Wingnut? Or Does Beck Just Play One on TV?
In his newest book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, John Avlon shines the spotlight on the extremists from the far-left and the far-right, from birthers questioning Obama’s citizenship to 9/11 truthers.
In the first in a series of excerpts, Avlon speaks with a former Glenn Beck producer who wonders if Beck truly believes the ideas he promotes on his show.
The Glenn Beck Program debuted on Fox News the night before Obama’s inauguration, and he came out swinging. Sarah Palin was among the first night’s guests. Within weeks Beck was pumping up “the Road to Communism” and offering “Comrade Updates,” declaring “the destruction of the West is happening” and that “the president is a Marxist…who is setting up a class system.”
Sometimes he pivoted his imagery to the right, saying “The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state” and claiming that “the federal government is slowly drifting into fascism.” Other times he indulged both sides of the spectrum, as on April 2, when Beck asked, “Is this where we’re headed?” and showed images of Hitler, Lenin and Stalin.
Beck’s opposition to the health-care bill in the summer of ’09 hit all the bases. First there was fascism, as in the “[health-care] system is going to come out of the other side dictatorial—it’s going to come out a fascist state.” Then there was health-care as “good old socialism…raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor.” And finally, race: “The health care bill is reparations. It’s the beginning of reparations.”
Beck’s ratings soared, and his credibility was bolstered by on-air investigations into Obama personnel like “Green Jobs czar” Van Jones, who had in fact once described himself as a communist and signed a 9/11 Truther petition calling for an investigation into whether President Bush had known in advance about the attacks of September 11th. Beck hammered home the story while other news outlets resisted it. Jones ultimately resigned. Beck had both a scoop and a scalp.
Beck’s newfound firebrand politics and effectiveness in driving the news cycle had some old friends scratching their heads. “I never got the impression that Glenn is as naturally curious as he appears to be, to be bringing the information forward that he is,” said Jim Sumpter [Glenn’s former manager]. “I don’t know if Glenn’s being fed or if Glenn’s really the driving force. I have no idea. If he’s the driving force, that’s a Glenn Beck I never saw. If he’s being fed, then the showmanship that goes into all of this is classic Beck. Now if Glenn is the showman and the driving force behind bringing the information to the forefront, then, then I think we’re probably looking at a near genius in terms of what he’s doing…[but] I don’t think this is Glenn. The catalyst in this thing is not Glenn. Glenn’s the vehicle, not the catalyst.”
Catalyst or not, Beck was hitting all the Wingnut themes with perfect pitch. When Iowa’s court legalized gay marriage, Beck declared, “I believe this case is actually about going into churches, and going in and attacking churches and saying, “You can’t teach anything else.’” To nervous gun rights advocates, he asserted that Obama “will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun.” He brought avowed secessionists on his show and gave them an interested hearing. Beck drew the wildest denunciations when he called President Obama “a racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” An advertiser boycott began, but the zealotry of his advocates more than compensated as yet another Beck book went up the charts in 2009. First there was Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Cast Against an Out-of-Control Government and then Arguing with Idiots: How to stop Small Minds and Big Government, featuring Beck leering on the cover in a Soviet-style commissar’s uniform.
In the books, as on air, it’s always a wrestling match between the Good Beck—humorous, self-effacing and calling on a higher power for a sense of purpose—and the Bad Beck, peddling political apocalypse, The Onion equivalent of a horror film: “We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.” “There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America…done through the guise of an election.”