Right-wing radio and television host Glenn Beck and WallBuilders founder David Barton have some interesting similarities. They both live near Fort Worth. Barton has been a repeat guest on Beck’s programs. Both are demagogues. And both twist historical facts to promote their political views.
For example, our friends at Right Wing Watch caught Beck misleading his audience at the Values Voter Summit in the nation’s capital last weekend. The annual event brings together religious-right activists and groups like the American Family Association for a weekend of political diatribes. The rhetoric gets so extreme that another Texas speaker this past weekend, Republican U.S. Rep. Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert, told the audience that GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona supports al Qaeda.
Anyway, playing to the religious right’s persecution complex, Beck told the audience that the German Nazis persecuted “Bible scholars” — anyone, he said, who “knew anything about the Bible” — before and during World War II. He explained that those “Bible scholars” wore a purple triangle in the Nazi concentration camps.
But Beck was promoting bad history, as Right Wing Watch points out. The purple triangle was used to designate Jehovah’s Witnesses, who at the time were known as Bible Students or Bibelforscher. Think we’ll hear a correction from Beck? Don’t hold your breath.
By the way, Beck also went on to claim that the religious right doesn’t want to impose its own religious views on others. Well, then maybe he should ask his buddy Barton why he argues that atheists, Muslims and other religious minorities shouldn’t have the same freedoms as other Americans. Or why he wants government to “regulate homosexuality”. Or why he argues that the Bible supports his radical anti-tax and anti-government political views. We’d love to hear the answers to those questions.
If you dig a little you’ll see that what Beck claims is actually more absurd then what’s been reported so far. Actually Jehovah’s Witnesses were being persecuted by the Nazi’s for refusing to get involved with politics or nationalism (as Jesus said Christians should do). Supporting nationalistic pride and the military certainly wasn’t anything Jesus could condone. Of course he wasn’t a big supporter of organized religion either which led to an early death.
Jehovah’s Witnesses were ALSO persecuted during WWII by the religious right in the U.S. for refusing to involve themselves in the nationalistic spirit there. Refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance, refusing to join the military, going door to door telling people that organized religion is s sham and it’s leaders war mongering profiteers.
Another interesting point is that Jehovah’s Witnesses have long fought for their right to worship and preach, especially in America where freedom and liberty is supposed to be guaranteed by the constitution. Legal victories they’ve had in the face of tremendous opposition and persecution were actually cited when prop 8 was declared unconstitutional. In reality Jehovah’s Witnesses have typically found themselves in the company of gays and other minority groups persecuted by the likes of Beck and his followers.
Go to google and look up “How Jehovah’s Witnesses helped kill Prop 8” for references.