In New Novel, Glenn Beck Warns of Squirrel-Worshipping Socialists

Nor is Beck the first to seize on the idea that Agenda 21 is an evil menace that must be stopped. That dubious honor belongs to the American Policy Center, an antigovernment group whose leader, Tom DeWeese, has spent years telling anyone who will listen that the U.N.’s nonbinding sustainability initiative is really a plot by “international forces” intent on “turning [American] communities into little soviets.” Phyllis Schlafly’s ultraconservative Eagle Forum has taken up the anti-green flag, as has the resurgent John Birch Society, best known for claiming that President Eisenhower was a secret communist and that water fluoridation was a communist plot to poison America. In 2011, JBS launched a massive campaign to spread the word about of Agenda 21’s perfidy, warning that the ultimate goal of this 20-year-old plan is nothing less than a new world order in which rural regions will be depopulated and foreign bureaucrats will mandate family size here in the United States, imposing forced abortions as they do in communist China.

Alabama, Hatewatch’s home state, bought the propaganda, and in May became the first state to outlaw Agenda 21 altogether. Also spooked, the Republican National Committee in January passed a resolution opposing Agenda 21, decrying the nonbinding measure as “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control.” Counties in various states have adopted similar resolutions, as has the Tennessee House of Representatives.

Ironically, Agenda 21’s agents are not nearly as certain of their power as Beck and his fellow fear-mongers are. According to a “review of the implementation of Agenda 21” issued by the United Nations’ division of sustainability development in January 2012, “[o]verall … progress on Agenda 21 has been limited,” with “no progress” or “regression” in the areas of promoting sustainable human settlement development and changing consumption patterns. (In other words, the ultra-spartan “living spaces” Beck’s book envisions are not exactly around the corner.) The bottom line is that, as has been amply demonstrated by decades of failed peacekeeping initiatives, humanitarian interventions, and other unsuccessful efforts, the U.N. is a cumbersome body with lots of high-minded ideals but little ability to implement them. As with fears that this international coalition will somehow manage to confiscate Americans’ guns and obliterate the Second Amendment, the idea that it will seize control of property and implement an enviro-communist technocratic dictatorship is not only paranoid, but patently absurd.