Should Fox fire Glenn Beck? Or should he resign?
The combative talk host, who said Helen Thomas should be ousted, utters a classic anti-Semitic slur
Topics: Glenn Beck, Anti-Semitism, Communism, Fox News, Germany, Helen Thomas, Religion, Politics News
Fox News host Glenn Beck speaks during the National Rifle Association's 139th annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 15, 2010. REUTERS/Chris Keane (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) (Credit: Reuters)Has Glenn Beck been touting anti-Semitic propaganda again? If so, should he suffer the same fate as Helen Thomas, the legendary Hearst columnist forced to resign last month after an idiotic tirade urging Israelis to “go home” to Poland and Germany?
Those unpleasant questions were provoked by Beck’s latest bizarre outburst concerning religion when, in the throes of yet another lecture July 13 on why Christians should abhor social justice, he alluded to his belief that “the Jews” had killed Jesus Christ.
Discussing liberation theology and its portrayal of Jesus, Beck said: “If he was a victim and this theology was true, then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did.”
Beck’s recitation of the old Christ-killer canard — a foundation of anti-Semitic ideology from the Passion Plays of the Middle Ages through the rise of Nazism to Mel Gibson’s contemporary spewing — may or may not represent personal prejudice. As the Fox News star might say, some of his best friends (including his publicist Matthew Hiltzik) happen to be Jewish.
But this fresh gaffe is hardly the first time that Beck has given wide circulation to ideas and ideologues hateful to Jews. Whether he is a bigot in his heart is unknowable, but he is a repeat offender.
As noted in a Salon series last year by Alexander Zaitchik, author of “Common Nonsense,” a gripping and thoroughly researched Beck biography, he has frequently and enthusiastically endorsed the late W. Cleon Skousen, a far-right favorite of the ’50s and ’60s with roots in Beck’s own Church of Latter-Day Saints. Skousen’s conspiracy theories echo old anti-Semitic themes about world domination by major banking families that can be found in the works of Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler.
According to Zaitchik, Skousen relied on “research” by Arsene de Goulevitch, a former czarist officer whose own sources included Boris Brasol, the pro-Nazi Russian émigré who popularized the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forged text alleging a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com. To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. More Joe Conason.




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