Glenn Beck's well of ridiculous was deep and poisonous before he launched his Fox News show, but the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States -- and the permissive cheerleading of his Fox News honchos -- uncorked the former Morning Zoo shock jock's unique brand of vitriol, stage theatrics, and hyperbolic fright, making him an easy choice for Media Matters' 2009 Misinformer of the Year.
When he wasn't calling the president a racist, portraying progressive leaders as vampires who can only be stopped by "driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers," or pushing the legitimacy of seceding from the country, Beck obsessively compared Democrats in Washington to Nazis and fascists and "the early days of Adolf Hitler." He wondered, "Is this where we're headed," while showing images of Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin; decoded the secret language of Marxists; and compared the government to "heroin pushers" who were "using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state."
Like his predecessor, Beck spat on scruples, frequently announcing his goal to get administration officials fired. He increasingly acted not as a media figure, but as the head of a political movement, while helping to bring fringe conspiracies of a one-world government into the national discourse.
And he all too frequently helped to set the mainstream media's agenda.
Glenn Beck's disturbing use of race and race-baiting
Appearing on Fox & Friends in June to discuss a White House "beer summit" between President Obama, a white Massachusetts police officer, and a black Harvard professor who had been arrested entering his own home, Beck uttered perhaps his most infamous words to date, calling the president a "racist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." The statement drew widespread derision and condemnation, and Fox News immediately sought to distance itself from the statement. But Beck's divisive commentary was likely no surprise to his followers, coming as it did at the end of a week-long deluge of race-baiting that included the claim that Obama "has real issues with race," and Beck's incessant talk of Obama's policies as a form of minority reparations. Just one month earlier, Beck had agreed that Obama was elected because of race and not policies, and in May he called then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a "racist."
In the controversy that followed Beck's inflammatory charge that the president is racist, his Fox News show began to hemorrhage advertisers, and Beck began to beg his viewers to "call a friend and tell them to watch the show this week." By September, Beck, who had become "tired of the race thing" and who claimed he doesn't "think the race thing works anymore," apparently decided it was time to move on. He later would blame politicians for charges of racism and call "false cries of racism" "dangerous." Beck then sat down for an interview with CBS' Katie Couric where he would express regret for the way he phrased the claim that Obama is a racist, but then emphasized that the issue of Obama's racism is a "serious question."
In the months since Beck called Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred of white people," at least 80 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from his Fox News show, yet he has faced no apparent repercussions from Fox News. Then again, Rupert Murdoch apparently agrees with Beck that Obama is a racist. (Or maybe not.)
Beck's red scare tactics
Beck introduced himself to Fox News viewers in 2009 by announcing that he was "tired of the politics of left and right," which leads its participants to do insane things, like accusing political opponents of "trying to turn us into communist Russia." Setting aside for the sake of brevity Beck's long history of calling progressive figures communists and Marxists, he almost immediately put lie to his professed aversion. Yes, taking to the airwaves the following week on his radio show, Beck concluded, "I do believe that Barack Obama is a socialist" who "has Marxist tendencies." Beck explained:
BECK: He may be a full-fledged Marxist. He has surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life."
Alas, the remainder of 2009 would see Beck unleash a tirade against Obama's "full-fledged" Marxism, blaming "fearless leader, Comrade Obama" for overseeing the "destruction of the West"; citing Obama administration policies and promising to show how "they line up with some of the goings-on in history's worst socialist, fascist countries"; calling Obama's economic recovery package "truly stepping beyond socialism" and "starting to look at fascism"; declaring that Obama is "so clearly" a socialist, citing his work as a community organizer as clear proof of such; claiming that Obama is "a Marxist who is "setting up a class system"; and comparing health care reform to socialism.
Beck's red scare was not limited to Obama himself. During a May 28 discussion with Bill O'Reilly, Beck proclaimed of Obama, "His friends and nominees and everything -- they're all Marxist." And over the course of 2009, Beck's McCarthy-esque list of known communists proved to be long and distinguished, including the Democratic and Republican parties, former White House communications director Anita Dunn, SEIU president Andy Stern, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, FCC official Mark Lloyd, proponents of maintaining free market principals in Internet competition, Sonia Sotomayor, and media reform activists at Free Press.
By way of example, Beck spent most of his hour-long Fox show one October evening discussing video of then-White House communications director Anita Dunn, who had cited Mao Zedong as one of two political philosophers -- the other being Mother Theresa -- she cites to illustrate the advice that "you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths" or "let external definition define how good you are internally." Ignoring the numerous political figures on the right -- including those who routinely appear on Fox News and Glenn Beck's very show -- who have cited Mao's teachings in the past, Beck distorted the video, claiming she "worships" "her hero" Mao.
By October 30, Beck -- who began the year decrying those who would denigrate the national debate by calling political opponents socialists -- had redrawn the battle lines:
BECK: I have said to you before, and we laid the case out last night. These are revolutionaries. You must decide, America, and your friends must decide. There's no sidelines here. You're either on the side of the revolutionaries for Marxism and a new Venezuela here in America, or the revolutionaries of 1776.
Beck's Law: If Obama did it, always say that Hitler did it, too
On June 30, Wal-Mart joined the Center for American Progress and SEIU in announcing support for health care reform efforts. The next day on his Fox News show, Beck made one of the countless Nazi and Hitler comparisons he made this year:
BECK: This is what happened in the 1940s. Look, this is what happened in Europe in the 1930s. It's what happened in Italy. It's what happened in the national socialist country of Germany in the 1930s under Hitler. These companies get into bed and think, "Well, we're going to be fine. We'll just take a little bit of this."
Then, they're trapped. These are bullies that are pushing these companies. And these companies are naive, at best, that they think they can get into bed with the devil, and then be able to control it.
In his uninterrupted efforts to attack and smear progressives, Beck would repeatedly prove the accuracy of Godwin's Law. Beck called Obama's proposal to expand the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps "what Hitler did with the SS" and compared the closing of car dealerships to what happened under the Nazis, warning, "Gang, at some point, they're going to come for you." Incidentally, this would not be Beck's only reference to Martin Niemoller's lectures. Responding to Anita Dunn's criticism of Fox News' overt partisanship, Beck compared the channel to Jews during the Holocaust, with other media outlets representing the silent bystanders.
Beck's embrace of violent, anti-government rhetoric
Beck's adoration of theatrics reached a fevered pitch in April. After claiming, "I think it would be just faster if they just shot me in the head," Beck created a classic cable news moment when, in criticizing the president's policies, he pretended to pour gasoline on an average American, stating, "President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire? For the love of Pete, what are you doing?" Beck would go on to use violent imagery throughout the year, distorting the face and voice of a "concerned parent" who attacked Dunn for her Mao reference as if he were a mafia informant, purporting to boil a frog to illustrate that "we've been tossed quickly into boiling water," and invoking civil rights marchers having fire hoses turned on them to spur opposition to health care reform.
Rhetorically as well, Beck spent 2009 at the forefront of the emerging right-wing culture of paranoia, his persecution complex manifesting itself in claims that "they are going to silence voices like mine" and suggestions that "you" would "have to shoot me in the forehead before I will let you into my house to tell me how to raise my children; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent." This especially unhinged rallying cry continued:
BECK: [T]hey cannot move on these things, because they are building a machine that will crush the entrepreneurial sprit and the freedom that our founding fathers designed. This machine, whatever it is they are building, will crush it. Do not let them build another piece. So while I turn away, I want to make sure that I have at least 10 million eyes watching -- watching every single move they're making.
[...]
We know why they're doing what they're doing. Now you need to do what you do, and as long as that is peaceful, we will save our country.
Beck alternately suggested that former White House adviser Van Jones or ACORN would kill him and that SEIU would break his legs. He stated that he "fear
" that he'll be silenced by a "thug-ocracy" that includes ACORN, SEIU, and Obama. Beck compared the Obama administration to the bat-wielding Al Capone from The Untouchables, claiming, "You take these guys on, and they will bash your brains out"; suggested that the administration was out to destroy him; argued that the Obama administration would use bombings of a Canadian pipeline to justify taking over oil companies; and suggested that government wants "more problems" so "they can use the iron fist and crush people."
Beck claimed the 2008 election was a coup conducted "through the guise of an election" and warned that "the country may not survive Barack Obama"; he hosted a guest who claimed the "only chance we have as a country right now is" for Osama bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in the United States. Beck charged the Obama administration with "putting a gun to America's head" through its approach to legislating, attacked White House advisers Cass Sunstein and John Holdren by stating that they "will be responsible for many, many deaths," and said the White House and progressives are "taking you to a place to be slaughtered."
Against the backdrop of this hyperbolic fright, Beck discussed poisoning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, encouraged his followers to "hold a meeting" with politicians "in front of their house," and encouraged people to attend a November rally in Washington to "see the whites of their eyes," warning, "There is coming a point to where the people will have exhausted all of their options; when that happens, look out."
Beck was simultaneously calling on his followers to eschew violence, since "one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything," and claiming, "It's not time to pick up guns" or "blow anything up," all while warning, "Somebody's going to do something stupid, and it will change the republic overnight."
