Birth of a Nation( 1915) described how Lincoln had undermined state sovereignty and created a powerful federal government. It depicted Northern blacks and freed slaves as monstrous villains who were destroying white civilization and abusing their new-found power after the Civil War. The major villain of the film is a mulatto, a man of "mixed white and black race".
..(In) the final climax of the film... the Ku Klux Klan (as the heroes) unites to save a town from "Negro anarchy"
Anyway Doesn't this sound familiar as we hear the Rightwing in America talking about Obama who is part black and part white and who is seen as a Usurper who is accused like Lincoln of increasing the power of the US Federal Government???(GORD.)
"Though it is often said today that the concept of an "Aryan race" was invented by Hitler or the Nazis, this is not true. The concept of an Aryan race certainly predates the rise of Nazism. Here, in 1915, in the most popular film in American history up to that time, the entire story focused on the concept of defending the Aryan race. " R.G.Price
Is this the America which some Republicans and uberconservatives such as Pat Buchanan are nostalgic for!!!
1925 400,000 Ku Klux Klan march on Washington
Above book The International Jew - an anti-semitic tirade and conspiracy theory published By the Hate-Filled Fanatically Anti-Semitic Henry Ford by his Dearborn Press.
Ford even received a medal of honor from the Nazis for his support-and American school children are still taught to admire Henry Ford -Does Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity , Lou Dobbs , Limbaugh etc. approve of Fords Anti-Semitisn and his racist views???
From the film "Birth Of A Nation" 1915 by the racist G.W. Griffiths another great American Racist which led to the rebirth of the Klan- North and South now had a common enemy African-Americans-Jim-Crow was king & Lynching was a family outing as American as Apple Pie.
"It is not necessary to wear brown shirts to be a fascist," LaRouche once wrote. "It is simply necessary to be one!"From: The LaRouche legacyAUTHOR LIFTS VEIL ON LYNDON LaROUCHE Traces extremist's rise to power and influence By SARA FRANKEL, San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, August 27, 1989
...The extent to which LaRouche's ideas actually penetrated mainstream politics.. is evident in the 1986 California battle over Proposition 64. Although the LaRouchian-sponsored proposal to quarantine AIDS patients was ultimately defeated by voters, the measure--which...echoed Hitler's Mein Kampf proposal to quarantine syphilis patients--successfully reframed the mid-1980s debate about AIDS.
"People called it a 'humiliating defeat' for LaRouche,I regard it as a stunning victory: Over 2 million people voted to quarantine a hated minority--and they did it knowing the measure was sponsored by dangerous extremist Lyndon LaRouche. It showed the radical right how to make previously unacceptable ideas palatable--how gradually to make an unacceptable idea discussable and entirely conceivable."
In attempting to understand Glenn Beck and other Rightwing Media personalities we need to understand the Radical Right & Religious Right or currently the Republicans since these groups have become mixed and interchangeable . Is this for lack of a better term Uberconservative movement on the rise in the US or is it in its last desperate death throws and so lashing out before it becomes inconsequential. I don't believe it is a dying movement but rather it is if you like morphing into something else which may be more focused and more dangerous. These voices have become more strident combining their fear and hatred of Big Government which they see expanding combined with what they see as the crisis of illegal-immigration and America going in the wrong direction as its traditional values are being undermined and replaced by UnAmerican and anti-Christian Values of the "Liberals", "Secular Humanists", the Radical Left and Socialists and Feminists and the Gay agenda so their America is under siege and action must be taken but the concern is can they wait until the November election 2010 or the general election of 2012.
The images above of the Ku Kux Klan marching 400,000 strong on Washington in 1925 we could compare to Glenn beck's 9/12 Tea Party march on Washington. What is notable about that Klan march is that before G.W. Griffiths release in 1915 of his racist white Supremacist/Nativist film Birth of A Nation the KKK had all but disappeared. The film was a success as a recruitment film for the Klan. Griffiths film was call to arms for White Americans.Glenn Beck and organizer Dick Armey were hoping for a similar reaction with the 9/12 March so the question remains did it succeed. Yes we are told that only 75,000 showed up but the supporters are still arguing over this figure which they are convinced is a deliberate underestimation by their enemies the Liberal Biased Media . Visiting their various website blogs, tweeter Face Book etc. they consistently put the number of demonstrators at hundreds of thousand at half a milion to one and a half million . Beck has been repeating these numbers on his radio show and on his website. So their perception is what matters and so many of these Uberconservatives who are anti-government and anti-Obama are embolden by what they see as a resounding success. Because of the reporting according to their perception by the biased liberal press if anything they are even more convinced that America is being taken over by liberal subversive socialist and communist elements. So their resolve is now deepened as they are egged on by Uberconservative leaders and Media personalities such as Glenn Beck.
Keith Olbermann and others may make fun of these people but Americans should take them seriously as a serious threat to American Democracy . As far as these Uberconservatives are concerned democracy has been under mined and even trampled upon by in their view the Obama cult and its millions of supporters. They believe as G.W.Griffiths did that America and Americas traditions, values and its institutions are under attack and the people who are the "real Americans" must rise up to make America for Americans and not certain unAmerican minorities and the on-going invasion by Latinos from the across the Southern Border.
The Birthers and other conspiracy theorists seeing the world through this prism of conspiracies are becoming even more active for instance on the internet hoping to set brush fires across the nation. For instance Gun and Bullet sales in the US are still on the rise since Obama's election a year ago and suppliers are unable to keep up with the demand. So there is the very real possibility of an all out insurrection or a Coup D'etat to replace the Obama administration which they see for various reasons to be an illegitimate government so according to their reading of the US Constitution they have the right and the duty to remove it. Barring this extreme scenario their is the danger of a small percentage of these uberconservatives taking the law as it were into their own hands. Historically this is a possibility given the rise of the Klan and Fascist movements and rises in anti-semitism etc. in the 1920s and 1930s with the help of racists such as Henry Ford and Father Coughlin and the various Nazi and Fascist organizations during that period. For instance the Klan was not as Southern Apologist try to claim merely some sort of benign private club where men went to indulge in male-bonding rituals but rather it was a terrorist organization which aided and abetted the lynchings of some 12,000 US citizens most of them black and the others were accused of giving aid and comfort to the Klan's enemies Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics and Jews and non-European immigrants.
With the present economic crisis in America and what these Uberconservatives see as unAmerican radical change taking place we can't help but notice that America is now about to enter if it hasn't already the Perfect Storm or Conditions for such a violent upheaval.
Controversial Glenn Beck
Whether Glenn Beck is channeling anger or stirring it up, he is certainly capitalizing on it. As his success on both radio and television continues to grow, Beck spoke exclusively to Katie Couric this week.
As Steve Krakauer points out in discussing the Katie Couric interview of the popular rabble rousing Professional Agitator Cum Media Star Glenn Beck this is a clash of cultural views but this avoids the fact that she is treating Beck as if he were some reasonable journalist committed to the facts and committed to journalistic integrity.By doing so Couric and Time etc. are lending some credibility to Glenn Beck's lies, misinformation and propaganda. When things get tough for Beck he will then suddenly claim only to be an entertainers and stand-up comedian. But this is disingenuous to say the least . He nightly runs his bizarre freak show which goes from bizarre and humorous to his maudlin fake tears as he pronounces how is the one true voice in America who will go on asking questions and will present the truth no matter how disturbing it may be. In the end it is mainly doom and gloom and apocalyptic as he shows hydrogen bombs exploding and a world gone mad.
"Katie Couric And Glenn Beck: Tense Moments As Worlds Collide" by Steve Krakauer |at Mediaite.com, September 23rd, 2009
...There was one legitimately tense exchange – and a Twitter question is to blame. Throughout the interview Beck would sometimes joke about Couric looking for a soundbite, and his fear of ‘getting in trouble’ over an answer. But when he was asked to explain what “white culture” is, which was part of his comments about whether Pres. Obama was racist, he began to avoid the question. In the subsequent minutes, Beck explained how his answer, no matter what it was, would be taken out of context and he was falling into a “trap.” Couric pushed on, until finally, Beck refused to answer.
It was a moment when Couric shined – and one that those who felt she was too tough on Sarah Palin will point to as indicative of her political beliefs. Instead, she was fair throughout the interview, asking probing questions while maintaining her cool. The comments were split in various directions – some felt she was too easy on him, precisely because she was so calm throughout, listening and responding. This is what Katie Couric does best – getting thought-provoking comments out of newsmakers. But it should not be lost that this interview was double the amount of time she gets for her day job – an average evening newscast. Some will question whether her success here proves there are better outlets for the star.
There will be other newsmaking @katiecouric interviews, but CBS News will be hard pressed to get as much buzz as this one. Someone will say something – a soundbite – that will go viral, but the intersection of the master of alternative media and one of the faces of mainstream media was a fascinating, and legitimately buzz-worthy event.
So with Katie Couric's interview of Glenn Beck combined with the recent Time cover article about Glenn Beck he has become a media star . But Couric and the Time's article tend to gloss over his insane and inflammatory and incendiary outrageous lies and misinformation and his promulgating of one wacky conspiracy theory after another even ones which are contradictory. He has given time to the Birthers, the FEMA Camp scenario or that Obama is working for The New World Order or that he is a Fascist, a Nazi, a Communist, a collectivist, a socialist or a secret Muslim and possibly the Anti-Christ or the one who precedes the Anti-Christ laying the necessary groundwork to allow the Satanic Forces and Principalities to take control of the world.
But Glenn Beck jumps around moving from one conspiracy theory to the other but in the end what is dangerous about all his nonsense is that he is promulgating the erroneous notion that Obama is in one way or another a usurper of the presidency and is using his power to fundamentally transform America in ways which go against the basic founding principles of America. And if any of this is true about Obama then logic and the US Constitution dictates that it is every Real American's duty to remove the Obama administration followed by a removal from American society all those Americans who have become his fanatical mindless supporters.
By avoiding the more controversial views and his bizarre antics such as pretending to poison Nancy Pelosi, or setting someone on fire or his disturbing videos such as Praise To Obama or his inaccurate little animated history lessons on the history of illegal-immigration or the founding of America . Beck describes illegal-immigrants in terms similar to those used by the Nazis in their erroneous characterization of the Jews. He describes these illegal-immigrants as criminals who are bringing disease, immorality, drugs and crime to America while secretly plotting to take over a large section of the US as their country or even take over all of America. They are therefore the enemy without who have become the enemy within. And the historical fact of the Native American Genocide carried out by European settlers to Glenn Beck is just another lie made up by UnAmerican and anti-American liberals, secular humanists and the intellectual elite whom he believes hate America. The millions of Native Americans slaughtered doesn't fit with Glenn Beck's and other conservatives with their idealized , romanticized and mythologized Faux History of America and so they want to return to a revisionist history which shows European settlers and Real Americans as good Christians who only killed when they had to.
Anyway Glenn Beck's war on progressives is as discussed in previous posts similar to the 1950s era during which Senator Joseph McCarthy led a paranoid witch hunt for Communists deliberately place in positions of power by various presidents from FDR to Eisenhower . Now Glenn Beck is doing all in his power according to him as a "simple average patriotic American" to out Progressives who were known to be Progressives and radicals and yet (liberals, socialists, atheists) have been chosen to be chief advisers or Czars in the Obama administration. He never discusses or mention the fact that President George W. Bush had 47 Czars and that Ronald Reagan also had a number of Czars. But Beck has little interest in inconvenient facts which may undermine his outrageous incendiary claims. Beck is all about Propaganda and stirring up the base who can be assured because of Beck's wild accusations and conspiracy theories that removing Obama from power in any way necessary is justified because Obama is trying to radically transform America and by doing so contravening the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence .
In Glenn Beck's view and that of many other members of the Religious Right, which includes Evangelical Fundamentalist, UltraConservative Catholics and Jews and Mormons to name a few, no American has the right to a different interpretation of these in his view sacred holy documents because they were given to the Founding Fathers by the means of Divine Providence and Divine Intervention by God Himself. So these texts are really an extension to the Bible itself and so to dispute particular parts of these texts as well as the Bible is sacrilegious. Note since Glenn Beck is a Mormon then he must also hold the Book of Mormon as a sacred text and a further revelation and fulfillment of God's plan and God'Law for humankind.
America appears to be at the crossroads - either America will move forward and become more progressive developing an attitude and policies similar to those in Canada and most of Europe in which there is a more mixed economy of the Free Market Place and Capitalism mixed in with some socialist programs and policies and thereby accepting that each of these different ideologies is the better program or policy depending upon the issue. This does not mean moving towards a collectivist or Communist state nor does it mean abandoning capitalists policies and programs where they work best. Part of the issue at hand is a willingness to take more risk in experimenting with various programs to determine which is best in which areas. This does not mean wiping the slate clean and starting all over again. For one thing there are living examples in other countries which can be studied to see which ones would work best in America.
On the other hand Americans can insist on maintaining the status quo or even become more radically capitalistic just in order to keep America distinct from other countries. Being different just for the sake of being different doesn't seem to be a rational workable solution. This is the sort of thinking we associate with immature adolescents or fanatics. They will not change nor back down even when the facts show them that they are wrong. So America can become more egalitarian or less and that is the fundamental choice.Of course in any other country there would be a number of other possibilities but Americans have for the most part seen issues and policies in terms of dichotomies black and white and either/or, Progressive or conservative.
Relation between American Eugenics, socialism, Hitler ,Nazi & Obama
Public health in Nazi Germany
Life unworthy of life
Glenn Beck: Eugenics, Progressives, Hitler, The Economy & Barack Obama [1/2]
Glenn beck is right to be concerned about any revival of Eugenics and the creation of a perfect race through abortion, euthanasia , sterilization etc. but he's got part of the story wrong and so it is questionable about whether his charges against Obama have any validity. Though it maybe doubtful whether he cares if his allegations are valid or not. On the other hand if he is sincere then he believes what he does and these "facts" are merely the creation of those who wish to push their agenda forward.
But the other question is did Glenn Beck and other Republicans and Right wingers and the America for Real Americans Brown-Shirts borrow the notion of Death Panels and Eugenics from Lyndon Larouche's Fascist group???
Months before Glenn Beck and others including Republicans began talking about "Death Panels" and Eugenics and "pulling the Plug on Grandma" the notorious Fascist Lyndon Larouche's magazine online was already comparing Obama's health care reform bills to the Nazis Eugenics program. And like Larouche Beck sees the Rockefeller Family as part of the Great Conspiracy along with Trade Unions Illuminati Masons Blacks Hispanics Asians Buddhists Muslims Hindus - Beware the Buddhists are coming and then them Russians!!!Is Beck now as insane as Larouche or just as savvy & cunning as a fox.
This article appears in the May 22, 2009 issue of the LaRouche Executive Intelligence Review.
"LaRouche: Obama Has Revived Hitler's Genocide Program" by John Hoefle
May 15—In October 1939, Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler issued an order, written in his own hand, ordering the extermination of those who were considered "unworthy of life." The order, entitled "The Destruction of Lives Unworthy of Life," stated that patients "considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, be accorded a mercy death."
Hitler's murder spree started with the mentally ill, the terminally ill, invalids, and the disabled, and eventually spread to millions of Jews, Gypsies, and other "undesirables"—worked to death or exterminated in concentration camps.
This monstrous program was initially sold as an economic measure: "The economic burden represented by people suffering from hereditary diseases is a danger for the State and society," Nazi Dr. Gerhard Wagner said at the Nazi party congress in 1934. The Nazis required all state institutions to report on patients who were chronically ill, and used those reports as the basis to decide which patients should be killed.
Today, the Obama Administration is beginning to descend down that same road, promising to make the "tough choices" to cut entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security to save money—at precisely the time in which an increasing number of Americans are forced to depend on them as the economy slides deeper into Depression. Obama is willing to spend trillions of dollars to bail out the financial markets, and pay for it by slashing programs which keep ordinary Americans alive.
Glenn Beck is erroneous in his simplistic characterization of Progressives and socialists and lumping them in with the Nazis and Fascists and Communist .He falsely sees little difference from minor or major reforms within the system and "socialism" , Communism or the Fascist and Nazi agendas. The so called socialist reforms as promoted by Democratic Socialists is eons apart from the radical Marxist-Leninist Communism.
Democratic socialism argues that the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes which may mean a ten percent increase whereas Marxist Leninist would require the wealthy to give up all that they have and there would be an absolute 100% redistribution of wealth and property.True Marxist would call progressives and moderate socialists mere tinkerers. But those of us on the left are aware that the "Communist workers paradise" is as much a fantasy as Reagan's voodoo trickle down theory of economics or 19th century Laissez Faire Capitalism during which period most people lived lives that were "nasty brutish and short".
and see: Fascism Part II: The Rise of American Fascism by R. G. Price at Rational Revolution.net May 15, 2004
... Throughout the late 1800s, the twilight of the Enlightenment era, a new world-view was being increasingly adopted. Marxism, socialism, and scientific sociology were having a profound impact on society. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s the idea was being advanced that people are the products of their social environments - that poverty is a social condition and that people become criminals because of social and economic conditions, etc.
Those advancing these views were largely calling for major social changes to correct these socially created problems. It was in contrast to these ideas that fascism began to develop in societies around the world, especially in America. The idea that poverty, crime and ignorance are a product of social conditions was a threat to the dominant members of society because the call was for these dominant members of society to reform their ways to create increased equality for all people.
In this social climate, those who opposed the idea that society created the problems of individuals put blame on race and bloodline instead. The ideology developed that the "socialists" were wrong, and that society's problems were not caused by oppressive economic conditions, but rather that social problems were caused by genetic inferiority. This is an ideology that was adopted by many wealthy and upper-class Americans and was related to the development of the ideology of "Social Darwinism," the idea that certain people were "genetically" more fit and that the more fit legitimately had the right to rule the inferior. It is out of all of these ideas that the American eugenics programs began, funded by wealthy Americans such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller. The idea was that people were born poor or born criminal, etc. They were "bad seeds", and thus the problem of poverty was not really a social problem, it was a problem of bloodline, to be fixed by selective breeding programs, forced sterilization, and the maintenance of "racial purity". Racial purity was the idea that races "should not mix" out of the fear that if whites and blacks mixed the inferior black bloodline would "corrupt" the white bloodline, leading to more crime, poverty, and ignorance.
...Dr. Albert Ochsner advocated the sterilization of convicts "to eliminate all habitual criminals from the possibility of having children." In 1902 Dr. Harry Clay Sharp stated: "We make choice of the best rams for our sheep... and keep the best dogs... how careful then should we be in begetting of children!" Sharp also advocated that every state institution should "render every male sterile who passes its portals, whether it be an almshouse, insane asylum, institute for the feeble minded, reformatory, or prison."
... this of course stood in stark contrast to the ideas of "leftist" sociologists who were saying that people were born virtually equal and that differences arose from environmental conditions. These people promoted the idea of rehabilitation of prisoners and the changing of economic conditions to promote economic equality and provide greater access to opportunity for those who were born into poverty.
The author R.G.Price goes on to refer to the film Birth of A Nation as a propaganda film which helped to galvanize the anxiety, fear and paranoia that Southern and Northern Americans had about African-Americans . The movie played on the well known stock stereotypes of Blacks as shifty, lazy , slow, stupid but with a bestial sexual drive which became overpowering according to the stereotype in their desire for white women .
Note the main bad guy in the film is not just black but is mulatto born of white and black parents. One can see some of this bigoted paranoia expressed in the anxiety of a portion of white Americans today in regards to Obama who had a white mother and a black father. So that Obama in their view is worse than any pure black man and so is even less trustworthy and more devious than any black man.
In the movie the director writer G.W. Griffiths has the Ku Klux Klan arrive to save the day and make things right as they fight for the Aryan race and White Supremacy for Christian values and the American Way . The film was not just a critical and box Office success but led to a massive revival of the Klan which had to a great extent disappeared. By 1925 400,000 Klan marched on Washington. In comparison Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project Tea Party march on Washington only managed to get around 75,000 or so to march on Washington. But in that crowd the White Supremacists were well represented . Glenn Beck also had little concern that a number of people were carrying rather blatant racist signs. If he or other had been concerned they could have had these people discard the signs or leave the march. They only complained when these images were shown over and over again in the media on TV and on the internet.
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Endnotes & suggested Reading
" Glenn Beck Faces Backlash -- From the Right" by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly via Alternet.org September 24, 2009.
It seems as if Beck may be marginalizing himself in a way that will, if we're all really lucky, make him permanently toxic to those who take politics seriously.
"Fascist America: Are We There Yet?" OrcinusFriday,by Sara August 07, 2009
Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America? By David Von Drehle at time magazine, Sep. 17, 2009
A President Was Killed the Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This by Eric Boehlert, at media matters, September 18,2009
The Unbearable Lightness of Beck by Frumpzilla at Frump Gazette August 30, 2009
"Why Are African-Americans So Frequently the Subject of Glenn Beck's Ridicule?" By Devona Walker, The Loop.September 16, 2009 via Alternet.org.
and check out article by Ed Kilgore: "David Brooks and Anti-Anti-Racism at The New Republic" The Plank, September 18, 2009
"Sever the Link Between populism and Racism" by Scott Kurashige Huffington Post Sept. 18,2009
Rachel Maddow :Census Worker Found Hanged With "Fed" Scrawled on Body September 24, 2009 via Truthout.org
and so it goes,
GORD.
