Glenn Beck Is A Repressed Fascist

I hear that quantum physicists are doing wonderful things in the field of string theory these days. One hypothesis that has gained momentum over the last several years is that there exist parallel universes alongside our own on other planes of reality. If this is the case, and scientists ever find what they believe to be a wormhole leading to these unknown places, allow me to volunteer to be the world’s first inter-universe traveler. My reasoning is simple: I do not want to live in a universe where Glenn Beck makes $32 million a year doing whatever it is that he does.

Over the last thirty years or so, conservative thought in the United States has undergone a remarkable devolution. Whereas the conservatives of the 1950s, sixties, and seventies were ably and articulately represented by the likes of William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and others, today’s right wing relies on the ostentatious Beck and the forever self-aggrandizing Sarah Palin to champion modern conservative values. Palin’s style differs from Beck in that her rhetoric is heavily platitudinous—even for a modern conservative. Palin manages to give lengthy speeches about politics without saying anything. Beck’s shtick on the other hand is fueled by personal mania combined with a gross misinterpretation of American and world history. As bad as Palin is, as a speaker and rhetorician she will never be as dangerous as Glenn Beck is.

Take this line from Beck speaking on his radio show last week. He was criticizing remarks by Simon Greer, who is head of the Jewish Funds for Justice (whatever that is) for saying,

“The government is you, me, and 300 million whom we share with our nation. Government is one way which we care for our neighbors, and tradition tells me to care for my neighbor as I care for myself. Here's what we do for each other as Americans: We grow food, we create jobs, we build homes, pave roads, teach our children, care for our grandparents, secure our neighborhoods. Government makes our country function. To put God first is to put humankind first. To put humankind first is to put the common good first.”

To you or me, this may seem like a pretty uncontroversial statement. But thank god we have Glenn Beck to set us straight. He tells us:

“This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany. Put humankind and the common good first.”

Beck went on to say that this Greer’s line of thinking leads to death camps because old or disabled would be regarded as harming the common good and therefore they would have to be “liquidated.”

To me, this is one of the clearest examples we have of Glenn Beck engaged in an active psychological projection, which is the denial of one’s own unconscious characteristics or inclinations by outwardly accusing others of having those same attributes. Sane people who are not fascistically inclined regard “common good” as an ideal to be striven for. Conservatives and liberals alike laud this goal, although they have different ideas on how to get there. Beck, however, attacks the very notion itself because he says this will inevitably involve rounding up certain undesirable elements of the population and exterminating them. “Death camps,” as he said. But how in the world do you get from phrases like “common good” and “put humankind first” to the Nazi-esque extermination of people? You don’t. Only Beck does. Many conservative commentators have at some point played the Nazi card over the last year and a half, but Beck invokes them regularly to ascribe Hitlerian characteristics to a wide variety of political phenomena and ideas—from the work of community organizations such as ACORN or Americorps to “social justice,” Beck sees Bormann-type boogeymen everywhere. It could be that he’s doing it just for show and to rile people up, but on the few occasions I have watched this piece of work operate, I get the feeling that he genuinely believes what he’s saying.

Ironically, Beck has accused liberalism/progressivism of being a cancer that embodies fascist philosophies. On the Right, it is becoming increasingly popular to describe the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini as being rooted in progressivism. (See Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”) But as any schoolchild knows, fascism is an inherently conservative and reactionary doctrine. Fascism is not about putting humankind first as Beck seems to think, but about putting the nation-state first, whose glory depends on the social cohesion of the general population which is preferably comprised of a single uniform ethnicity. Every fascist state in history has invariably invoked the superiority of the people of that state to all outside groups. Sound familiar? How many times have we heard Beck and other conservatives espouse the tired mantra that America is an “exceptional” nation with a special place in world history? All the time. It’s their m.o. Criticize U.S. foreign policy in front of them and see what happens. Just recall the Bush years. Anyone who wasn’t 100% on board the war train for Iraq was deemed a terrorist sympathizer or at the very least a pussy by Beck, Hannity, et al. These men decry the purported rise of “big government” under the current president, but remember that no matter how much authority the Bush administration usurped for the federal government, they were behind it all the way. The decision by the Obama administration that conservatives have approved the most of is his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. A close second is his sending 1,500 troops to the border to keep out Mexicans from a territory that less than 200 years ago belonged to Mexico. That illegal immigration has come to the forefront of the political landscape at a time when the American economy is in the doldrums and American workers are getting the red-headed stepchild treatment speaks volumes about the political culture. It says that Americans—like the Weimar Germans before them—are looking for a scapegoat, a reason for why their livelihoods are fucked.

And Glenn Beck is giving them one.

- Max