What's Glenn Beck tapping into?
Something interesting is going on at Fox News: the rise of Glenn Beck as conspiracy theorist and demagogue. Last Friday night, as David Frum points out on the conservative site NewMajority.com, Beck broke into tears on a TV special (variously tagged "The 'We the People' Project" and "You Are Not Alone") as he explained the forces arrayed against decent Americans -- the media, Wall Street, politicians of both parties (but mostly Democrats) -- and vowed that decent citizens had only a vanishing window left in which they could save the United States.
Save it from what? From a fascist takeover. As Beck has explained, he believes the Obama administration is preparing to round up critics of the administration and force them into concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency:
We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest dreams. I have to tell you: I'm doing a story tonight that I wanted to debunk -- these FEMA camps -- I'm tired of hearing about them -- you know about them? -- I wanted to debunk them. We've now for several days done research on them. I can't debunk them! If you trust our government, it's fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be heading towards a totalitarian state: look out.
This sort of stuff has proved too much not just for Frum but also for Shepard Smith, a star Fox anchor who has taken to mocking Beck on-air -- mimicking Beck's weepy odes to his own patriotism and the cult of personality Beck seems bent on building around himself. Chris Wallace, son of the noted newsman Mike Wallace, scolded Smith on-air: "I for one am on the Glenn Beck bandwagon and I advise you to join it as well."
Frum reports that audiences at Beck's Friday night show were given copies of "Five Thousand Year Leap," a book by Cleon Skousen that Frum had assumed had been consigned to history's dustbin. Skousen, Frum writes, was "one of the legendary cranks of the conservative world, a John Bircher, a grand fantasist of theories about secret conspiracies between capitalists and communists to impose a one-world government under the control of David Rockefeller."
The Great Depression produced such noted demagogues as Father Coughlin and Huey Long, whose followings at times reached into the millions. Auditions to fill that niche in 2009 have begun.
