Monday, April 15, 2019

Glenn Beck: My First Inspiration with Conspiracy Theories


I remember early 2009 when I first got into politics after voting in 2008 Presidential election. You can’t understand conspiracy theories today without understanding the modern driver of it.
And that of course being politics. Political motivation for believing in conspiracy theories can be based on partisan feelings about political opponents or ideological motivation based on your beliefs of how the world works. If you don’t like President Obama you're probably more prone to believe he is a Kenyan socialist Muslim with a fake birth certificate. If you were a staunch believer against gun control you are probably more prone to believe that these mass shootings aren’t happening and or they are staged by the government.


Being at such a young age fresh out of high school is when you’re easily influenced by ideologies. You either stay that way for the rest of your life or it’s a phase before you later become molded into what your label really is. At at that age for me I was also easily influenced by conspiracy theories I saw online. My best advice to avoid that is to read books to learn how the world works before amateur conspiracy videos tell you how it works first. Education matters.

But my conspiracy minded phase did not start with Alex Jones. It all started with talk show host Glenn Beck. He was my first influence when it came to conspiracy theories. My gateway drug. You can’t understand the phenomenon of politically driven conspiracy theories without knowing Glenn Beck and his history. Growing up out of the Cold War, I didn’t really learn much about communism or even the Cold War in elementary school or high school. Beck would become my Communism for Dummies teacher on cable TV. I watched and listened to him every week day of my freshman year of college. And would see other students reading his books.

Beck was an engaging speaker on the radio and could really connect to anyone who was listening. Beck would do things that would change the political landscape in ways that weren’t thought possible. He led rallies and movements against legislation. Imagine a book that was not well known and not well sold in the 1980's. Then out of nowhere a talk show host revives it so much that it’s re-published and becomes the number one book on Amazon. Well, that's what Beck did. The book in particular Beck was pushing at the time was The 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen. Or as HUD secretary Ben Carson pronounced it “Skoo sen”. The book is mainly a conservative pseudo-history of America. This book along with The Naked Communist are what drove Beck’s politics. His politics were American pseudo-history mixed with fringe anti-communist conspiracy theories. Beck would promote these ideas openly and covertly. In his book The Real America, Beck listed the communist goals and asked his readers which goals have already been accomplished. The entire list was almost word for word from The Naked Communist book. Much of his other material was inspired from the John Birch Society.

For those who don't know, the John Birch Society was a conspiratorial anti-communist organization in the 1960's. They saw the Civil Rights Movement as a communist plot and that President Eisenhower was a conscience agent of the communist conspiracy. Beck would continue this diatribe of connecting Democratic politicians to communism using decades old conspiracy theories. Only difference is that they got a 21st century update. What was told by people once a year with the John Birch Society knocking at your door in the 1960's was now on cable television every day of the year. Beck would continue this tactic of pulling obscure works and making them mainstream withing the conservative movement. Some of which were neo Nazi and anti-Semitic. This included the books The Red Network and Secrets of the Federal Reserve. This would pressure conservative leaders to bring back fringe factions once banned resulting in the John Birch Society being welcomed to CPAC in 2010. 

Probably two of the most outrageous conspiracy theories Beck pushed were the North American Union and FEMA concentration camps. Beck would claim for weeks that the Bushadministration initiated a North American Union agreement merging Canada US and Mexico into one union like the European Union. He even had a John Birch Society representative on his show to make the case that it was real. Beck also pushed the idea of FEMA concentration camps under the Obama administration. For days he said he was going to expose them as if they were real then abruptly on the day of his expose it completely debunked the most popular theories with Popular Mechanics. It's a segment I highly recommend watching.

There were multiple fears during his cable news reign that his manic mongering rhetoric could lead to violence. And it did. There was Richard Poplawski who watched and shared videos of Beck promoting FEMA camps conspiracy theories with Ron Paul along with falsely claiming that guns were going to be banned. Poplawski shot and killed 3 Pittsburgh police officers believing this was happening. It was the deadliest single day incident for law enforcement since 9/11. (Shooting was in 2009) Beck did his abrupt debunking of the FEMA CAMP conspiracies two days after the shooting.


There was also a violent incident involving Byron Williams who was on his way to commit a mass shooting at an ACLU office and the Tides Foundation hoping to start a revolution. After being pulled over for speeding he ended up in a shootout with police, but was arrested and subdued. 


In a jail house interview he laid out his motive:


"And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence, he’ll never do anything like, of this nature, but he’ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need."
...
"I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this."
...
"Yeah, it's like Obama on this oil spill. He causes the oil spill, right? Contracts it -- contracts Halliburton, where either Soros, or him, or BP -- have said it themselves -- contracted Halliburton to sabotage the oil well field. Kills 11 people, destroys the entire Gulf, wildlife, to pass the cap-and-trade legislation."

...
"Except don't use the word 'theory.' Because the conspiracies are not theories. The official report is the lie; the conspiracy is the truth."
What was a long conspiracy care
er was now crumbling down and strangely it happened during the Trump era. However it started with the Boston Marathon bombing. Over the course of several months Beck claimed a Saudi national who was caught in the explosion of the Boston marathon bombing was the money man behind the attack. The FBI investigated him and cleared him of any involvement in the bombing. That wasn’t enough and Beck continued to make the false claims alleging a cover up by the government. This resulted in a defamation lawsuit that went on for several years. Eventually there was a settlement but to this day the terms of the settlement time not been made public by either party.

It was after this lawsuit dilemma that Beck slowly begin to change by moving away from a conspiracy branded talk show. Beck also began to show remorse for the political divide in America. And was seriously reserved about supporting Trump for president. Hell, he was even skittish about Trump in 2011 when Trump made it to the top of the 2012 Republican Primary polls by talking about nothing but Obama‘s birth certificate

Nowadays Beck has abandoned his conspiracy brand and even has gone out of his way to debunk conspiracy theories that are popular on the right. This includes Sandy Hook shooting denial conspiracy theories. There's some indications that Beck has realized the conspiracy minded political culture he created has real life consequences. That's both from a personal business interest for him when he was facing advertiser boycotts and the defamation lawsuit. And of course from the emotional toll peddling outrageous conspiracy theories has taken such as Sandy Hook families receiving death threats and harassment.

"I wish I could go back and be more uniting in my language. Because I think I played a role unfortunately in helping tear the country apart. And it’s not who we are. I didn’t realize how really fragile the people were. I thought we were kind of a little more in it together.”- Glenn Beck

Whether Beck will stay the course or return to his dark conspiratorial past, only time will tell. Will he cave to President Trump taking over the conservative movement? Or will he maintain the standards he's set when it comes to the fringe. The conspiracy theorist presidency has just begun.

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