What’s Beck Doing in Israel?
Early in our lecture series, Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom, we cited Glenn Beck as fulfilling a prophetic role in helping awaken “Sleeping Beauty” America-Israel. We made clear in our lectures that we recognized that Beck’s religion is Mormonism and that we were in no way giving an unqualified endorsement of everything Beck believed or taught.
Recently, he has devoted enormous amounts of time and money to promoting his “Restoring Courage” rally in Israel. Of course, we find his blindness in the matter of biblically identifying the nations on the world stage today just as totally dark as John Hagee’s.
In that regard, I found this column by Michelle Goldberg, published in The Daily Beast, to be both instructive and typical. Beck “crossed the line” some time ago (as discussed by Goldberg), and her piece shows that, do what he will in and for the Israeli state, he will not be able to atone for his “sin” or redeem himself in their eyes.
The Daily Beast is a liberal, left-wing website. Here are a few particulars according to Wikipedia: The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker… Edward Felsenthal, a former Wall Street Journal editor, is the site’s executive editor…
Now a few excerpts from Goldberg’s column:
“For years now, Glenn Beck has been warning us that we are hurtling toward a point of no return. Time and again, he has said that we’re in an “Archduke Ferdinand moment,” one shot away from a global conflagration. … He’s recast himself as a great champion of the Jews, united with Israel in a coming global war with the Islamist and socialist hordes.
“This is more than a little ironic, given Beck’s uncomfortable history with American Jews. His radio program and now-defunct television show have been full of classic anti-Semitic tropes, particularly his attacks on George Soros as a manipulative puppet master who is deliberately destroying America’s economy so as to impose a totalitarian one-world government.”
Then Ms. Goldberg goes on in the next several paragraphs to link Beck via David Barton to Christian Identity (whose beliefs—as she describes them—we find abhorrent, and individuals from whom we separated from a long time ago). Goldberg’s column is here.
As I just finished this blog, I was checking the link to the article and found that the paragraphs I had commented upon (re: Christian Identity beliefs and individuals) had disappeared from Ms. Goldberg’s revision of her story, which is datelined today, August 24, 2011 at 4:30 p.m., which is curious because as I write, it is 3:40 p.m. Maybe she or her editor are time travelers (chuckle, chuckle). In any case, I had copied the article in its first incarnation, and so here is the pertinent part of the first version of her column including the paragraphs/sentences deleted from the “4:30 p.m.” version.
“This is more than a little ironic, given Beck’s uncomfortable history with American Jews. His radio program and now-defunct television show have been full of classic anti-Semitic tropes, particularly his attacks on George Soros as a manipulative puppet master who is deliberately destroying America’s economy so as to impose a totalitarian one-world government. Beck has championed the work of obscure anti-Semites like Nazi sympathizer Elizabeth Dilling and Eustace Mullins, who once wrote, ‘The existence of the Jewish parasite upon the host is a crime against nature, because its existence imperils the health and the life of the host.’
“He [Beck] is the author of a propaganda novel that attributes 9/11 to a scheming public-relations executive based on the real-life Edward Bernays, one of several Jews who occupy an outsize place in his personal demonology. He once described Reform Judaism, the liberal denomination of most American Jews, as akin to ‘radicalized Islam.’ (He later apologized.) Even the conservative Jewish magazine Commentary has been alarmed by Beck; writer Peter Wehner described him as ‘the most disturbing personality on cable television.’
“Beck is working closely with David Barton, the GOP operative and conservative revisionist historian, on ‘Restoring Courage.’ The two acted as cohosts on Sunday night, and donations to the event are being channeled through Barton’s Wallbuilders organization. Barton’s record on Jewish issues is no better than Beck’s. He built his career by arguing, via a selective reading of documents from the Founding Fathers, that the Constitution is rooted in biblical values and that the founders never intended to separate church and state. And early on, he found an eager audience for his dubious history lessons on the right-wing fringe.
“In 1991, as the Anti-Defamation League has reported, Barton spoke at a summer gathering of Scriptures for America, a group founded by Pete Peters, a pastor in the Christian Identity movement. Christian Identity holds that Anglo-Saxons are the true children of Israel, while Jews are the Satanic offspring of Eve’s liaison with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Black people, according to Christian Identity theology, are a separate species of ‘mud people.’ In November of that year, Barton spoke at another Christian Identity gathering, this one in Oregon. According to the ADL, his self-published books were advertised in The Watchman, a Christian Identity publication. [The Watchman was (maybe still is) a publication by Pastor Dan Gayman in Missouri. Notice that Goldberg reaches all the way back to 1991, to link Barton—and thereby Beck—with the racist element in Christian Identity.-JWB]
“Barton later argued that he didn’t realize Christian Identity was a racist organization, which suggests, at best, remarkably poor observational skills, since his co-speakers at Scriptures for America included Holocaust denier Malcolm Ross and white supremacist Richard Kelly Hoskins.
Given this history, there’s an almost awe-inspiring audacity to Beck and Barton’s attempt to cast themselves as princes of philo-Semitism. Over and over again on Sunday, they emoted over their deep love of the Jews. …”