By Richard A. Joyce

Redstone Review

PUEBLO – Glenn Beck. Need I say more? Maybe I should. The Fox News commentator is every bit the equal of Rush Limbaugh when it comes to ranting about Barack Obama in the style that, no doubt, will one day ensure their induction into the Propagandist Hall of Fame.

One part of that style involves linking together things or concepts that are not, in fact, linked at all. For example, in a recent broadcast, Beck correctly reported that Obama is against reparations for slavery.

Then he showed a clip of Obama speaking to a group of people and making the point that his health care reform plan will have a disproportionate effect on minorities in America because they are the largest group of citizens with no or inadequate health care coverage, mostly because they also are among the poorest Americans.

Beck repeated that Obama is against reparations for slavery, but then linked Obama’s quote

about the disproportionate effect of health care reform to the idea of affirmative action and the terms social justice and economic justice, which Beck then links to the Nazis and the Communists, respectively.

The train of logic buried in the linkages is this: Obama says he’s against reparations for slavery, but he really favors them because his health care reform bill aims at creating disproportionate benefits for the descendants of the slaves, who are the ones that will most benefit from the bill. Obama and his supporters want to do this in the name of social and economic justice, which are code words for Communism and Nazi-style socialism.

It was quite a propaganda train ride, done at high speed to blur the flaws in the linkages, and it was followed a day or two later by another that made national news under the headline: “Beck to Jesus: Drop Dead.”

In that subsequent broadcast, Beck told his audience to examine their churches carefully, and if they found anyone within them using the phrases social justice or economic justice, they should first inform church authorities and, if church authorities took no action or worse, endorsed the concepts, leave that church – presumably in favor of one that doesn’t endorse such notions.

The broadcast, of course drew much criticism from religious groups that have long encouraged their followers to help achieve social justice and economic justice through charitable gifts to and charitable work with the poor.

A Roman Catholic priest wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post shortly after Beck’s rant (which included a Beck challenge to find the phrase social justice anywhere in scripture) that skewered Beck with New Testament quotes from Jesus that fit and led to the concept of social justice, even if Jesus didn’t use the phrase.

Unfortunately, that eloquent response to Beck’s tirade failed to address the deeper wound Beck is inflicting on the American psyche, which has during the last 50 years responded to the disproportionate social injustices of racism, sexism, ageism, religious bigotry, poverty and crime (for example, the most likely victims of violent crime in this country are 18- to 24-year-old minority males, according to Department of Justice statistics).

It is obvious that by linking the terms social justice and economic justice to the terms Nazi and Communism, Beck is attempting to nullify the first two, which until now have carried with them the connotation of righting wrongs, through association with the second two, which, though they are arch enemies politically, have been lumped together over the years as evil.

In much the same way that far right propagandists have succeeded in linking the word “liberal” with anything and everything that is “wrong” in America, and to such an extent that more than a few “The Only Good Liberal is a dead Liberal” bumper stickers now scream their message of hate along the nation’s roadways, so this latest Beck rank attempts to create a linkage that will result in psychic anger at the mere notion of social justice.

In doing so, Beck also seeks to nullify that which, by definition, precedes any consideration of social justice: the recognition of social injustice. If the common understanding of justice is to right a wrong, then injustice is an un-righted wrong, and social injustice is a wrong done on a large scale, a wrong that affects groups of people living together in society.

Using Beck’s logic, if social justice is code for Nazi-style socialism, and if that is the fix for social injustice, then we must deny the existence of social injustices because to recognize their existence burdens us with an impossible task: to rectify them without resorting to social justice concepts and methods.

So, the only alternative that will avoid the horrific code words and the Nazi-solutions Beck claims are inextricably linked to those words is to deny the existence of social injustices and any responsibility, therefore, to rectify them.

If such propaganda is allowed to fester in this nation, our American Eagle, symbol of liberty and justice for all, will not so many years from now be re-symbolized into an imperial eagle, symbolizing only hollow words. Much like the words of Glenn Beck.

Richard A. Joyce is associate professor in the mass communications department at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He was the managing editor of the Canon City Daily Record. He can be reached at phase15@mac.com

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