The John Birch Society roots of Glenn Beck’s obsession with George Soros
Glenn Beck’s bizarre George Soros conspiracy theory has been making some waves lately for using antisemitic stereotypes and overblown rhetoric. How did he discover George Soros’ secret plot to overthrow the US government?
He tells us in last night’s episode. Skip to 4:45 of this clip….
That’s right. His source is a document from Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. Mr. Beck was kind enough to post his copy of the document on his website. The New Role of National Legislative Bodies in the Communist Conspiracy is a reprint of a document written by Jan Kozak, an obscure Czechoslovakian communist bureaucrat, in 1957. Beck encourages his readers to explore the original source material for themselves but Beck’s copy is illegible. About 1/3rd of every sentence is blocked out and some pages are completely obscured. Even Beck himself can’t read it. One of the few legible parts of the document is the title page showing the committee members who assembled it. There’s William M. Tuck who vowed “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision banning segregation, Brown v. Board of Education. Francis E. Walter who was known to be “reactionary and racist.”
Beck also claims that this secret memo was never meant to be published. That’s not true - it was published. Here’s an online version of the introduction: The New Role of National Legislative Bodies in the Communist Conspiracy.
Kozak was a participant in the new Communist parliamentary tactics which proved so successful in achieving and maintaining victory “from within” in Czechoslovakia and other countries that the Kremlin departed completely from long-standing strategy and adopted a new post-revolution role for legislative bodies in Red-conquered nations. Whereas destruction was formerly the Communists’ plan for a national legislative institution, it is now their policy to convert it into “an active revolutionary assembly.”
…
First, the Communist-controlled Ministry of Agriculture (pressure “form above”) announced a proposal for a drastic “reform” program that would confiscate land from all but small holders. The Ministry invited reaction and support from the working peasantry (pressure “from below”). Workers’ organizations and newly-created “Peasants’ Commissions” throughout the country were instructed to draft petitions and pass resolutions in favor of the land reform proposal. These were forwarded by the thousands to Parliament.
This is where Beck gets his theory that Soros’ communist coup conspiracy is to infiltrate government as “top pressure” while using agitation from the working class as “bottom pressure” to topple the bourgeois land owners and redistribute their wealth. Of course there’s no evidence Soros is using this tactic but the Committee on Un-American Activities tells us how it was being applied right here in America.
If such a party is to serve effectively as the political expression of a broad democratic (Communist) front of the people against monopoly, its emergence would involve a mass breakaway from the traditional two-party system. It would have to be based firmly on the trade unions, have at its core a solid Labor-Negro alliance, and win the adherence of the mass of farmers and of the city middle strata.
That’s right, workers and negroes are conspiring to bring communism to America. This explains Beck’s overblown conspiracy theories about ACORN, The Black Panthers and SEIU.
So we are still left with the question of how Beck learned of this plot, since his own copy isn’t legible. As I mentioned before, Beck’s claim that this document was never meant to be published is false. It was published and often cited by John Birch Society conspiracy nuts and racists to discredit the burgeoning civil rights movement as a communist plot. It also explains Beck’s objection to the “social justice” taught in certain churches.
Beck has previously shown a fondness for fellow Mormon, Birch Society devotee and racist, Ezra Taft Benson.
Glenn Beck quotes Ezra Taft Benson:
It’s likely that Beck learned of George Soros’ communist strategy as outlined by the Committee on Un-American Activities, from reading Ezra Taft Benson’s racist essays such as Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception (September 29, 1967), which cites the report as evidence of the inherent danger of communism resulting from race mixing.
It would be a terribly bloody affair, with all Americans suffering mightily, but with Negroes paying the highest toll in human life. And the communists know this better than anyone else. They do not really expect to take America with a “War of National Liberation,” (which is their term for internal conquest through force and violence), unless the aggressive revolutionary force can be broadened to include, not only the minority of Negores, but migratory farm laborers, the poor, the unemployed, those on welfare, other minority groups, students, the so-called “peace movements,” and anyone who can be propagandized into mob action against established government. But unless and until they manipulate an overwhelming majority of the population into at least sympathizing with their revolutionary activities, they will use violence, anarchy, and sabotage, not as a means of seizing power, but merely as a support operation or a catalyst to an entirely different plan.
In such countries as Czechoslovakia, the communists have used an entirely different method of internal conquest. Instead of the force and violence of a bloody revolution (a “War of National Liberation”) parliamentary and political means were used to bring about a more peaceful transition to communism. The communist sympathizers call this alternate plan a “Proletarian Revolution.”(8)
The plan is as follows: Using unidentified communist agents and non-communist sympathizers in key positions in government, in communications media, and in mass organizations—such as labor unions and civil rights groups—demand more and more government power as the solution to all civil rights problems. Total government is the objective of communism. Without calling it by name, build communism piece by piece through mass pressures for presidential decrees, court orders, and legislation which appear to be aimed at improving civil rights and other social reforms. If there is social, economic, or educational discrimination, then advocate more government programs and control.
Footnote 8:
Reprints of the pertinent parts of this textbook may be obtained from the U.S. Printing Office in the form of a government pamphlet entitled, The New Role of National Legislative Bodies in the Communist Conspiracy, published by the House Committe on Un-American Activities, December 30, 1961.
So Glenn Beck probably invented his antisemitic George Soros conspiracy theory from reading one of his favorite racists from the John Birch Society. Lovely, eh?