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Flirting With Fascism on CNN Headline News Host Glenn Beck threatens
Muslims with concentration camps

12/5/06

The New York Times (12/4/06), profiling new CNN Headline News host
Glenn Beck, called him "brash" and "opinionated," with an "unfiltered
approach." The conservative talk-radio host-turned-cable news
announcer, the paper reported, "take[s] credit for saying what others
are feeling but are afraid to say."

The Times mentioned one of the things Beck has said recently, to newly
elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim: "Sir, prove to me
that you are not working with our enemies." But as press critic Eric
Alterman pointed out (Altercation, 12/4/06), as offensive as that
question is, it doesn't begin to suggest the poisonousness of Beck's
rhetoric about Muslims.

On his August 10 radio show, distributed by Clear Channel's Premiere
Radio Networks, Beck told listeners, "The world is on the brink of
World War III," then issued this warning:

All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and
have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, 'Hey,
you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be
the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad
Muslims in the head.' I'm telling you, with God as my witness... human
beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves
from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When
things-when people become hungry, when people see that their way of
life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and
just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they
will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II
wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

On September 5, Beck took the same message to his CNN Headline News
audience, declaring, "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking
through a razor wire fence at the West." He explained:

Since 9/11, Americans have gotten so fed up with the "yes, but"
Muslims. The "yes, but" Muslims are the ones who show up on talkshows
and in the media and say, "Yes, terrorism is bad, but"-and then they
go through a list of reasons on why we should try and sympathize with
people who fly planes into buildings.... If, God forbid, there's
another attack, we won't have anymore patience for the "yes, buts."
The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn't a "yes, but"
Muslim. They shouldn't even understand the word "but," because if they
don't, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the
razor wire will be coming.

Beck went on to say:

You want the profiling to stop? Then, here's an idea. Stop murdering
innocent people. Stop excusing the people who do. You do that for a
while, and I guarantee you won't have any more problems at the
airports. Stop blowing stuff up and the world just might be your
oyster. Otherwise, it's going to be like that movie, The Siege. You
remember that movie? The Muslims will see the West through razor wire
if things don't change.

He concluded:

Look, I'm not saying all Arabs and Muslims are anti-American. Far from
it. We should get to know these people and embrace the good Muslims,
and eliminate the bad ones. Here's what I don't know. I don't know if
the Muslim community will ever step to the plate like the
Japanese-American community did during World War II. You know, it was
absolutely disgraceful how we rounded innocent people up then and,
sadly, history has a way of repeating itself no matter how grotesque
that history might be. The Muslim community can prevent this if they
act now.

When Beck is talking about "razor wire," he's talking about
concentration camps-in the original sense of the word, places where
masses of people are imprisoned "just based on the way you look or
just based on your religion." Despite his (perfectly accurate)
observation that such camps are "Nazi, World War II wrong," comparable
to the "absolutely disgraceful" wartime interment of
Japanese-Americans, Beck is clearly using the threat of such camps to
coerce Muslims into behavior he approves of, like volunteering "to
shoot the bad Muslims in the head."

Since the overwhelming majority of U.S. Muslims are neither "murdering
innocent people" nor "excusing the people who do," there's really
nothing that they can do to avert Beck's threat that "the razor wire
will be coming." And Beck is explicit that there's nothing non-Muslims
can do to avoid locking Muslims up en masse.

The New York Times, in its profile about Beck, refers to his criticism
of the animated film Happy Feet, but fails to mention that he uses his
Headline News slot to issue threats that he himself compares to Nazi
behavior. For the Times, CNN's decision to give Beck a TV show is a
"success," because he "has increased the ratings in his 7 p.m. time
period 60 percent among all viewers, and 84 percent among viewers aged
25 to 54."

The Times article quoted CNN executive Kenneth Jautz as saying that
the network did not take Beck's politics into account when it hired
him. "We did not set out to have anyone from any particular view
fronting these shows," he said. In fact, CNN hired Beck knowing that
the host's repertoire included hateful attacks--the Hurricane Katrina
refugees seen on TV and the father of a terrorism victim were both
"scumbags" (Mediamatters.org, 5/17/04, 9/9/05)--as well as a
disturbing preoccupation with violence: Beck has told his listeners
that he was praying for a gruesome death for Democratic presidential
candidate Dennis Kucinich (3/6/03), and that he was fantasizing about
strangling filmmaker Michael Moore to death (5/17/05). As FAIR
predicted (FAIR Action Alert, 1/18/06), Beck has not changed his
repellent tune simply because he's been hired by a major media outlet.

Contrary to Beck's suggestion, there are things that the people of the
U.S. can do to avoid repeating the "grotesque" history of
Japanese-American internment. One of these things is to take people
seriously when they start threatening people with concentration
camps-rather than looking the other way because of their ratings
"success."

ACTION: Please contact CNN/U.S. president Jonathan Klein and urge him
to condemn Glenn Beck's chilling threats against Muslims.

CONTACT: CNN/U.S. President Jonathan Klein Phone: 404-827-1500