Milbank to Beck: "Stop encouraging" potential murderers

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007300024


Milbank to Beck: "Stop encouraging" potential murderers

July 30, 2010 2:36 pm ET by Matt Gertz


In a column that will run in Sunday's Washington Post, Dana Milbank discusses Byron Williams' aborted attempt to gun down leaders of the Tides Foundation, a group often demonized by Glenn Beck. Noting our research indicating that Beck was virtually the only one on cable or network TV talking about the organization, Milbank writes:

It's not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show. Yet Williams isn't the only such character with a seeming affinity for the Fox News host. In April 2009, a man allegedly armed with an AK-47, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun was charged with killing three cops in Pittsburgh. The Anti-Defamation League reported that the accused killer had, as part of a pattern of activities involving far-right conspiracy theories, posted a link on a neo-Nazi Web site to a video of Beck talking about the possibility that FEMA was operating concentration camps in Wyoming. The killings came after Beck told Fox viewers that he "can't debunk" the notion that FEMA was operating such camps -- but before he finally acknowledged that the conspiracy wasn't real.

Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid." Most every broadcast has some violent imagery: "The clock is ticking. . . . The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch!. . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun to America's head. . . . Hold these people responsible."

Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching "a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out." One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. "If you're a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children," he said. "And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?"

Here's one idea: Stop encouraging them.

[RamboLiberal]

1. I'm glad to see this story is getting a bit of play

IMHO because no one died this one has been flying under the radar. Not much mention in the MSM. Didn't even see any coverage on MSNBC. Seems like it got overshadowed by the Sherrod flap.

And Beck is mostly escaping any blame.

If this nutball would've been able to carry out his mission would the story have been any different?

Good for Milbank for writing about this.

[Kurovski]

4. An IRS worker died when a plane crashed into the office.

I think the daughter talked about the murderer's obsession with FOX. Or am I confusing stories here?

[gratuitous]

9. I'm guessing we'll see some play now

Mostly along the lines of how the Post is trying to "silence" or "censor" Glenn Beck, and endless speculation on just what kind of a Marxist/Stalinist/Fascist/Socialist anti-American creep Milbank might be. As to any further discussion or delving into Beck's dangerous buffoonery, that will be strictly off limits as a curtailment of his free speech.

[movonne]

10. I wonder why fox news get away with this and stopping it is not an

urgency...

[Hekate]

16. A Unitarian church was shot up in the middle of a youth performance by an obsessed wingnut...

... who got all his "news" from RW radio and TV, and had a slew of RW books with him. IT's been 2 years almost to the day since that happened in Knoxville, TN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting

Then there's the doctors and nurses and clinic workers who help women with abortions -- quite a few of those have been killed (or maimed) as well.

There is most definitely a death toll connected with this kind of hate speech.

Hekate

[Kurovski]

2. K&R

Beck may or may not be mentally ill, but he certainly has a personality disorder.

[AnArmyVeteran]

7. He has all of the character traits (flaws) a typical cult leader has.

And his followers are all ignorant and gullible. I know a few of them and you would think they were worshipping Beck. It's scary how profoundly ignorant a lot of people are.

[lib_wit_it]

17. Worshipping him--that's exactly it. His followers are deranged, brainwashed, cult members. Oh wait,

I just heard that it's actually the Muslims who are the cult members.

:sarcasm:

[SalviaBlue]

3. K&R

[RamboLiberal]

5. 'Glenn Beck, Come Back to Planet Earth,' Says Tides Foundation Head Drummond Pike

When Byron Williams -- the body armor-clad man charged with turning I-580 into a shooting gallery earlier this month -- listed his purported targets, it wasn't very surprising he named the ACLU. But the Tides Foundation? Who's heard of the Tides Foundation, let alone harbors a grudge against it?

Answer: Glenn Beck. It turns out the San Francisco-based progressive grantmaker is a favorite subject of ranting and conspiracy theory-mongering by the cherubic FOX news superstar. The nonprofit Media Matters has documented 31 separate instances since January of 2009 in which Beck accused Tides of undermining capitalism, brainwashing children, and, essentially attempting to infiltrate American business and government. Two of Beck's diatribes occurred the very week before Williams' abortive shooting rampage.

Williams' mother earlier told the media that her son watched the news on TV and was "upset at how Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." SF Weekly's calls to Janice Williams were not returned, so it's not clear if Byron Williams was specifically watching Glenn Beck's program. But, really, it's hard to imagine where else Tides would be mentioned on TV.

​Tides founder Drummond Pike has long been aware of his spot in Beck's cross-hairs. He has a message for the TV demagogue: "It'd be nice if he came back to earth with regard to the truth."

For starters, while Beck frequently refers to Tides as "the George Soros Tides Foundation," Pike notes that his organization and Soros are not connected -- despite what Beck's conspiracy theory spider charts may claim. Soros did not help Pike found Tides in 1976, Pike says ("Oh Lord, no"); the two never met until 2005. The extent of Tides' connection is this, claims Pike: Soros' Open Society Institute -- which isn't just Soros, but has a board of directors, a letterhead, everything -- has donated money to some of the same projects Tides showered money on. "I think our affiliation lives mostly in Glenn Beck's fantasies," says Pike.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/07/glenn_beck_tides_drummond_pike.php

[RamboLiberal]

6. Here's Milbanks article

Late on a Saturday night two weeks ago, an unemployed carpenter packed his mother's Toyota Tundra with guns and set off for San Francisco with a plan to kill progressives.

When California Highway Patrol officers stopped him on an interstate in Oakland for driving erratically, Byron Williams, wearing body armor, fired at police with a 9mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308-caliber rifle with armor-piercing bullets, Oakland police say. Shot and captured after injuring two officers, Williams, on parole for bank robbery, told investigators that he wanted "to start a revolution" by "killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU," according to a police affidavit. His mother, Janice, told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son had been watching television news and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items."

But what television news show could have directed the troubled man's ire toward the obscure Tides Foundation, which sounds as if it's dedicated to oceanography, or perhaps laundry detergent, but which is in fact a non-profit that claims to support "sustainability, better education, solutions to the AIDS epidemic and human rights?"

A week after the incident, the mystery was solved. "Tides was one of the hardest things that we ever tried to explain, and everyone told us that we couldn't," Fox News host Glenn Beck told his radio listeners on Monday. "The reason why the blackboard" -- the prop Beck uses on his TV show to trace conspiracies -- "really became what the blackboard is, is because I was trying to explain Tides and how all of this worked." Beck accuses Tides of seeking to seize power and destroy capitalism, and he suggests that a full range of his enemies on the left all have "ties to the Tides Center." On Monday, he savored the fact that "no one knew what Tides was until the blackboard."

For good measure, Beck went after Tides again on Fox that night. And Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. That's on top of 29 other mentions of Tides on Beck's Fox show over the past 18 months (two in the week before the shootout) according to a tally by the liberal press watchdog Media Matters. Other than two mentions of Tides by Beck's Fox colleague Sean Hannity, Media Matters said it was unable to find any other mention of Tides on any news broadcast by any network over that same period. Beck declined comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/30/AR2010073003254.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[RamboLiberal]

8. Media Matters has a petition to the shareholders of NewsCorp

http://mediamatters.org/action/becktides/?src=becktides

Glenn Beck brags about "turning the light of day" on the Tides Foundation by constantly attacking it as part of a socialist conspiracy to destroy our government. The Tides Foundation isn't the shadowy political influence of Beck's fantasies -- it's a transparent organization known in the philanthropic community for doing good public service. Make no mistake: Beck's intention was to paint the Tides Foundation as a dangerous, increasingly powerful threat to freedom that must be stopped. And Williams set out to stop them.

It's time for those who profit from Beck to take responsibility for his incitements to violence. Beck's paranoid, dishonest and incendiary rhetoric doesn't just reflect on Beck -- it reflects on News Corp., Fox News' parent company, and its shareholders.

Dear Newscorp Shareholder,

Glenn Beck's violent and unhinged rhetoric has real-world consequences. Last week, a gunman set out to "start a revolution" by killing members of the Tides Foundation -- a philanthropic organization that Beck has frequently and falsely targeted as a threat to the country and a player in a sinister conspiracy.

As shareholders of Newscorp, you have a stake in the poisonous rhetoric Beck unleashes every day. You must speak out and renounce Beck's violent rhetoric and its potential consequences.

[Kurovski]

11. Kick for the petition. (nt)

[Doctor_J]

23. Nearly all of Rupert's shareholders are fascist terrorists themselves

This "Petition" is stupid.

[Scurrilous]

12. K & R

:thumbsup:

[BrklynLiberal]

13. DANA Milbank? ????????????? ??????????

[AspenRose]

25. I know, right?

LOL :D

[lillypaddle]

14. Listened to Beck today for about an hour and a half

back & forth from a distant doctor's appointment. He talked a lot about "The weather Underground" and "The New Black Panthers." I thought I was in a time warp and had landed back in the 1960s. Of course it was all tied in with Obama and Marxism, and DANGER, and the take over of America; and how there's no hope for real Americans and they'd better hang on to their money because there's no telling what's going to happen.

I shouldn't have been, but I was shocked. It was clear that he was inciting the masses with fear. And OMG, the callers ... They love him, ya know, he's a "good man."

Wow.

[louis-t]

20. "Hang on to their money"?

Then, as soon as a repug takes over, it will be "spend, spend spend, spend, it's yer patriotic duty, spend, spend......." See, repugs DO understand economics.

[political_Dem]

15. The sad thing is that Beck is too far gone to be negotiated with.

After all, conventional wisdom is that you cannot negotiate with terrorists and republicans. The only way to shut these dangerous RW ideologues is to go after their advertisers. Secondly, publicly campaign for someone like Rachel Maddow to discuss this phenomenon. While discussing this issue, she must carefully discern First Amendment rights from shouting "Fire!" in a crowded building.

Beck's rhetoric is the equivalent of inciting a riot in a public venue in which people truly can get hurt. The worst part of this is that he doesn't care. If that guy on I-580 succeeded in a massacre, Beck would not give a crap. The show would go right on. Therefore, the only way to curb this dangerous incitement is to make it punitive enough that those RW talk show hosts will learn that there is consequences to when engaging in violent and false information to their listeners.

[Doctor_J]

22. Beck lost dozens of advertisers over one such rant; he hasn't stopped

your suggestion is probably good-hearted; it is certainly useless.

[NewJeffCT]

18. "Will nobody rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

Was said several centuries back... it's just repackaged by Beck and his ilk.

Then, he will profess shock at the killings.

Then, he'll claim it's a liberal plant to ruin him.

[Initech]

19. They won't rest until someone gets killed.

[Doctor_J]

21. What do you mean?

A whole bunch already have. They won't stop until we stop them

[Initech]

24. I mean something catastrophic - like Oklahoma City level.

Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? A huge contributing factor was that the bombers were driven by the bile and garbage spewed from AM hate radio hosts like Limbaugh and Hannity. Why wasn't an investigation launched then? If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.

[Doctor_J]

26. So the fact that 4 different killers in the last 2 years have been inspired

by Beck doesn't count? here's a clue: beck is responsible for four murderers and is ramping his rhetoric UP, not down.

:wtf:

[Initech]

27. It counts, but has it shut them up? No.

[Doctor_J]

28. You are arguing with yourself

You: They won't stop until someone gets killed

Me: A bunch of people have gotten killed and they haven't stopped

You: A bunch of people have gotten killed and they haven't stopped

You have me surrounded. I give up

[Initech]

29. Allow me to resurrect the argument:

Think about this for a second: back in the 90's when Clinton first took office, there were tons of militias and lots of anger being spewed by right-wing radio hosts. Waco and Oklahoma City are direct-end results of what happens when right-wing bullshit goes too far. Yeah sure there were a few deaths here and there but once Oklahoma City happened it shut them up. Oklahoma was a direct result of the right wing bullshit machine at work. Why wasn't an investigation launched then? It could have prevented a lot if this from happening!

[IDemo]

30. I forget now what it was that got him off of Keith's guest list

and under the bus here. Refused to retract a faux pas, if I recall.

He's on the mark with this one, though.