Rules for reactionaries II: practice sheer hypocrisy.

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On The Glenn Beck Show of 7/14/2010, he opened with an assault on the NCAAP for their vote to condemn racism in the Tea Parties; but the bulk of his opening segment was focused on a clever assault against progressives again. On his chalk board Beck had his argument laid out about the strategy of "divide and conquer." He explained exactly how it's done.

The chalk board

____Progressive____________Policy___________Agenda____

                                                                    for                                       against

Financial reform                 Pro reform                 robber barons

Health Care Reform   All kids go to heaven     babies die in streets  

Immigration Reform        pro diversity                      racists

Cap and Trade                  tree hugger                   hate the Earth

The column on the left depicts four of the major reforms either passed by or still before Congress. The one in the middle are "pro" reform described variously as obvious or right wing cynicism or something Beck pulled out of his rectum ("all kids go to heaven"). The column to the right is what Beck claims to be charges made by progressives against people opposing the "progressive policy agenda." As usual with Beck, he mixes fact, robber barons (except that Wall Street is actually gambling with our money, our mortgages, out life insurance policies, etc., not "robbing" technically) with something that, again he seems to pull out of his rectum, "babies die in the street." Maybe that's what is written in the revolutionary magazines that Beck's researchers read; he doesn't say.

Pretending to be a progressive addressing conservatives and reactionaries like him, he asks:

Beck: 'Why do you want to destroy our future?' What is this? America, the message is to follow the progressive agenda and you like it, or you're the enemy. You're ... greedy, you're a hate monger...you're a pariah. There is no middle ground any more. When is the last time you heard, 'I thought we were supposed to unite.' There's no room for compromise?

Then, mocking his enemies, he added:

'Don't read the bill. There no time to discuss it. We're in a crisis' Divide and conquer. America, you are faced with a choice, but it isn't these [waving his arms are the chalkboard behind him reviewed above]. Where is the category that has any grey in it? These [the chalk board items] you can be reasonable with. One category where you won't, and that is this one: you either stand with the rule of law and the Constitution, the American ideals, the ideas of John Dickinson, a colonialist with sights of freedom away from tyranny. He wrote, [in The Liberty Song] 'Then hand in hand, brave Americans all, by uniting, we stand, by dividing we fall.'  Lincoln said that as well. 

So, do you stand here [pointing at the lyrics] or here?"

Beck held a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, a book that Beck has previously and provably lied about. See "Rules for reactionaries: lie, distort, misinform." 

From the prologue, it says, 'A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism....' Are we there yet? Are we there yet? [From further in the prologue] 'then into third stage into new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat and finally the last stage - the political paradise of communism.' How many times have you heard this quoted? They know it. [Holding up the book again] This is their Bible. [Pointing to the chalk board again] There are problems. We can work through the, these are problems, not principles. We solve these [the four issues on the board] with principles. Are they the founders' principles, or Saul Alinsky?

Nearly yelling for effect he continued:

Everything else! There's a shade of grey, but not this. [holding up the book again] Not this. [Waving at the board] But divided  they conquer.

He then walked off screen for dramatic effect as the first segment of the show ended.

Who is doing the dividing to conquer?

The most important fact to point out is that those quotations Beck claimed to have come from the prologue of Rules for Radicals; they are not there. No where in the prologue is there any reference to dictatorship of the proletariat. So Mr. Beck: are you a liar yet? Are you a liar yet? Actually, Alinsky wrote in the prologue: "The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible." What a Communist!

Maybe Beck was just mistaken. After all, he seems way too busy to be sitting around reading Rules for Radicals. Most likely this research was done for him by one of his researchers, someone at Freedom Works or elsewhere. The quote from the book that Beck used was in Chapter 1, The Purpose, p. 10. There, Alinsky sets of ideologies of change that have a prime truth. He gives the Marxist example of this, which Beck quoted, and then the Christian's prime truth. "Out of these 'prime truths,'" Alinsky wrote, "flow a step-by-step ideology." Then Alinsky adds that an "organizer working in and for an open soceiety...does not have a fixed truth--truth to him is relative and changing...." Once again, Beck, one of his "researchers" or someone at Freedom Works found a quotation that allowed Beck to make it seem like Alinsky believed something he did not. When it comes to misinforming to the point of inducing stupidity by crafting the art of quoting out of context, Mr. Beck: are we there yet?Are we there yet?

For Beck, radicals have taken this country over from the Oval Office on down. Forgetting that some members of the The Tea Party have expressed racist ideas and that racism is still with us in this "post racial" America; Beck uses every opportunity to race-bait the President when he's not posing as being against racism. The main thrust of this counter point in this Review addresses how Beck painted the political divide in this country.

There are many deceitful ideas expressed in Beck's presentation. First, the views expressed for and against health care reform he made up. The idea that cap and trade has anything to do with "tree huggers" is flay out stupid and inaccurate. Cap and trade is one idea of several before Congress and before the Administration. Cap and trade or cap and tax or cap or tax and a tax on distribution points for energy are just four ideas of how to pay for energy policy that is before Congress. In this election year, they will all most likely be ignored. The notion that people opposed to cap and trade "hate the Earth" is made up. Opponents don't want fees attached to energy consumption or production, and Congress even recently turned back an effort to stop giving big oil tax breaks. Opponents hate taxes, even in the face of a national debt that is approaching record levels.

The idea that Rules for Radicals is the Bible to progressives is Beck's idea, and it may be true for some radicals However not all progressives are radicals, and not all radicals embraced Alinsky. As Beck has pointed out, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is a progressive. She is a Christian, not a Marxist. There are many other non-Marxist progressives in Washington and throughout the world. The black and white contrast Beck's poses is a figment of his imagination and it is not supported by the realities on Congress where Republicans are working on the finance reform bill, the energy bill and on immigration reform with Democrats. Conservatives, liberal (reformers), progressives and the one socialist in Congress hammered out the bills. Beck's portrayal is simplistic beyond recognition, but it make for a very convincing and scary television before the transition to an advertisement for gold with G. Gordon Liddy as the spokesman. What's not to trust?

The idea that opponents are "enemies" is classic Beck. He has deceitfully substituted enemy for opponent in the past, and he does so not to be honest or accurate. Beck substitutes enemy for opponent to make his audience believe that progressives or the Administration think of them as an enemy. This is nothing more than sleazy and deceitful. No one refers to the Tea Party as the enemy except Glenn Beck when he's pretending to be a progressive, and he has an agenda for doing so.

In other ways, what Beck was saying was complete nonsense. There's no middle ground? How many Republican ideas need to be used in comprehensive reforms to be considered an area of grey? In financial reform, Wall Street bankers, which Beck defends no matter how irresponsible they behaved with American's money, have joined this Administration . The only person calling the Wall Street bankers and investors "robber barons" is - again - Glenn Beck. The Republicans are trying to protect their campaign contributors, but the public sentiment is widely in favor of comprehensive reform of the financial sector. The middle ground is discussed and debated in the halls of Congress, just as the framers of our Republic intended.

Beck has demonstrated repeatedly that he does not accept the results from the last election. There is a systematic and concerted effort to divide and conquer in the United States, and it's not coming from progressives or radicals. It's coming from Fox News and especially Glenn Beck. As it has been pointed out here, this is nothing new. It happens whenever there is a Democrat in the White House, but Glenn Beck has racheted up the rhetoric to stray from honest, loyal opposition to government policy to inciting undue hatred, fear and sometimes sedition all through deceitful presentations. This episode is not exceptional in this regard; Beck routinely deceives his audience. See the "Contents" from the link at the top to access the growing list entitled "Beck's false claims."

The effort to "divide and conquer" is not coming from this Administration, progressives or Marxists. The effort to divide Americans is coming - quite successfully - from the Fox Right Wing Propaganda channel and especially from reactionaries like Beck, Limbaugh and Governor Palin. This seems to be one of the rules for reactionaries: accuse the opponents in power of engaging in the exact type of activity they themselves are engaged in. This is hypocrisy which is blatant when perceived through a critical lens and invisible for the gullible reactionaries who support Glenn Beck.

The choice

Glenn Beck was right about at least one idea in this segment: voters have a choice this year. The American people are going to have to choose between politicians who want to solve problems associated with letting the "free market" handle the challenges to the Republic (liberals and progressives) and those who want to return to some nostalgic past when corporations that are driven primarily, if not exclusively, by the profit motive only are handed the keys to the car (conservatives and Tea Party reactionaries). These are the defenders of unregulated, private enterprise who, for the first eight years of this century, drove the car (economy) into the ditch.

Before more people start tuning into Beck's  
CONvincing propaganda, 

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