Tag: glenn beck
Glenn Beck's Online Network Promotes Notorious Antisemite

Glenn Beck's Online Network Promotes Notorious Antisemite

Right-wing commentator Jason Whitlock used his show on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze to host a notorious antisemite who used the platform to denounce “the Jews” for “undermining the moral fabric of the American people,” dominating the Biden administration, and “tak[ing] control of the black population” through “sexual liberation.”

Whitlock responded to the hateful rant by saying, “The man is speaking facts, and I know the intent of what he just said, and I got no problem with it.”

Whitlock hosted E. Michael Jones, whom he described as “a celebrated author, a public intellectual, a ardent supporter of the Catholic faith,” for a lengthy taped interview that aired January 18. Jones was there to discuss his book, which aligns with Whitlock’s own view that “sexual lust … has been turned into a tool to control all of us” and describes the sexual liberation movement as a vehicle for achieving political control.

But the conversation kept coming back to the group Jones blames for that movement: the Jews, who he claimed “have always been involved in pornography as a way of gaining control over the population where they're always a minority.” At one point, he went on a lengthy rant, which began with his argument that for most people, marriage is the path to happiness and salvation.

“And I’m saying, the Jews know this, and they have spent their entire time here in the United States of America undermining the moral fabric of the American people,” he explained.

“I get it, and I can’t say that I disagree,” Whitlock replied, “but I’m just – aren’t you letting Joe Biden and a lot of other politicians, left and right, off the hook?”

“First of all, Joe Biden is not in charge of the government,” Jones responded. “It’s called Biden’s minyan — you can look this up too — there are 457 Jews who are running the Biden administration. They’re the people who are in charge, OK? So there’s no point in talking about Joe Biden. We have to be able to identify these people, and we have to call them out and hold them responsible.”

Jones went on to say that “the Blacks have suffered more in this regard than any other group in this country,” arguing that “the Jews took over the Blacks early on” by encouraging the Harlem Renaissance and the creation of the NAACP, which he said were intended to destroy Black nationalism.

“They got this guy, W.E.B. Dubois or Dubois or however you want to pronounce it, Harvard guy, and he was the front man,” Jones said. “The Jews had taken control of the Black population, they destroyed Black nationalism under Marcus Garvey, and then they created this plantation for Black people known as sexual liberation.”

Jones wrapped up his rant by claiming that basketball player Kyrie Irving and musician Ye (formerly Kanye West) had been unfairly persecuted for speaking out against Jewish control of the NBA and the music industry.

Whitlock’s expressions during Jones’ screed at times suggested that he found his comments stupid or beyond the pale. But after it concluded, he said, “Mr. Jones, you are fearless. You are fearless. My God,” adding that while he knows some people will criticize him for hosting Jones, “the man is speaking facts, and I know the intent of what he just said, and I got no problem with it.”

Whitlock acknowledged in the segment introducing the interview with Jones that “some of the audience is likely going to be offended by his conversation about Jews,” but said that he doesn’t believe in “silencing people” and mocked anyone who might criticize him for airing the discussion.

He initially promoted Jones’ comments about Jews on X (formerly Twitter) but deleted the post after it garnered attention.

Whitlock, in his introductory segment, also told viewers that Jones “is under attack by the Anti-Defamation League. He’s one of the first people to get canceled because of his writings.”

Indeed, the ADL describes Jones in an extensive report as “an anti-Semitic Catholic writer who promotes the view that Jews are dedicated to propagating and perpetrating attacks on the Catholic Church and moral standards, social stability, and political order throughout the world.” It says he “reaches for tenuous connections to paint ‘the Jews’ as inherently wicked and prone to colluding openly or secretly to threaten other populations around them” and “argues that mass killings of Jews throughout history have been understandable reactions to Jewish beliefs and behavior.”

Whitlock himself previously defended Ye’s tweets denouncing “JEWISH PEOPLE,” writing, “You can't question black entertainers' unhealthy relationship with non-religious Jewish power brokers in Hollywood.” He also hosted a discussion about whether former basketball player and TV analyst Charles Barkley was under the nefarious influence of a Jewish “cabal.”

Beck, Whitlock’s employer, has a long record of promoting antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories. But he typically responds to criticism on those grounds by stressing that he is a philosemite who supports Israel.

Whitlock’s cozy interview with Jones follows a recent trend of prominent right-wing commentators engaging in unusually explicit antisemitism as high-profile figures detail their grievances with the Jews. Those bigoted outbursts have drawn cheers from white nationalists who are ecstatic at their talking points entering the mainstream right.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Right-Wing Media Joins Assault On Fox Over Dominion Revelations

Right-Wing Media Joins Assault On Fox Over Dominion Revelations

As Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News brings to light more private messages between hosts and executives, others in right-wing media have begun to attack the conservative news giant over revelations from the filing.

The latest tranche of documents in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit has shown Tucker Carlson attacking former President Donald Trump and mocking his lawyer Rudy Giuliani; executives suggesting that they distance themselves from Mike Lindell; and infighting between the daytime news shows and the nightly opinion shows.

Here are some of the most prominent right-wing figures lashing out at Fox News:

  • Steve Bannon has repeatedly used the lawsuit as ammunition against Fox News, saying at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the outlet had “a fear, a loathing, a contempt” for conservatives and on his show that the Murdoch family is “trying to destroy the United States.” On the program, Donald Trump Jr. called for former House Speaker Paul Ryan to be fired from Fox’s board of directors. Bannon also hosted conspiracy theorist Darren Beattie, and the two of them decried what Beattie called “McConnell, … Murdochs, the whole institutional apparatus at Fox,” saying that “of course they’re opposed to Trump. They’ve always been opposed to Trump.” [CPAC, 3/2/23; Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/2/23, 3/6/23, 3/7/23]
  • Giuliani called Fox “pathetic” and promised that “there will be a day on which I unload on Fox.” On his YouTube show America’s Mayor Live, Giuliani — who was mocked by Carlson and his executive producer in texts released in the lawsuit — told his audience not to trust the network because of what he perceived as disrespect toward himself. [YouTube, America's Mayor Live, 3/3/23]
  • Newsmax host Eric Bolling said he “just can’t get past” Carlson’s “really disturbing” admission of hatred for Trump. Bolling was exasperated as he attacked Carlson, saying he “can’t understand how a guy who can portray himself as a huge Trump fan on television, saying he hates him passionately, is very, very much looking forward to the day he didn't have to cover Trump being in the White House every day.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 3/8/23]
  • Islamophobic far-right activist Laura Loomer: “Anyone who still works for Fox News does the bidding of globalist Rupert Murdoch.” [Twitter, 3/7/23]
  • OAN host Dan Ball: “A lot of people are going to be a little upset with Fox ... as they should be.” Ball used his prime-time show on One America News Network to praise Bannon for attacking Fox at CPAC, bragging that “they’re not gonna find those types of texts and emails here at OAN when it comes to the 2020 election and President Trump, I can guarantee you that.” [OAN, Real America with Dan Ball, 3/6/2023]
  • White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes attacked Carlson: It seems like “he’s really not with us.” On his livestream, Fuentes commented that Carlson’s comments were “pretty shocking” because “everybody thinks Tucker is, like, secretly our guy.” He said people think that Carlson is “just diluting our worldview for a mass audience” but it seems more likely that “he’s really not with us.” [America First, 3/9/2023]
  • On The Glenn Beck Program, former Fox host Glenn Beck commented on the Dominion lawsuit, saying, “I have heard more and more people say, ‘I just don't trust it anymore. I don't, you know, I don’t watch it like I used to.’” Beck also claimed he was “hearing rumblings that [Fox] is coming apart at the seams on the inside.” [BlazeTV, The Glenn Beck Program, 3/3/23]
  • Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the lawsuit proved “there was some real, real bad stuff going on at Fox News.” On The Hugh Hewitt Show, Christie criticized the network’s hosts for their dishonesty, adding that “they think these people are crazy, and then they’re putting them on the air to be able to spout the things that they think are untrue and crazy. And, I think that that skirts towards the area of actual malice.” [Salem Radio Network, The Hugh Hewitt Show, 3/1/23]
  • Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan: Fox News was “afraid of their audience.” Klavan noted that the lawsuit was “embarassing” for Fox News personalities who “were having people like Sidney Powell on” while “discussing among themselves the fact that they thought this was completely absurd.” [The Daily Wire, The Andrew Klavan Show, 2/25/23]
  • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt accused Fox of going “off the rails” by “deciding to stop covering Donald Trump at all.” Schmitt had no problem with Fox’s coverage of election conspiracy theories, but used the lawsuit to promote his network and claimed Fox is “pretending” Trump isn’t running for president while an on-screen chyron read “Fox trying to erase Donald Trump.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 3/1/23]
  • Former OAN and Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson: Fox News is an “anti-Trump outlet.” Robinson added, “Murdoch is not your friend.” [Twitter, 2/28/23]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Not This Grandma

Not This Grandma

My, these aging men with their bright ideas.

First, it was the president, who has been openly contradicting medical experts with his pining for an early end to social distancing. This would threaten the lives of millions of Americans during the pandemic. Oh, well.

As he said, via tweet and at the microphone, “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” Every time he says that, I can’t help feeling that women like me — over 60 and eternally over him — are on his checklist of things that can go.

It’s not sitting well, I have to tell you.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, on the verge of 70, spelled it out for us in an interview on Fox.

“No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

He added: “I just think there are a lot of grandparents out there in this country like me — I have six grandchildren — that’s what we care about. … And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed. And that’s what I see.”

I don’t know who he’s looking at, but it sure isn’t this grandma to seven grandchildren. I would throw myself in front of a 137,000-pound Montana B-Train to save the life of a grandchild, but I will not risk a single hangnail to rescue corporate America.

Next up: Glenn Beck.

“Where do you stand?” he asked.

Nowhere near you, I answer.

“I’m in the danger zone,” he said on Blaze TV. “I’m right at the edge, I’m 56… So, I’m in the danger zone. I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working.”

He added, because there’s always something else, “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country.”

OK, Glenn.

I’m sorry these men hate their lives. I can’t name a single grandmother of my acquaintance who wants to throw away her life to save companies like Hobby Lobby, which has insisted on remaining open during this pandemic.

The craft company also told its managers to “make every effort to continue working the employees” while denying those same employees sick leave. Billionaire owner David Green is big on touting his right-wing version of Christianity, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wing of Christianity. She said this after Congress passed the stimulus package:

“I wish that every person in America would subscribe to the fact that science is an answer to our prayers so that we can get through this in a very positive way.”

She’s a grandmother, by the way, and what a fine example she is setting in not volunteering for the Trump-Patrick-Beck cliff leap.

Regular readers will notice that I’ve been quoting poetry a lot in the last few weeks, and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve got another poem. This excerpt is from the late poet Grace Paley’s “Here,” about an old woman watching her old man in the yard:

at last a woman

in the old style sitting

stout thighs apart under

a big skirt grandchild sliding

on off my lap a pleasant

summer perspiration

that’s my old man across the yard

he’s talking to the meter reader

he’s telling the world’s sad story

how electricity is oil or uranium

and so forth I tell my grandson

run over to your grandpa. ask him

to sit beside me for a minute.

I am suddenly exhausted by my desire

to kiss his sweet explaining lips

Mercy.

Silly old men can cling to whatever economy-themed fantasies make them feel useful in the world.

I’ve got other plans, if God’s up for it. I want my grandchildren to know that for them, Grandma lived.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two non-fiction books, including …and His Lovely Wife, which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. Her novel, The Daughters of Erietown, will be published by Random House in Spring 2020. To find out more about Connie Schultz (schultz.connie@gmail.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Why Are So Many In The ‘Resistance’ Ignoring Trump’s Iran Warpath?

Why Are So Many In The ‘Resistance’ Ignoring Trump’s Iran Warpath?

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

There are roughly two categories of resistance to President Donald Trump that have emerged over the past few months. There’s the grassroots, earnest resistance marked by mass protests, populated by everyone from radicals to liberals to nonprofits to immigration rights groups to antifascists to the occasional Democratic politician with the backbone to stand up to the administration. Then there’s the Resistance, a loose confederation of media careerists who nominally oppose Trump, but do so often for the most cynical and ideologically incoherent reasons. The “Resistance” consists of, among others, discredited neocon David Frum, racist huckster Glenn Beck, blowhard Keith Olbermann, and former spook and backalley abortion advocate Evan McMullin.

These men comprise the worst of the “Resistance.” Their attacks on Trump, such as they are, are marked by Cold War-mongering, gendered insults, career revamping, and a dislike of a foreign policy they view as inadequately bellicose toward Russia, Syria, and Iran.

Stop with the purity tests! is a common rejoinder to these criticisms. We must, given the stakes, welcome all who oppose Trump, some might say.

But what use is that opposition when it stops at the water’s edge; when it cares only for Trump’s excesses at home but ignores—if not welcomes—excesses abroad? Consider this not an indictment on the whole of their ideology, but an honest question from a potential anti-Trump ally: why does the “Resistance” not seem to care about Trump’s Iran war path?

Since he was sworn in just under a month ago, Trump has signaled a radical departure from the Obama White House’s already hostile (though mild in relative terms) approach to Iran. Trump has surrounded himself with anti-Iran hawks like Michael Flynn (since departed for unrelated reasons) and his Secretary of Defense General James Mattis. Flynn stated time and again that Iran was “intent on having a nuclear weapon” despite all evidence to the contrary. Gen. Mattis, who, as Politicoput it, “has a 33-year grudge against Iran,” insists “the Iranian regime… is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.”

In their short time in office, Trump has put Iran “on notice” and leveled new sanctions nominally for firing a ballistic missile in January—an act that, according to NPR, did not violate the terms of the relevant U.N. resolution.

Trump has also surrounded himself with radical pro-Israel voices whose antipathy for Iran dovetails with their staunch loyalty to Israel’s far right. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, once compared the Iran deal to the Dreyfus Affair, the infamous anti-Semitic persecution of a Jewish army captain in 1890s France, saying of the deal, “the blatant anti-Semitism emanating from our president and his sycophantic minions is palpable and very disturbing.”

“The relationship between America and Iran,” Saeid Golkar, an Iran expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, recently told Al Jazeera, “is getting very dangerous.”

One would hardly have noticed if they were only listening to high-status Resistance pundits.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote a much-praised 8,000-word piece warning of Trump’s “authoritarianism,” but didn’t mention Trump’s hostility toward Iran, his alliance with Israel’s far right, or any of his foreign policy aggressions once. The only time foreign countries were brought up, whether it was Russia or Honduras or Venezuela, was when Frum needed to use them as examples of backwaters Trump would turn us into, not targets of Trump’s hothead foreign policy.

For Frum, the vaguely defined concept of “authoritarianism” seems to apply only stateside. This is an exceedingly self-serving definition given that Frum worked in the Bush White House and is to this day an advocate for the devastating Iraq war leveled by his former boss.

Limiting criticism of Trump to the damage he will inflict domestically isn’t just bad politics, it’s also a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card for Frum and his neoconservative friends who helped turn Iraq and the Levant into a hellscape less than a generation ago. To this extent, Frum is far more concerned with protecting the GOP brand both in the future and down-ballot than he is with “resisting” Trump. This is why Frum is silent on Trump’s Iran war path and his increasingly close relationship with Netanyahu; Trump’s vision of power in the Middle East, sans perhaps Syria, is entirely in line with Frum’s.

Evan McMullin, who has been calling for the United States to bomb the Syrian government and overthrow Assad for years, routinely discusses how Trump’s posture on Russia will help Iran rather than reading the words the president actually states on the subject. On actual policy, on actual statements threatening Iran and ratcheting up tension, McMullin has little to say. McMullin even lavished praise on Trump’s selection of Gen. Mattis as Defense Secretary, largely because, again, Trump’s policy on Iran dovetails with what McMullin actually believes.

Keith Olbermann, who isn’t nearly as vile as other members of the faux “Resistance,” rants and raves about Trump being a “Russian whore,” but can’t take five minutes out to note Trump’s gutting of Obama’s hard-fought Iran deal. Nor does Olbermann have anything to say on Trump cozying up to the worst elements of the Israeli far right. Olbermann never tweets about or discusses Iran, Israel, or Palestine on his GQ web series. Like Frum, he limits his outrage over Trump to purely domestic issues.

Racist grifter Glenn Beck has used the anti-Trump sentiment to try to rebrand himself as a moderate, principled, conservative crusader, even given validation and airtime by liberal late-night comedian Samantha Bee for a much publicized anti-Trump campaign. Beck (as well as Bee) has been entirely silent on Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric. Beck, showing the nebulous nature of the “Resistance,” has even praised Trump’s far-right Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and gone back to blaming Black Lives Matter for entirely unrelated crimes against whites.

The Washington Post, which raised money saying it would hold Trump to account, publishes op-eds on Trump’s Iran policy ranging from praise (Jennifer Rubin) to procedural handwringing (David Ignatius), but never offers any meaningful criticism. Liberal media watchdog Media Matters and Mother Jones have not covered Trump’s ramped-up hostility with Iran once. Not only has MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid ignored Trump’s surly Iran posture, she even praised Gen. Mattis as the man preventing Trump from “dragging us into bed with Russia.” A pro-Russia stance is, as a matter of dogma, always assumed to be worse than potential war with Iran.

The reason, if history is any guide, is that if someone in the media has three topics to choose from, and two of those topics don’t upset American national security orthodoxy, those two topics will always rise to the top of the press heap. This is why foreign policy, especially as it relates to Palestine, Iran, and Muslim countries in general, always gets lowest priority. Its moral hazard is seen most explicitly during the early Obama years when issues like drone killings, extrajudicial assassination and a sprawling war on terror largely went unquestioned. This is a bipartisan consensus of executive power that, predictably, later came back to haunt liberals after Trump was elected.

Just the same, because Trump’s hostility in the Middle East largely serves the bipartisan consensus on Iran and Israel, it is of extremely low importance to most high-status liberals and centrists who are far more concerned with scoring points and winning the latest 24-hour news cycle than building an ideologically sustainable opposition to the Trump regime and the Republican Party it serves. This myopia is understandable for party flacks and media hangers-on, but it doesn’t mean thinking adults should indulge it or its longer-term implications.

It’s important that the resistance to Trump, such that it is, highlight the clampdown on domestic opposition and liberal programs. But it’s equally important for the resistance not to lose sight of those outside the U.S. who will suffer greatly from Trump’s eagerness to ramp up tensions in Iran and the Middle East as a whole.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst at FAIR and contributing writer for AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter Adam@AdamJohnsonNYC.

IMAGE: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves as he gives a speech on Iran’s late leader Khomeini’s death anniversary, in Tehran, Iran June 3, 2016. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS/Files