On his Monday radio show, Glenn Beck highlighted claims that before he started targeting a little-known, left-leaning organization called the Tides Foundation on his Fox News TV show, "nobody knew" what the non-profit was.
Indeed, for more than a year Beck has been portraying the progressive organization as a central player in a larger, nefarious cabal of Marxist/socialist/Nazi Obama-loving outlets determined to destroy democracy in America. Beck has routinely smeared the low-profile entity for being staffed by "thugs" and "bullies" and involved in "the nasty of the nastiest," like indoctrinating schoolchildren and creating a "mass organization to seize power."
As Media Matters reported, the conspiratorial host had mentioned (read: attacked) the little-known progressive organization nearly 30 times on his Fox program alone since it premiered in 2009, including several mentions in the last month. (Beck's the only TV talker who regularly references the foundation, according to our Nexis searches.)
So yes, Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and "turn the light of day" onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving.
And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution.
Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn't able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger -- fueled by the TV news he watched -- about how "Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," as his mother put it. Williams wasn't able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization "nobody knew" about until Glenn Beck started targeting it.
And thankfully, Williams wasn't able to take his place alongside a growing list of domestic, anti-government terrorists, such as the recent Pentagon shooter, the Holocaust Museum gunman, the kamikaze pilot who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, and the Pittsburgh cop-killer who set up an ambush because he was convinced Obama was going to take away his guns.
All the vigilante attacks appear to have been fueled by an almost pathological hatred for the U.S. government -- the same open hatred that right-wing bloggers, AM talk radio hosts, and Fox News' lineup of anti-government prophets have been frantically fueling for the last year, pushing doomsday warnings of America's democratic demise under President Obama.
And the sad truth is we're going to see more like Byron Williams. We're going to see more attempts at vigilante violence during the Age of Obama simply because the right-wing media, lead by Beck, continue to gleefully (albeit irresponsibly) stoke dangerous fires with the kind of relentlessly incendiary rhetoric that has no match in terms of modern day, mainstream use in American politics or media.
Just listen to Glenn Beck:
* Progressives "are sucking the blood out of the republic" and are "gonna start getting more and more violent."
* "To the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter."
* "[Y]ou will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun" and "before I acquiesce and be silent."
* "This game is for keeps"; "[Y]ou can shoot me in the head ... but there will be 10 others that line up."
* "There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America"; "God help us in an emergency."'
And don't forget about the unhinged response when health care reform was passed in March: "Get down on your knees and pray. Pray. It's September 11th all over again, except that we didn't have the collapsing buildings." After financial reform passed last week, Beck told his audience, "Your republic is over."
Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart's website recently tagged Obama as the "suicide-bomber-in-chief," while the conservative Washington Times just last week published an op-ed -- by a former congressman, no less -- asserting the president poses more of a threat to America than al Qaeda.
Note that the radical right's media rhetoric is no longer even political in a partisan sense. Instead, it's purely revolutionary. It isn't, "We think taxes should be lower" or "Obama should be more hawkish overseas." It's, "There's an insidious and deadly plot afoot by Democrats and progressives to strip Americans of their freedom and this country of its greatness." Obama is now the incarnation of evil (the Antichrist?), and his driving hatred for America, as well as for democracy, runs so deep that he ran for president in order to destroy the United States from inside the Oval Office.
Rush Limbaugh: "Our country is being overthrown from within."
And this summer, the latest toxic twist to that line of attack is that Obama is destroying America on purpose in order to exact revenge from white America for the historic sin of slavery. (Think: Black Manchurian Candidate.) The GOP Noise Machine is now mixing a vile cocktail by stirring revolutionary rhetoric with hateful race-baiting.
It's impossible to argue that today's avalanche of insurrectionist rhetoric doesn't have a real world effect. Or that those on the fringes don't find comfort in seeing and hearing their worst fears legitimized on AM radio and Fox News.
The consequences of the doomsday programming seem entirely predictable. As Jeffrey Jones, a professor of media and politics at Old Dominion University, recently explained to the New York Times in regard to Beck's rhetoric, "People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something."
Indeed, the relentless message that right-wing audiences hear is unequivocal and inescapable: Do something! Take action!
And last week, Byron Williams, likely inspired by Glenn Beck's Tides obsession, grabbed his guns and set out to do just that.
Crossposted at the Media Matters blog, County Fair.
Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EricBoehlert
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• Inspiring speaker, proven to be skilled in motivating and inciting hatred and bigotry ...
• Experience
• Proficient at delusionar
• Proven skills at showing mental breakdowns and temper tantrums ...
• Possesses youthful juvenile like qualities much younger than his years ………
You know, something to be proud of to show his grandchild
(On a another note, if you could put politics aside, how do you do bullet points here? Do the comments us bbcode?)
However you are going to have to figure out bullet points yourself. Otherwise how will you learn to think for yourself?
And how HYPOCRITIC
I wish Huff had more forum-like features. It would be fun to be able to make a member group of all the conservati
---John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity," one of the most influentia
Giving up some extra tax dollars for the benefit of others sound pretty American to me.
"It may be laid down, as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government
--George Washington
"this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism
--Martin Luther King Jr in a speech to his staff.
Y'know, you sound pretty Un-America
Oh, and Lincoln started the income tax. Just sayin'.
Any refudiatio
by Steve Benen
http://blo
http://med
"your republic is over"
"this is 9/11 all over again"
"they can shoot me in the head"
"there's a coup going on"
You're right, he doesn't advocate violence. He incites it using fear.
Thanks for the clarificat
“The ONLY way to prevent this country from going completely fascist under the Fox-Rush propaganda machine is to outvote them. We either can muster a majority for decency, or our country is lost.”
I have thought so many times the only way to stop the Fox-Rush propaganda machine is to “muster a majority for decency” and PULL TOGETHER. I have given $25 here $50 there and $100 over there. All the progressiv
What we need is ONE main group working together against this for truth and decency. Just look at all the people who post here on this site. If all of us gave only one dollar we would have a big down payment and a good start to shut this madness down.
If this cause already exists let me know what/where it is, I want to donate to it.
All I am asking for is a link or a document that points to a group that wants to stop Fox and Beck.
Just can't say anything right today.
Guess I'll go to the dog house.
http://med
http://cur
And that "greedy" Soros, remind me again what he does with his money? Oh, right, fund charities, he's given away more money to charity than all of the Republican billionair
$2 billion? That's a fraction of just one no-bid contract for Halliburto
Please share more of your wacky rants, its hard to tell if you really are a dim right winger or a liberal doing a pretty good parody.