The Rise of Glenn Beck's Bizarre Media Militia

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/135541/the_rise_of_glenn_beck%27s_bizarre_media_militia/

The Rise of Glenn Beck's Bizarre Media Militia
By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted April 8, 2009.

Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing paranoid insurrection rhetoric and conspiracy theorists.

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In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Specifically, Poplawski, one friend described it, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was "going to see the end of our times."

We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the Web site of 9/11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that's the name of Jones' new documentary DVD) and how President Barack Obama is bound to destroy America.
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Jones might be a "freak," but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.
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Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News Webcast viewers about Obama's "agenda" for gun confiscation and the new president's plan to "bring in total police-state control" to America.

Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News' Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. "It is great!" cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that the Second Amendment is under fire.) Concluding the interview, Fox News' Napolitano announced "it's absolutely been a pleasure" listening to Jones' insights.




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who are buying guns and ammo out of fear, people who watch Beck and Hannity, and that gun sales in my state are skyrocketing. It is all connected. It is NOT just people who are wanting to "protect their property" because of the economy. It is rightwing fueled rage and fear and it is lethal.

the average joes SHOULD be afraid of ... not the ones who cringe when a person calls someone else a retard ...

it leads to murder or other violent crimes but somehow this incident was just an act of an idiot and totally not Glenn Beck's fault(which I agree) You just can't do things just because some idiot on TV suggests you rise up or fight back or whatever. The hypocrisy is what gets me.

Unfortunately, there will be more Poplawskis out there. The biggest victims will be family members. In the 60's, there was a segment that advocated armed insurrection on the left and we saw how it backfired. "People's Heros" ended up going down in a blaze of glory, or so shocking the public that it created a negative reaction that would hurt the Progressive movement to this very day.

The rushpublicans remain in massive denial...they have a massive power vacuum that is being filled by the most verbose and exploitive. Instead of trying to figure out how their corrupt party went from majority to minority in less than 3 years, they still live in their bubble that what happened was someone elses fault or some sinister plot. The gun frenzy is a symptom of a party and ideology in free fall where the real battle is between reality and their parallel universe. Sadly, many innocent people will get caught in the crossfire.