On Tuesday night, Glenn Beck invoked the red-baiting of a bygone age, making the claim that there are "Communists in the United States government." Beck's McCarthyite rampage came during an extended screed attacking White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones, the co-founder of Green for All, an environmental-entrepeneurial organization. After renouncing his "rowdy black nationalism" in 2000, Van Jones "has emerged as the perhaps the nation's chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment." However, Glenn Beck is convinced that Van Jones is a Communist sleeper agent in the White House:
I know there are good decent people, left and right, Democrats and Republicans that watch this program! How much more evidence do you need that we have radicals in the White House? Oh, we haven't even begun. If you think you need more -- We need to at least start having the necessary conversation of: Do we really want Communists in the United States government as special advisors to the president?
To be honest with ya, and maybe it's just me, I don't even want Communists having lunch with our president. When Putin was having an hour with the president, I know he had to do it, but I wasn't comfortable with it! Barack Obama did not campaign on openly changing the whole system.
Watch it:
In fact, Obama did campaign openly on a message of change. And hope.
Evidently, Beck is attacking Van Jones to divert attention from his accusations that President Obama is a "racist" who "hates white people." A successful boycott by Color of Change, an organization co-founded by Van Jones in 2005 but with which he has had no active involvement since 2007, has led to 57 advertisers abandoning Beck's show.
Also in response to the boycott, Gary Kreep, head of the United States Justice Foundation, founded DefendGlenn.com. On the website, Kreep instructs Glenn Beck fans to tell advertisers that Van Jones "went to prison for inciting the 1992 Rodney King riots in L.A.":
Tell them CoC's founder went to prison for inciting the 1992 L.A. Riots, and accused President Bush of giving troops orders to shoot black people after Hurricane Katrina.
In reality, Van Jones was a legal observer in San Francisco, not Los Angeles, during a non-violent rally that took place after, not before the riots. Jones and hundreds of others were seized in a mass arrest. He was released within a few hours, all charges were dropped, and "the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest."
Jones also has never "accused President Bush of giving troops orders to shoot black people after Hurricane Katrina," as the DefendGlenn site claims. Kreep's inflammatory lie has no factual basis whatsoever.
Kreep's unhinged attacks come as no surprise, however. He is one of the leaders of the "birther" movement, claiming that President Obama is not a citizen of the United States. Kreep is a professional when it comes to defending the racist and bigoted actions of America's radical right-wing.
Aside from spearheading DefendGlenn, Kreep has also supported the hateful interests of nativists, homophobes, and anti-choice radicals.
Kreep himself subscribes to the delusional notion that Obama "has been hiding the truth [about his birthplace] from the American people." He has also expressed frustration about recent waves of immigration to the US, having told the Los Angeles Times:
"When the Italians came to America, they assimilated. When the Irish came to America, they assimilated...It isn’t the language barrier; it’s the willingness to assimilate. It’s not that hard to come here speaking only a little English and assimilate."
In 1992, the gay community and the Anti-Defamation League expressed outrage when Kreep brought his "purportedly anti-homosexual views" to San Diego's Human Relations Commission.
Those Kreep has chosen to defend as an attorney are even more telling of his radical right-wing agenda. Kreep's professional biography reveals that he has served as General Counsel to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps -- a militant "nativist extremist" group -- and has been honored by the anti-choice extremist group Operation Rescue for "his services to the community." Most recently, Kreep defended the San Diego Minutemen and help win them more than href="50,000 in damages for a lawsuit filed against Caltrans for revoking their Adopt a Highway permit. He also defended "anti-immigration crusader" John Monti who was charged with battery, interfering with the civil rights of two day laborers, and filing a false police report. In 2007, Kreep defended anti-immigration activist Roy Warden, who was convicted of one count of assault and two counts of threats and intimidation after burning a Mexican flag outside a Mexican consulate. Warden was also videotaped "threatening to blow a child's brains out," and vowed "he would continue to exercise his right to free speech, burn Mexican flags and protect himself from others."
Fundamentalist pastor Wiley Drake, who has publicly prayed for Obama's death, has hired Kreep to pursue a lawsuit challenging Obama's birthplace and presidency.