"Jesus was a Nazi. So's your preacher" (Roger Ebert on Glenn Beck post of the day UPDATED)

[Omaha Steve]

Marta found this. UPDATE: I forgot to mention that for $4.99 a year, you can have special access to ALL of Roger's extra stuff like this: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/dear-readers-in-the-last.html


http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/03/jesus_was_a_nazi_and_sos_your.html

By Roger Ebert on March 14, 2010 6:24 PM

Pretty near everything Glenn Beck says strikes me as absurd, but he scored a perfect 10 when he warned his viewers against the dangers of Christianity. You already know all about it. Well, maybe not, because the usual defenders of Christianity, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, were very quiet on the topic. Not even a peep from Pat about this man who showed every sign of having hired the best lawyers to draft his pact with Satan.



Many other Christians were not so silent Dr. David P. Gushee, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, wrote: "He managed to do something few have been able to do -- speaking only of my own religious community, he has united Catholics and Protestants, evangelicals and mainliners, Christian progressives and moderates and conservatives."

What were Beck's unifying words? "I beg you, look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church web site," he told his audience. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'yeah, we're all in that social justice thing'--I'm in the wrong place."





I was on the brink of picking up the phone and asking Francis Cardinal George if he was down on this whole social justice thing, but then I recalled that I no longer use the telephone. Do you suppose the cardinal texts? I know some priests pretty well, and two ministers I went to high school with, and a rabbi, and I have a Muslim friend who teaches that faith in Chicago universities, and I work with a Buddhist, but it's no use asking them. They're all down on this social justice thing.

What are the words "social justice" code for? Why, Nazism and Communism, says Beck: "Social justice was the rallying cry--economic justice and social justice--the rallying cry on both the communist front and the fascist front." Beck even went so far as to cite Jesus Christ, saying, and I quote: "Nowhere does Jesus say, Hey, if somebody asks for your shirt, give your coat to the government and have the government give them a pair of slacks." Well, Beck has me there. It is quite true that nowhere does Jesus say that. Nor, for that matter, does he ever say, A wop bop a lu bop, a wop bam boom!



What I would enjoy hearing is one single clergyman from any faith in America, appearing on Beck's program to agree with him and denouncing social justice. Such a person might be a real piece of work. I suspect he might currently be in between congregations. Beck's oversight is that all religions teach social justice. That's sort of what they're about. "My church doesn't," said Beck, who is a Mormon. Not for the first time, he was dead wrong, and the mountains of Utah rang with the thunder of outraged Mormon elders. I know now, and did not know before, that before statehood the Mormons in the Utah territory provided universal health care and care for the poor as a matter of their duty.

FULL story at link.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Tell Marta this is a good find

:)

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. It's a great day in America...

...when I can say that a man who is physically unable to talk "speaks" for me.

[anigbrowl]

3. That last picture is unintentionally accurate

That's exactly where Beck is trying to take this. Established religious institutions are competition for a nascent political movement. If you go back and examine the history of the Nazi party (since you brought it up, Glenn) one little-known detail is that they moved early on to develop a kind of statist religion, in the belief that churches should express similar views to the party. Mild, moderate community-based churches just get in the way of revolutionary movements. The solution? Reframe them as part of the problem, by claiming they have been corrupted by your enemies...in this case 'socialists'.

It's disturbing. Glenn Beck is a terrible guide to history, but the consistency with which he follows the pattern of previous totalitarian movements suggests he is an avid student of it.

Says Ebert, "Beck has strayed way, way off beyond conservatism, to a land where reason itself is an evil conspiracy."

He is entirely right about Beck's departure from reason. But I am not at all sure he has strayed..I think that is exactly where he wishes to lead his viewers.

[Newest Reality]

5. And it would be nice if ...

we could see what goes on behind the scenes of his show.

I agree that this is exactly where he wishes to lead his viewers. The question I have is, who is it exactly that wants him to lead the viewers there? I mean specifically within the Faux organization. It is hard to pass Beck's show off as just a ratings/advertiser vehicle considering the nature of it as if the executives, producers and directors have no idea of its effects and that some people will take the performance seriously.

[anigbrowl]

8. I wonder about that too

I don't know if it's Fox necessarily. Obviously that's a natural home for his brand of crazy, but at the same time I don't think the corporate types really give that much of a fuck - to them he just brings in the ratings and they don't really care too much as long as he's consistent. You'd be amazed how many people just look at that kind of stuff as business without particularly caring what it is that they're selling, or what the ethical considerations are.

Of course if you put yourself in the shoes of a right-winger for a moment alot of stuff on TV that we think is mindless fluff probably seems to them like some hideous liberal conspiracy...Rachel Maddow is part of secret plot to force teh ghey on America, PBS is socialism, and god knows what else.

I was watching C-Span earlier while they were interviewing the head of the US Census and some fruitcake called in yelling that taking a census was unconstitutional (when in fact it's required by the constitution). they were very polite to him (because apparently there are so many of these people that they're used to it) and he explained that 'gets all his news on infowars'. I almost choked on my dinner.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. this should be an OP itself! n/t

[grantcart]

4. Beck is approaching the point of return mentally

I wonder if he will end up like his mother.

[Omaha Steve]

6. Kick

[caty]

7. I've never really understood

how the religious right can put their claim and God and Jesus, and then do and say some of the most hateful, mean spirited, selfish, greedy, and evil things I've ever heard in my life. Jesus was a liberal. I'm not a believer, and I have come to doubt that the members of the GOP are. They can't possibly cause so much suffering and death and believe there is an afterlife. One thing I strive for, that they know nothing about is, to be ethical.

[nightgaunt]

10. Yes he is part of a movement that wants this country first, then the world

They are a varied group bankrolled by the most wealthy people on the planet right here in the USA. Being Pre-millennialism it is their duty to "fix" the earth and its inhabitants so that their god will return to rule over it. So in the meantime there will be wars and commerce and evangelicalism of the faith in the "Great Commission" all mixed together. No "Great Taking Up" into the air, and if you are rich and "well born" it is because their god saw it that way as a blessing. And if you aren't? Then you are cursed by him. In the Calvinist mold this religion is and also has many affiliations to that Nordic-Christian creation of Nazism in many ways. For they are from the same fount of whites or Nordics are the "promised" people, the peculiar people and in fact the new Jews. But unlike the Germans, the Americans don't want to necessarily kill them, just convert them and kill their religion in its stead. They are working from the standpoint that it is what they have in common that is important. Any doctrinal variances will be dealt with later after the rest of us "heathens" and "apostates" are put in their "proper" place. Remember the Gilded Age? It will be much like that only no Bill of Rights and the corporations will have even more freedoms to act as countries unto themselves and life will be even cheaper for us as they "save our souls." Slavery is not outlawed by the Bible so it is still viable today by them on us.

The leaders and planners tried this once before in 1934 but failed, however FDR didn't punish them and so here we are today. They are at it again but have been very careful in how they do it. We can see examples everywhere of what they are doing. Now most of them aren't privy to the inner workings but they are given free reign to follow their own way that benefits their business. Bring down the Republic while building up the empire to be. Much of that has already gone on overseas and some of it here with the establishment of Homeland Security and the North American Command. We see their actions on C-Street, K-Street and in Uganda. They are everywhere and have no use for a Republic which along with democracy, doesn't exist in the Bible they follow. They also go by "Dominionist" which is what they seek to do. Climate change will also benefit them to get their theocratic-corporate nation-state very soon. I think we are just one economic collapse away right now. One which we could have again, like 2008, since nothing has been done to stop it. I wonder why? Too bad Glenn Beck is spending so much time blaming the new Jews--Progressives as the ones behind all this. Any close study would say otherwise. But then just like in Germany you pick a group almost universally loathed and relatively powerless as the main enemy and move on from there. So doesn't that put multi-millionaire Glenn Beck on their side & not ours?

Distortions of history are all part of it. They would say "interpretations" but we can see how they distort, or out right lie. Lying is a sin but for them they are immune because what they are doing they consider righteous and they are absolved. Nice when you want to take over the country and will kill millions to do it.