how hollow is this?
the vices are not capable of being hidden for all the hiding!
dushwari
CNN Host Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps
Action Alert
Flirting With Fascism on CNN Headline News
Host Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps
12/5/06
The New York Times, 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, “takes 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
internment 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 (3/16/03), 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
Web: www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?39