowning in it. Alan Greenspan, anyone?
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 am
this guy hasn’t reproduced, has he?
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 am
In the end,this relates to a problem in our society. We are more concerned with outwitting people than we are with helping people. We can use logic to justify anything we do. Just as we have always used religion to do the same. Rather than fighting over religion, it might be better over practicality. I happen to worship a pretty minor religion. Only seven hundred million people worship it. So it’s not some kick-ass religion like Hinduism. But it’s a lot more relevant than some piss-ant religion like Judaism. There are more Taoists there are Jews. So why do the Jews always get more credibility than Buddhists? In America, we are approximately the same sized population. In the world, the Jews are an irrelevant population compared to the Buddhist population. But in Palestine, there is a simple formula: The Jews deserve three times the land that anyone else would deserve. I really don’t believe that Jews are the chosen People, and I really don’t believe that they are better people than I am. And my Jewish friends are insistent that they don’t think that I am a lesser person. So why do the Israelis still think that I am an animal rather than a human being?
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:59 am
Actually, the fasces was the symbol of the Roman Republic, and was an ax with a bundle of rods tied around it. I remember a story we read in school about when Brutus had to sentence his own son to be executed for treason, and the fasces was the method. The guards would first take the rods and beat the condemned before using the ax to finish him.
I don’t know much about what Mussolini said himself when appropriating the symbol for his own regime but I’m sure it must have had to do with how men like Brutus had to act for the rule of law, although I doubt if such men would have liked Mussolini’s style, necessarily.
Beck’s audience does include people with great capacity for revising their own recollection of recent history, but it’s only been a few months since McCain was repeating his slogan of “country first,” while former constitutional law professor Obama had never said or implied that the state should have any supremacy over the people.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 am
Has Beck read 1984 himself? The state ideology was called IngSoc, newspeak for “English socialism,” and that was a springboard for socialist Orwell to expand on his differences with totalitarian communism.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:45 am
Whoa, whoa America. Slow down. lets get our heads back. Yes, much of America has been built on some horrible fictions, and hopefully we will learn a lot more about our unsavory past and present.
I do think America needs a Kruschev moment.
But, lets be careful as we try to advance America into adulthood. The American identity is still young impressionable, and needs to beware of unsavory crap such as Beck is peddling.
These are going to be truly difficult times.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:55 am
My worry is that this kind of shock-entertainment craziness has the potential to encourage particularly unstable people to do crazy, actual things, violent things. If people like Beck claim Obama is bringing fascism to our shores with shots of stormtroopers on a big screen in the background, well then, better do something about that right? This kind of thing can stir a very ugly pot.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:00 am
What happened to Beck railing against the rise of “socialism” via Obama and his agenda? Does he really not know the difference between Nazi fascism and socialism?
Incidentally, Obama is basically inseparable from the policies of Bush, so Beck is only doing this crap for attention, not connected to reality.
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 am
My aunt and her right-wing third husband watch his show. They even had one of those house parties during his special. Now, they’ve armed themselves because Obama is destroying the country and poor people are going to come and kill them and steal their stuff. I’m pretty sure they mean black people – she’s always been racist. And Obama is destroying the country? It’s as if they were in a coma for eight years.
Bright side – they actually hate each other, my aunt is mean and has a vicious temper, so now that they’re armed, I kinda see this problem as solving itself.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:16 am
Tomorrow on Glen Beck: Watch Rush take a dump on Glenn’s chest.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
Why shouldn’t we be demanding that national republicans, particularly those in competitive states and districts, reject calls to violence and revolution and distance themselves from folks like Beck, Hannity, etc.? They would either need to alienate sane independents or the insane component of their base.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:33 am
I think it’s awesome that Wilson put the “symbol of fascism” on the Mercury dime 3 years before Mussolini founded fascism.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Tomorrow on Glenn Beck: the Buffalo nickel killed Christ.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 am
fostert—I really don’t understand your obsession with this straw man “Chosen people” argument. As you’ve stated, Jews really don’t think it means what you’re worried it means. (You insist that you shouldn’t have to feel like a lesser person and all but the fringiest Jews agree, so why do you keep bringing up that you aren’t a “lesser person” than the “chosen people”? No one’s saying you are!) And before you quote the Jewish bible—it really doesn’t matter, just like pulling out passages from the Quran, as many on the anti-Islam right love to do, doesn’t prove anything about how Muslims feel about non-Muslims etc. So because of this chosen people thing and resenting being regarded as a lesser person (which no one regards you as), you repeatedly take shots at Jews, talk about what they need to learn, and now call them a “piss-ant religion”. Really, what is your problem?
Do Israelis really think you’re an animal?
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:44 am
fostert—I really don’t understand your obsession with this straw man “Chosen people” argument
There’s been a lot of nickname impersonation going on lately in which someone uses someone else’s nickname to post anti-semitic or otherwise racist comments. I’m going to adopt a “wait and see” attitude to fostert and see if that’s really him or if he pops in later to complain about nickname stealing.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:18 am
Well, you’ll know if fascism has won if the people controlling us start saying ridiculous things singularly based on fear and hate.
Oh wait, that’s what has been happening the last 8 years! And wait, Beck sounds just like one of them!
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 am
BTW – people can argue what Fascism is, but ultimately it’s one of those things you “know when you smell it”.
Obama may suck for various reasons (the jury isn’t out, but there’s reason for disappointment), but one thing I can say – he’s not fascist or heading toward fascism. Beck is just pulling a loaded word out of his backside for effect. That is in fact the kind of manipulation that is dangerous and it is the sort of thing typical of fascists.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 am
“I’m going to adopt a “wait and see” attitude to fostert and see if that’s really him or if he pops in later to complain about nickname stealing.”
No, that’s really me. And my “chosen people” comment stands. Let’s be honest here. The Palestinians and the Israelis are roughly equal populations. Yet the current thinking is that the Israelis deserve three times the land that the Palestinians deserve (look at a map if you think I’m wrong). If the Israelis thought of themselves as equal to the Palestinians, they would give some land back to the Palestinians. Instead, they take more. There’s an old stereotype that the Jews are greedy. Unfortunately, the Israelis are doing everything they can to enhance that stereotype. If someone can explain to me why Israelis are genetically in need of more land and water than everyone else, I’ll be happy to support their land grabs. But until then, I’ll treat the Israelis like normal human beings, not the extra-special people they insist on being. And you should note that Jews and Israelis are not the same thing. I have no problem with the Jews. Israelis can go to Hell. I’ll give them some credit when they can acknowledge that the Palestinian people are actually human beings. Until then, I’ll think of them as the dogs that they think the Palestinians are.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
If Strauss bothered to read Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, he just would have laughed at it ten pages in and realized he had better things to do with his time.
Yes, Strauss would have laughed at her because she was forthright in her craziness; he knew you had couch your insanity in exquisitely elaborate mumbo jumbo.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
I guess I should note that I’m erratic enough that nobody has tried to fake me. Insanity does have its advantages.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:33 am
Yes, Jews and Israelis are not the same, but you’ve called Judaism a “piss-ant” religion, talked about how Jews want you to feel lesser than them because they’re the “chosen people” etc. Jews don’t really look at non-Jews this way, but you have the book of Joshua (which doesn’t really apply outside of an ancient tribal-warfare context) to cite and seem really annoyed at a non-existant feeling of supremacy directed at you by Jews. Explaining the politics of land and resources in Israel/Palestine with reference to this chosen people idea and anti-Semitic stereotpyes of greed is really just ridiculous. Because Israelis are Jews, you interpret their actions in light of and plug them into what you already “know” about Jews—-there are ways to treat this conflict like other similar others without your strange focus on aspects of Judaism/Jewishness that supposedly underpin it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Ayn Rand’s legacy still lives strong in the Bush family machine
I’m sorry, but that wins some sort of prize for the most retarded statement ever made on the Internet.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:42 am
For the sake of pedantry: Fascism and communism are fundamentally similar, particularly in opposition to liberalism. They both share the same myth of a special, representative portion of the human race (the nation, the volk, the proletariat, etc.) who must struggle to destroy their enemies in the pursuit of creating a perfect society. Both ideologies are predicated on the necessity of violence. Moreover, they have programmatic similarities. Fascism can be described as a communist heresy in which the proletariat is replaced by the national group and the class struggle is replaced by the race (or national) struggle. Really, fascism is just communism for the petit-bourgeois. The fascists and communists knew this about each other, hence the animosity. When Hitler took power and outlawed the KDP, many communists found it an easy ideological move from red to brown.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 am
fostert, you’ve also, in the past, gotten angry about how Jews “need to learn” that their not better than you because their supposedly “chosen”. Seriously, where does this come from?
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:47 am
their=they’re
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 am
“Do Israelis really think you’re an animal?”
The Israelis I’ve met certainly do. And they’ve said it to my face. There’s a simple rule: treat me well, and I’ll treat you well. When the Israelis treat me and other people with respect, I’ll respect them. But for now, they insist on taking my money and using it to destabilize the world. And I’m supposed to like that that simply because they are Jewish? Fat chance. I like the Jews and truly admire their approach to religion. But that does not mean that I support every policy of the government of Israel. The concept of separating Jews from Israel shouldn’t be so hard. We don’t seem to have a problem separating Christianity from Pinochet or Franco, do we? Jewish people really are no different from anyone else. There should be no problem separating the policies of the Israeli government from the doctrines of the Jewish religion. And if we insist on equating them, then we should insist on equating Christianity with the tactics of Tim McVeigh. I wouldn’t do that, so you should not assume that I equate the Israeli government with Judaism. Yagil Amir certainly didn’t.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:06 am
“Good ratings”? Whatever happened to “nobody watches Glenn Beck’s shitty show”?
– Chris
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
fostert–I don’t have a problem separating Jews from Israel. You do, as shown by your comments about Jews/Judaism in this thread and in another, and your weird obsession with the idea that Jews (not Israelis) want you to feel like a “lesser person” because they are the “chosen people.” You indignantly state that you won’t be made to feel that way, or to treat someone differently just because he’s Jewish, but no one is making these demands on you. You say you have no problem with Jews, but you seem to carry assumptions about them/what they think and explain things to yourself through the lens of anti-Semitic stereotpyes not really grounded in reality. In being resentful that Jews want you to feel like a “lesser person” and “bow to them” (which you said in another post, something like “…if he expects me to bow to him just becasue he’s part of the ‘chosen people’”), which, your citations of Joshua aside, doesn’t describe how Jews, secular or religoius, feel about non-Jews, you do indicate that you have a problem with Jews.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 am
Here is an example:
“And I’m supposed to like that that simply because they are Jewish?”
Who is claiming that you have to like Israeli policy because they are Jewish? You really have a strange, paranoid and resentful idea of what Jews—and again, I am perfectly capable of separating them from Israelis, but haven’t seen that from you—think of you as a non-Jew; you seem to think they make all sorts of demands and want special treatment b/c they think they are “chosen”. That is really ridiculous (and I’m sure your Jewish friends will assure you of that.)
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
“Seriously, where does this come from?”
Keep in mind that I separate Jews from Israelis. The idea that I think Israelis believe that they are are superior people comes from the fact that they believe they think that having three times the land that the Palestinians have is not enough for them. They think they deserve even more than three times the land than the Palestinians do. That’s why they keep stealing land from the Palestinians.
I know that I’ll be crucified for saying what I say. I have no problem with that. But really, some Israel supporter should at least explain why the Israelis deserve more land than the Palestinians. And not just more land, but more than three times the land. What is it about them that they deserve more than everyone else? Until someone can explain that, my opinion will not change.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
fostert, I tend to agree with your views of Israeli policy, but you don’t separate Israelis from Jews. You talk about what Jews “need to learn”, that they are a “piss-ant religion” and that they want you to “bow to them” and feel like a “lesser person” because they are chosen. This really shows paranoid resentment against Jews and has nothing to do with Israel. You invoke the book of Joshua to support yoru idea that Jews think x and y about all non-Jews. I’m responding to your comments on Jews, not Israelis.
Then you plug your critique of Israel into anti-Jewish stereotpyes such as greed. Then you act like a martyr for getting “crucified” (ie disagreed with/argued with) for your views on Israel, and act like you are accused of anti-Semitism just because you criticise Israel. No. I’m perfectly capable of making these distinctions and am pointing out the various false, resentful ideas about Jews you’ve expressed and the anti-Semitic explanations you use to discuss ISrael (such as the greed issue, and that they want you to like them “just because they are Jewish” and chosen, which isn’t true but is rooted in anti-Semitic ideas about Jews.)
I agree about Israeli policy, land, resources, occupation, etc. I would discuss it the way I discuss any other nationalist conflict. The way you discuss it, and more importantly, Jews in general and what you imagine they think/want of you as a non-Jew, reveals that you have a problem with Jews and resent them for things they supposedly think/believe (but in reality don’t).
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
Isrealis believing they are superior is one thing, (though I don’t think that you’d ascribe to anyone else involved in a national conflict over land etc. the belief that they are superior in general; this ties into your general beliefs that Jews think they are superior and chosen). Israelis believing they are superior because they are Jewish, which you then tie into your idea that Jews, not Israelis, want you to “bow to them” and feel like a “lesser person” because they are chosen (supported with pull-quoting from the Bible) is another, and reveals a lot about your thought process.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
and when I point out what you’re saying/thinking about Jews, you jump over to Israel and ask me to justify their policies or you won’t change your mind. This doesn’t really suggest that you differentiate between Jews and Israelis, or between “Israelis” and Israeli gov’t policy.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
honestly it is a little too easy/convenient to play this game and then act like you’re a victim of being accused of anti-Semitism for being critical of Israel. That happens far too often, but is not the case with you.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
Anthony, there is no hope. You simply cannot separate the Judaism/ Israel concept as much as you claim to do so. I have a problem with people stealing other people’s land. If Muslims, Hindus, Christians, or Buddhists were doing the same, I’d have the exact same problem with it. I took serious issue with Saddam’s invasion of Iran. I took serious issue with Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. I treat these kind of things the same regardless of who is doing it. Your assertion is that I should ignore Israel’s land grabs simply because the people doing it are Jewish. As if Jewish people are immune to scrutiny. They are not. They are equal to the rest of humanity and deserve to be judged exactly the same way. And when they steal people’s land, they deserve to be called on it. And they aren’t just stealing land, they are waving a big fat middle finger at the rest of the world and demanding that the United States give them the money to do it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
But in the end, Anthony, I’m proud to be considered an anti-Semite by you. It only shows your ignorance.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
DTM,
But aren’t anarchic forms of communism just anarchism, which is far removed from Soviet-style communism and European fascism?
The real point is that fascism and communism share many specific elements beyond authoritarian/totalitarian attitudes. Their roots are strikingly similar, and it’s important to recognize how intimately related the two concepts are. The whole problem is that the Glenn Becks of the world confuse the symbol for the thing itself, and throw around scary words like fascist and communist without knowing anything about these phenomena.
Watching Red Dawn is not an education in Marxist thought, and History channel documentaries on Hitler’s secret occultism are no short course on the the roots of fascism.
But I stand by the point that fascism and communism are far more similar than they are different, if for no other reason that they both loathe modernity and the pluralistic liberalism that has evolved out of it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
Oh, and by the way, you still haven’t explained why the Israelis deserve three times the land that the Palestinians do. Can’t do that without racism, can you?
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
fostert, I am agreeing with you about Israel and responding to your various statements and assumptions about Jews. When did I say this?
“Your assertion is that I should ignore Israel’s land grabs simply because the people doing it are Jewish. As if Jewish people are immune to scrutiny.”
What?
My assertion is that thinking that Jews (not Israelis) believe that you are a “lesser person” and want you to “bow to them” because they are chosen, and then justifiying this with a citation from Joshua, reveals that you have a problem with Jews. You think that they think they are chosen, which makes them immune to criticism and that they believe that others should bow to them and feel like lesser people. You then say you’re separating Jews from Israel, but I am also opposed to Israeli land grabs etc. and responding to your comments, here and in another thread, about Jews. You can jump to Israel, but this didn’t start with you talking about Israel (and even your comments about Israel reveal these same misconceptions about Jews and what they think, ie that they—and I—think they are above criticism b/c they are Jewish and “chosen”). How is calling Judaism a “piss-ant” religion and saying that Jews “need to learn” that they’re just like everyone else an example of making a distinction between Israel and Jews? Your even explain Israel’s awful policies with reference to the same resentful and untrue thinking about what Jews believe about themselves and non-Jews!
You think you are making a clear distinction, but you’re demonstrating a lot of ideas about Jews (not Israelis, Jews) that are rooted in anti-Semitic stereotypes (oooh they think they’re superior b/c they’re chosen). That’s what I’m responding to. I’m certainly not telling anyone to ignore Israeli land grabs. The fact that you think I’m doing that, and that you think i’m doing that b/c such things should be ignored “simply because the the people doing it are Jewish” and that Jews think they are “immune to scrutiny” really shows what I’m trying to say: that you proceed from anti-Jewish prejudice, rooted in long-standing anti-Semtici theories about Jews, then hide behind the “hey I’m just criticising Israel” line. Which demeans people who criticise Israel and are unfairly called anti-Semites. That is a horrible trend—but it doesn’t apply to you.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:41 am
fostert, for the 100th time, I don’t agree that Isrealis deserve 3X the land. I *agree* with you about Isreali land grabs and policies. I’m responding to your anti-Semitic commens. About Jews.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:30 am
Nick (#97) – I take your point about similarities. But on that level of generalization, it strips away the key differences. I have a friend who studies French interwar culture and fascism and he and I argue all the time about modernism fascism. He typically insists (and I have in many ways come to agree with him) that fascists do not, as you say, “loathe” modernity as a THING IN ITSELF (they do, as you suggest, loathe the pluralistic liberalism that it in part generates). In Italy many of the first fascists were veterans, syndicalists, and cultural modernists (in particular futurists). Fascists are actually highly modernist, if you look at their forms of cultural production, which is important in terms of legitimizing fascism and giving fascism a tangible content. (_Triumph of the Will_ is I think the most visible and well-known example, perhaps?) I guess it all depends on one’s definition of “modernism.”
I would still maintain that lumping communism and fascism together “beyond authoritarian/totalitarian attitudes” is way too dramatic an oversimplification, but I think I understand your point, viz. that Beck and those other retards on the right have no idea what they’re talking about. And on that, I am in total agreement.
Here’s my larger question: how come WE are the only people pointing this out – that these people have their heads so far up their asses that you couldn’t pump sunshine to them? (and by that I do not mean on this thread) – Why aren’t other people pointing out that Beck and his nimrod cohorts are “morans”? Is most of America that un-informed that they simply don’t know? *sigh* I feel like a total failure as an educator.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Lots of good stuff above the Roman fasces. The Roman Republic used them as a symbol of strength: one reed breaks, but the bundle (and the attacked axe) are still held together. They were carried symbolically in the late Roman Republic by an honor guard consisting of lictors (and by then the axe had been removed). The larger your number of lictors, the more important you were, and thus the more authority you wielded. For example, consuls were entitled to 12 lictors and a praetor to 6. Fascism is appropriately named, I think, because it relies on the strength of ones personality and charisma (like a classical tyrant, but that word is inappropriate today), and not necessarily on the absolute rule of law.
GWB could be considered a fascist leader because he repied on force of will and personality to get what he wanted, not active political engagement.
But now, like the word Nazi, Fascism just means an ideology of people that I disagree with. It’s lost most of the force of its original meaning. (Beck should know better, though of course he’s betting that his audience doesn’t know either. O tempora o mores).
BTW, socialism and fascism are not political opposites or spots on a wheel. The former is an economic theory, the latter deals with political organization. Of course, one of the roles of political science is to figure out which economic systems work better with which political systems.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Fascism and communism are part of the fabric of modernity in an odd way, as both are attempts to overcome it. Which I guess is part and parcel of the modernists’ “make it new” ethos. They both hope to undo the fractiousness of pluralist modernism; fascism by attempting to recreate the ideal, pre-modern past with the very tools of modernity, and communism by purifying modernity of its contradictions.
This is a debate that can and should go on, but as other commentators have mentioned we should bear in mind how strange a situation this is. All of the above commentators have at least some actual knowledge of the matter at hand, and yet Glenn Beck reaches millions with his ignorant and embarassing ravings. It’s enough to drive you up the wall.
Real socialists (and fascists, for that matter) must find the situation unbearable.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
What would the Italian fascists and German Nazis say about gay marriage and abortion? Seriously, that’s a sincere question.
Also, what would they say about immigration by poor foreigners? Would they be pulled in two directions by big business and Volk-glorifiers, the way today’s US conservatives are?
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
By the time ones gets to the end of the clip with the Mercury Dime this is pretty clearly a April Fool joke…guys, show some perspective. Admittedly, Fox News as it really functions makes this sort of send up work.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
No Stefan, Glenn Beck is like this every day.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:02 am
@ 82 Exactly Nick.
Stalin and Hitler would have readily admitted they were both hungry rats willing to fight to the death over a piece of cheese. It gave them a grudging respect for each other. They identified with each other.
Their techniques for maintaining power were almost identical; internally, relentless propaganda mixed with a ruthless security network (or 2, or 3), externally, duplicitous diplomacy backed up by military threat.
Who was more evil? Its a rhetorical question.
Ever since, the Stalin/Hitler state design is used by all sorts of characters. Is North Korea communist? I would quibble and call Kim a fascist. Saddam? I’ve read lengthy articles contending that Saddam copied Stalin and others asserting he was obsessed with 3rd Reich technique. No doubt, after careful study, Saddam couldn’t tell the difference.
No wonder Fox calls Obama a fascist and a communist in the same sentence. Their pea brains are understandably confused.
The only thing I would add is communism, in its pure form, a bunch of hippies selflessly sharing everything, including the bong, has obviously been co-opted.
To me, a simplified US political spectrum might read from left to right, communism, socialism, Democrats, Center, Blue Dogs, Republicans, Stalin/Hitler/Communist/Fascist, Wingnuts, anarchists, Pure Nihilists.
Anarchists must be placed on the far Right. Wingnuts want pure anarchy in the market place and they want the State to wither and almost die. The almost death of the state means near anarchy were I come from.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Whoops. I pulled the wrong file.
My US political spectrum is from my 1952 chart.
Here the modern chart: communism, socialism, Center, Democrats, Blue Dogs, Republicans, S/H/C/F, Wingnuts, Anarchists, Pure Nihilists.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hi guys. It really doesn’t matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on.
I am from Brazil and learning to read in English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Offers cheap vacation packages, cheap airline tickets! Airline tickets airline tickets are often deeply discounted up to off of the regular.”
With best wishes
, Dilys.