One of my first contributions to Deliberately Considered was an essay on Glenn Beck (“Beck and Call”), a commentator who at that moment (February 2, 2011) was riding high. But who hears Glenn Beck today? He has a website that requires a subscription. In the past year, Mr. Beck has become marginal to the public debate, and perhaps in becoming marginal, the sharp fringe of the Tea Party has become so as well. He was the tribune for the aggrieved during the Tea Party Summer.
Last winter – back in the day – Glenn Beck was a roaring tiger. His claws were thought so bloody that when he attacked Frances Fox Piven, one of the leading activist scholars of social movements, a string of professional organizations rose to the lady’s defense, including the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. After the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, many progressives concluded that Professor Piven was next in line for assassination from the rightists roiled and boiled by Beck.
Today we frame Glenn Beck’s symmetry as less fearful. Those who worried that Professor Piven was walking on a knife’s edge might be surprised that her latest book, published in August, is entitled Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate. Glenn Beck has become Professor Piven’s marketing tool. Without Glenn Beck’s opposition, Piven’s writings might seem less essential. (As a fellow former president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, I am pleased that her deservedly influential writings have become essential. I am attempting to find someone of equal stature to hate me. The placid readers of this flying seminar know that I try my best.)
However, my point is not to critique the pas de deux of Beck and Piven. Rather it is to recall that in my earlier musing on Glenn Beck, I confessed to having become addicted to his rants, his startling readings of American intellectual history. However, beginning early in 2011, sparked by the demonstrations of the Arab Spring, first in Tunisia, then in Tahir Square, spreading to Tripoli and Syria, Beck began warning that these demonstrations were a clarion call to global rebellion. He promised viewers that an uprising was coming to a park near you, reporting every small and inconsequential gathering throughout Europe throughout the spring.
Listening to his fervid predictions, I came to feel that this represented a tea-laced fantasy. Beck had fallen off the dark edge. And perhaps Roger Ailes agreed with me. Beck was escorted out of the Fox studies and into his own Internet redoubt (“the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment”). As he was no longer close by my remote, my addiction ebbed.
Yet, examining the world of November, I can see the outlines of Beck’s vision from January. He informed us – warned us actually – that we would see an uprising on the streets of America. This uprising would not be an occasional frat party, but a hard and determined thing. Beck instructed us that the movement would be global – London, Rome, Athens, Bahrain, Oakland, Atlanta, and Zuccotti Park. What could Glenn Beck see that I could not? What could Glenn Beck see that progressives throughout America missed last spring? Was he a broken clock right twice a decade?
One need not agree that this exuberance of protest is as frightening or destructive as Beck would have us believe. Liberals, libertarians, and perhaps even some brave conservatives might agree with Thomas Jefferson, speaking of Shays’ Rebellion in 1787 that “the tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” The Arab Spring reminds us of this same reality, and slowly, imperceptibly those images proved to be a model for actions in Europe and America. When the Occupy Wall Street movement began in September, New Yorkers were primed, and soon others were. But along with the Arab Spring, the Tea Party movement also provided a model. Progressives felt a gathering envy, and OWS was the result. The problem, as I see it, is that while there was a legitimate drive to gather to protest grievances, practical solutions remained distant for the well-intentioned mandarins of the movement.
What Glenn Beck recognized, first through Tea Party Summer, then Arab Spring, then Manhattan Autumn, was that moments of profound discontent, helplessness, and resentment at distant control produce an insistent demand for communal action, a call from agitators left and right. Glenn Beck’s own 8/28/10 Washington gathering to “Restore Honor,” ostensibly an opportunity for faith and commitment, mimicking that of the Reverend King, arose from the same forces.
Beck recognized an emergent power in these hard times: groups sharing common concerns, gathering, angry, frustrated, and perhaps hopeful. These groups view a cloudy future for which they lack answers, but know that their questions cannot be ignored.
My first response to Fine’s latest was that it was intriguing, though I didn’t agree. Beck always seemed to me to a clown, not someone who should be taken seriously. But on second thought, I think Fine is underscoring something important. Beck as demagogue actually has understood our situation quite well, similar in this way with demagogues past. At the last time of severe economic crisis in the US, there was the radio Priest Father Coughlin. He understood the times, spoke to the public’s fears and prejudices, and posed a significant, but passing, threat to American democratic principles. Sound familiar? I just hope that the threat now is passing. The police and most of the Republican candidates for President suggest to me that the threat is much more serious this time around.
My first response to Fine’s latest was that it was intriguing, though I didn’t agree. Beck always seemed to me to a clown, not someone who should be taken seriously. But on second thought, I think Fine is underscoring something important. Beck as demagogue actually has understood our situation quite well, similar in this way with demagogues past. At the last time of severe economic crisis in the US, there was the radio Priest Father Coughlin. He understood the times, spoke to the public’s fears and prejudices, and posed a significant, but passing, threat to American democratic principles. Sound familiar? I just hope that the threat now is passing. The police and most of the Republican candidates for President suggest to me that the threat is much more serious this time around.