We can all agree that Glenn Beck is a dangerous demagogue. He pushes lies on the weak-minded; he promotes fear among the anxious; he suggests violence to the already angry; he induces paranoia among the self-described disenfranchised. It's commonly believed that Glenn Beck is merely a paid shill, a propagandist for an elite few who are afraid of seeing their comfortable status-quo slip away. Many suggest that he's willing to say anything for the fame and fortune he receives for doing so, and that his statements are so backward and offensive that he can't possibly believe them himself.
But it might be worse than you think. More than a mere shill willing to say anything for ratings and money, the evidence is clear that he actually does believe the outrageous things he says. And his recent cries of racism against the president bely a perhaps unsurprising possibility: that it's Glenn Beck himself who is the racist.
To better understand Glenn Beck, we must understand the tainted lens through which he sees the world. Who gave him that lens? Who helped shape his world-view? It was given to him by W. Cleon Skousen, who converted Glenn Beck to Mormonism in 1978. Skousen was Beck's mentor, and ALL of what Beck pushes today ultimately comes from the mind of Skousen.
In the interest of brevity, there's a great overview of Skousen here .
A devout Mormon from way back, Skousen got involved in politics in the 1950s, when he aligned himself with the warped paranoid accusations of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Like McCarthy, Skousen loudly proclaimed that communists had infiltrated high levels of the US government. He also championed the total elimination of the federal income tax and preached that the federal government should stay completely removed from private enterprise (and we've seen what a great idea that turned out to be). He was, in fact, the original Modern Conspiracy Nut, helping to found the John Birch Society--the very template for the nutty conspiracy groups that appeared in the 1990s--and promoted the belief in the "New World Order" conspiracy theory. Our own government at the time labeled his groups "domestic right-wing extremist threats."
But most crucial to the topic at hand, Skousen also helped found the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a group devoted to re-interpreting the Constitution so that it conforms more closely to their vision of America. In their America, the only ones who matter are white gun-totin' Reformed Christians. In their America, nobody else was ever promised anything. In their minds, America belonged to them before they even got here. In their America, non-whites are here only to labor, to serve and to buy--never to earn, own or control.
Their vision of America is deeply rooted in (some say outdated) Mormon thought. And as we shall see, Mormon thought itself (like so many parts of American society, sadly) has deep roots in bigotry. This is the source of Skousen's racism. It is also the source of Beck's own racism.
The NCCS, founded by Skousen, published a book in 1987 called The Making of America, which in part suggested: 1. That blacks are naturally inferior to whites because God made them that way; 2. that blacks actually enjoyed slavery because it gave them a sense of direction they don't possess themselves; and 3. that whites were the true victims of the practice of slavery due to the stresses of cost management.
Some putz in California actually tried to get this book used as a school textbook. It's becoming clear that the Mormon church has a history of using California (that bastion of godlessness and sin) for its "test cases," the latest example of which being last year's Prop 8 debacle.
The sad fact is, for more than a century the Mormon church practiced institutionalized racism. One of the cornerstones of Mormon thought is the belief that one's actions during "pre-life" determine one's place in life on Earth. A corollary to this was the idea that those born without white skin have been somehow disobediant to God before they were even born. By this way of thinking, blacks (and all non-whites) are therefore naturally inferior because they have committed some unknowable sin and are therefore cursed by God to be born into inferiority, ignorance, poverty and servitude. Non-white skin was, they believed, the "Mark of Cain," a visible "stain" on a person who was born cursed by God and therefore naturally abhorrent to the "pure" white folks. This was the natural order as they saw it, officially sanctioned by the Mormon church for their first hundred years.
This only changed three decades ago. It changed because the Mormon church ran into a little problem: how were they to export their religion to other countries when so many of the world's inhabitants are non-white? At this crucial moment, the head of the Mormon church claimed to have had a "divine revelation," and suddenly non-whites were allowed to enter the Mormon priesthood after all. (What convenient timing for the church, huh? Of course, it wasn't the first time the Mormons changed a tenet of their faith for political expediency.) When this change in doctrine was made, Skousen was 65 years old. Skousen had already been disavowed by the Mormons by this time, so there is no reason to believe that he simply changed with it. As the old saying goes, a tiger can't change its stripes.
Being inspired as he is by the ideas of Cleon Skousen, the election of a non-white president was an existential affront to everything Glenn Beck holds sacred. Following his Skousen/Mormon beliefs, we now know that Beck doesn't just believe that Obama is inferior; he believes that he's cursed by God for some unknowable sin he committed before he was born. In Beck's mind, Obama is evil incarnate; his religion tells him so! And he uses his charisma, which inexplicably enchants some, to paint a portrait of our president as just such a person. Even worse, he uses whatever crazy Skousenesque conspiratorial illogic he can dream up to raise doubts about Obama in the minds of the sheeple. And all of this goes out every night on the most-watched cable news service in America. (Just look at this for further evidence.)
Shameful. Dangerous. Glenn Beck's worldview is every bit as poisonous as the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, the Klan, or any ignorant fear-driven hate-filled soul. As with all such zealots, extremists and misinformed people, we must do everything we can to stop the hate-mongering, subdue the fear. Beck, Murdoch and Ailes must be brought to task for promoting such backwards ideas.