Many of us had a good chuckle a week ago when comedian Lewis Black went on Comedy Central and did a brilliant monologue on Glenn Beck and his bad case of Nazi Tourette's. My favorite line was, "Glenn Beck plays "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," except there's just one degree and Kevin Bacon is Hitler." And many diaries at this point out that 'extreme talk' has fatal, predictable consequences. Well, it's happened again. Go below for 'tomorrow's headlines' tonight.
The New York Times just put out a story from the Associated Press that at least one of the two men who murdered two Arkansas state policemen during a traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark had 'anti-goverment' views. Jerry Kane was on the road with his sixteen-year old son when the two were stopped on an Arkansas highway. Original stories about that October 12 incident speculated that members of a violent drug gang had done the shooting.
Tonight new reports identify Kane as a member of 'sovereign citizens' movement who believe that taxes are illegal. Kane ran a debt-avoidance swindle where he went around the country promising listeners at his lectures that "they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt."
He had an internet radio show and during a recent broadcast he told listeners that he had been arrested at a"Nazi Checkpoint" near Carrizozo, New Mexico. Carrizozo police confirmed that Kane had been arrested in their town and he spent three days in jail for driving without a license and concealing his identity. On his radio show Kane said, "I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail. That was their option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 houses in there."
In a particularly chilling moment Kane said that he'd one a background check on the arresting officer. "I found out where he lives, his address, his wife's name."
The Times article quoted Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center to say that his group did not even have Kane in their database because the Center has not been able to keep up with the explosive growth of the antigovernment movement in recent years. He said he counted 363 new groups in 2009.
So what have we got?
- Glenn Beck mines a meme that the new Nazis are everywhere.
- Jerry Kane of Clark County, Ohio had been having run-ins with police at least since 2004 to the point a sheriff in his home county issued a warning to his officers that year Kane was a public danger. In 2010 after he declares that the police are Nazis and he murders two of them in an encounter that leads to his own death and the death of his 16 year old son.
Is Glenn Beck directly responsible for Jerry Kane's crimes? I personally would just say that Kane was obviously a pretty disturbed guy and a danger to himself and those around him. Even he had never adopted Beck's tactic of labeling his enemies Nazis, I can easily imagine he was headed for trouble. But by the rules Glenn Beck himself uses when he compares a group like Acorn to Hitler youth, he (Glenn Beck) is responsible for the actions of a guy like Jerry Kane.