Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Glenn Beck is the messianic (lately he claims God speaks through him) cult leader of old white people who watch FAUX News and long for the "good ol' days" of their youth — when America was a segregated society of white privilege by force of law.
Glenn Beck has asserted that president Barack Obama is a socialist/communist/marxist out to destroy America, "a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don't know what it is…"
Where have I seen this before?
Citizens Councils of America (aka White Citizens Council) billboard in Tennessee purporting to show Martin Luther King at "Communist Training School" (it is actually the Highlander Center for Labor Education, and Mrs. Rosa Parks is there as well). H/t Fire on the Mountain: (UPDATE) Honoring Rev. King…
Glenn Beck has been promoting his "Restoring Honor" rally, to be held this Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" clarion call to the nation. Beck is engaging in revisionist history claiming Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as icons for modern movement conservatism:
"[I] think we reclaim the civil-rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. . . . We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties, and damn it, we will reclaim the civil-rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!"
You want to talk about distortion and turning history upside down, Glenn? It was white conservatives opposed to desegregation and the "mixing of the races" who were the greatest obstacle to desegregation and America living out the true meaning of its creed that "all men are crearted equal." Conservatives opposed the Civil Rights Movement. And these people, sadly, are still among us.
The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South. Created in 1985 from the mailing lists of its predecessor organization, the CCC, initially tried to project a "mainstream" image. Council of Conservative Citizens | Southern Poverty Law Center. The group's newspaper, Citizens Informer, regularly publishes articles condemning "race mixing," decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization.
"We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. … We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."
—Statement of Principles, Citizens Informer, 2007
Sound familiar? This is exactly the same language we hear coming from conservative leaders like Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) who are stoking anti-immigrant hysteria in Arizona. How many conservative politicians have you heard repeat this refrain? How many times have you seen this language in letters to the editor – or even in comments posted to this blog – from concerned conservative citizens?
Columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes, "Glenn Beck's contention that his 'we' were the architects of the civil-rights movement is worse than nonsensical, worse than mendacious, worse than shameless. It is 'obscene.' It is theft of legacy." 'Reclaiming' of civil-rights movement is 'obscene':
We're in an odd moment. Having opposed the freedom movement of the 20th century, some social conservatives seek, now that that movement stands vindicated and venerated, to arrogate unto themselves its language and heroes, to remake it in their image.
* * *
But even by those standards, Glenn Beck's effrontery is monumental. Even by those standards, he goes too far. Beck was part of the "we" who founded the civil-rights movement!? "No." Here's who "we" is.
"We" is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. "We" is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. "We" is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. "We" is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. "We" is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. "We" is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of "Bonanza," lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.
"We" is Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, Denise McNair, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, shot, beaten and blown to death for that cause.
"We" is Lyndon Johnson, building a legislative coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to defeat intransigent Southern Democratic conservatives and enshrine that cause into law.
And "we" is Martin Luther King, giving voice and moral clarity to the cause – and paying for it with his life.
The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, that cried "socialism!" "communism!" "tyranny!" whenever black people and their allies cried "freedom."
The fatuous and dishonorable attempt to posit conservatives as the prime engine of civil rights depends for success on the ignorance of the American people.
This, then, is to serve notice as Beck and his tea party faithful gather in Lincoln's shadow to claim the mantle of King: Some of us are not ignorant. Some of us remember. Some of us know very well who "we" is.
And, who "we" is not.
FAUX News no doubt will try to draw a false equivalency between the 1963 "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" to the mockery of Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally. The crowd estimate for the March on Washington in 1963 was more than 250,000. Beck will fall far short.
Below is a flyer for the 1963 March on Washington. Does anyone seriously believe that Glenn Beck, who recenty said of unemployed Americans that "Some of these people, I bet you'd be ashamed to call them Americans," cares one iota about any of the concerns of Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders identified in this flyer?
This insane rodeo clown is desecrating the memory of all those who risked their lives and gave their lives in the Civil Rights Movement. FAUX News is an obscenity.
Public Domain: by USIA (NARA)