Alex Jones just annoys me with his half-digested info, paranoia, and general lack of discernment. But Glenn Beck is starting to
scare me.
For one thing, Beck has a much larger audience and much broader appeal than Jones. My grandparents adore him, but they've never heard of Alex Jones.
For another thing, since making the move to Fox News, Beck has been talking about a lot of things that are, frankly, bats*** insane. A few could be straight out of Alex Jones's mouth:
FEMA camps, American Communism, etc. Beck and Jones even hosted Chuck Norris on their radio shows in the same week, since he's promoting his book
Black Belt Patriotism.
But incredibly, it's Beck who's taking things too far and showing signs of instability these days. He brought up the idea of an
American anti-government militia to Norris. Then there's this:
2 comments:
I remember back in the 90s when the militia movement was big and have been thinking recently that it's making a come back. When a group is marginalize they become populist. When the right felt marginalized during Clinton's administration they began forming populist groups, many of which were in the tradition of their heroes, the Constitutional militias of yore.
As a counter point during Bush's terms the left was marginalized into being populist and they did what they do and protested in the tradition of their heroes, civil rights leaders. And so the pendulum swings.
Now the pendulum has returned. The right likes a martyr, preferably someone pushed to becoming what the left often accuses them of. This makes them all feel like justified martyrs by extension. They often pick the gun totting, middle class, factory worker, who whips out his David's Tool Kit when he just can't take it anymore. Failing that they pick a farmer as their Robin Hood or pride, same conditions otherwise.
I think this is actually a somewhat predictable grasping at straws by a population that feels disenfranchised. The equivalent on the left is accusing everyone of being Hitler. I'll wager that this is part of a mass flinch as the right adapts to their new positions as the political under class.
It is, indeed, a predictable populist "uprising" and a period of adjustment. To date, both the populists and the newly disenfranchised right are behaving within the bounds of propriety, so I'm not going to pass judgement on either side.
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