Glenn Beck Senses America’s Downfall

The right-wing conservative Glenn Beck is Rupert Murdoch’s new media star — and he believes that a Jewish conspiracy is planning a revolution in the United States.

Glenn who? That’s how Americans reacted a few years ago if anyone mentioned the TV talk show host’s name. Meanwhile, left-wing liberals have come to think of him as The Evil One. It wasn’t too long ago that Glenn Beck was just another in a long line of conservative media commentators.

Colleagues like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly were more famous and came across more confidently; Beck seemed more like the shy little brother whom nobody had to take seriously.

That all changed two years ago when CNN took away his time slot. Beck switched to the conservative Fox News network and today everyone knows his face: baby chubby, lively eyes sometimes hidden behind glasses, and a white crew cut.

Right from day one, Beck had a special trademark: he wept. Many of his programs had one moment where he had to choke back a deep sob. While his conservative colleagues railed over the airwaves that the White House had been usurped by a dyed-in-the-wool socialist with the middle name Hussein, the 46-year-old Beck was reaching for his handkerchief.

Never a Day Passed When He Wasn’t High

He hasn’t always been a famous, wealthy conservative. Beck grew up as the son of a poor man in the state of Washington. His mother drowned in a boating mishap along with her lover, a death Beck interprets as a suicide.

He admits that since his 16th birthday, never a day had passed when he didn’t get high on drugs; he also drank to excess. He reached his low point in the mid-1990s. Freshly divorced with two little girls, he entertained thoughts of committing suicide to the pulsating rhythms of Kurt Cobain.

Instead, he decided to join Alcoholics Anonymous and his appearances have been influenced by AA ever since. His public image is a continuation of the AA therapy by other means.

Shortly after he liberated himself from alcohol and drugs, he met his second wife. Under her influence, he rediscovered religion. He became a Mormon, the only major religion that hadn’t been exported to the New World but was quintessentially American.

A Complete Lack of Boasting

Those who want to understand his popularity with the so-called simple folk have to see him in person. Recently, Beck made an appearance at a Pittsburgh theater before an audience of thousands. The appearance was also simulcast to theaters in all major American cities.

Beck’s magic lies mainly in his complete avoidance of boasting. He dresses in jeans with his shirttails out; he doesn’t give the impression of feeling superior to anyone. Glenn Beck is also genuinely nice. He doesn’t come off especially as a demagogue — at least at first. What he says actually makes sense.

He uses numbers on a flip chart to make his points: Greece, currently one of the European Union’s major headaches, isn’t as important to Europe as California is to the United States, he says. And California, please note, is notoriously bankrupt. “Don’t say it can’t happen here! It certainly could happen!” he cries.

The national debt will lead straight to hyperinflation. “That’s already happened once — in Germany during the 1920s,” he says. Almost unnoticed, we’ve slipped away from the subject of economics and into the category of “apocalyptic preaching.” Beck says with quavering voice, “Every generation that loses its liberty will never regain it, but our children will.”*

Learning the Constitution by Heart

The end is nigh; the audience is advised to hoard enough clothing and foodstuffs to last a whole year. And they need to educate themselves. They need to memorize the U.S. Constitution so they will be able to pass this treasure on to the next generation. Every individual should be responsible for him or herself.

Europe is visibly dissolving; Marxist mobs will soon be ranging through American streets as well. That’s when the totalitarian saviors of mankind will come out of the shadows to lead America back into European slavery.

Beck says it’s hard to understand, but there are actually people who want to destroy America from within. Beck doesn’t seem at all fanatical when he says that; he just seems genuinely worried. And that’s where we now get to the conspiracy theories.

Every good, apocalyptic conspiracy theory needs an Antichrist. And Beck’s Antichrist is — as usual — a Jew. Beck has now devoted three consecutive programs to crassly attacking Jewish multi-billionaire George Soros. Beck has accused him of betraying other Jews to the Nazis during the Holocaust and of being a closet communist.

Classic Anti-Semitic Rabble-Rousing

“Soros has helped fund the “Velvet Revolution” in the Czech Republic, the “Orange Revolution” in the Ukraine, the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia. He also helped to engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia and Yugoslavia. What’s his next target? “Us. America,” said Beck on prime-time national television in the United States.

Beck obviously doesn’t know — or perhaps he doesn’t want to know — that the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was waged against communism and that there was never an attempted revolution in Yugoslavia and therefore it needed no funding. His accusations are classic anti-Semitic rabble-rousing: every Jew a puppeteer, pulling the strings to make the puppet dance; the Elders of Zion as shadowy conspirators, sowing chaos in order to seize global power.

Is Glenn Beck therefore typical? Does he represent a broad movement? Fortunately, there are enough American conservatives who throw up their hands in horror at the very mention of Beck’s name or ridicule his semi-education (which in reality is more like a quarter-education).

But such disavowals can’t disguise the fact that Beck is a hero of the tea party movement, the anarchic-populist anti-Obama uprising. Behind him stands the concentrated power of Fox News and behind Fox stands the power of media czar Rupert Murdoch.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this demagogue is the fact that he represents not only the worst but also the best his nation has to offer. Glenn Beck embodies not only mouth-foaming insanity but also the U.S. Declaration of Independence that proclaims the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

*Editor’s note: A transcript of Beck’s Pittsburgh performance could not be found. The above quotes are therefore unverified.