Beck and Brits at Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend

Last week (19-20 November) the David Horowitz Freedom Center held its 2011 “Restoration Weekend”. Reports from the event contain no surprises: the speakers were as expected, and the rhetoric predictable. The highlight appears to have been an address by Glenn Beck, who warned about the “dark, evil stuff” of the Occupy movement – he was introduced in gushing terms by Horowitz:

Until Glenn Beck came along, ex-radicals like myself were endlessly frustrated by conservatives’ refusal to look at history, refusal to connect the dots, refusal to understand that these are not idealists, but dedicated anti-capitalist, anti-liberty and anti-American crusaders who number in the millions; that they are financed by anti-American billionaires, like George Soros?; and leftwing foundations, billionaire foundations, like the Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation; and communist unions, like the SEIU; and criminal organizations, like ACORN; and that they are part of an international socialist Left which supports our Islamist enemies in the Middle East and Asia.

The British end was represented by Baroness Cox, Douglas Murray, and James Delingpole – Delingpole attempted a write-up at the Spectator, but after the first couple of paragraphs he descends into a generic rant against against the evils of liberals and moderate conservatives (the latter denounced as “cowardly, loathsome ideological sell-outs”).

Last year’s event included a special award for Pamela Geller, although she doesn’t appear to have been present this time.

Beck followed up his Restoration Weekend gig with a showing at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner, alongside Michele Bachmann, where he received the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award and was praised in a video message from Netanyahu. The JTA, however, was more circumspect:

As for Beck, who was introduced by billionaire businessman-philanthropist and Netanyahu-backer Sheldon Adelson, he is arguably the most polarizing media figure in Jewish life. Hundreds of liberal rabbis signed a letter in January asking that he be sanctioned for “completely unacceptable” use of the Holocaust and Nazi imagery. He has urged his listeners to quit their church or synagogue if “social justice” is part of its mission. And in a two-part series that accused left-wing financier and Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros of collaborating with the Nazis, Beck flirted with what some critics saw as anti-Semitic conspiracies of Jewish control of media and finance.

Occasionally Beck has apologized — as he did after he compared Reform rabbis to Islamists — and then gone on to offend again.

8 Responses

  1. Whatever you think of the content of what these guys say – and I suspect my view is much the same as yours – surely we have to admire the energy with which they say it? I think you would be hard put to find anyone on the contemporary left who puts as much fizz (and venom) into their writing…

  2. Nice try, but no. He’s rational, which is not something you could ever accuse Ann Coulter or Mark Steyn of being. What worries me is that they have an audience – which they wouldn’t’ve done 30 years ago.

  3. Alex’s recent plunges into global warming denialism indicate that he may be saying farewell to rationality. At any rate, you can’t fault his energy, venom and fizz.

    • I knew you’d do it, of that I had no doubt but I’m delighted you did it and loved it. You sound well and truly hooked and describe it all so beautifully. I almost feel I could do it too now8u&230;tho#gh I’ll live vicariously for the time being.Axxx

  4. The Right has a structural problem that they cannot fix, that their desire to concentrate power and wealth at the top does not sit well with the rest of folks if stated plainly. Therefore they can only operate by disingenuous rewording or diversion of the issues to less relevant ones like gays or racial stereotyping.

    There is a group that tries to avoid that advocating for the majority and then turning traitor to it, but careful observation shows that they are the same ideology in a different cloak, nowhere better shown than David Horowitz or Russian or Chinese Communists that are now the far right politics in those countries now.

    One of the best descriptions was by George Lakoff detailing what I call the Lakoff Razor that defines those who can be open in what they advocate and those who of necessity must hide it.

  5. The Right has a structural problem that they cannot fix, that their desire to concentrate power and wealth at the top does not sit well with the rest of folks if stated plainly. Therefore they can only operate by disingenuous rewording or diversion of the issues to less relevant ones like gays or racial stereotyping.

    Look, The Left has an even bigger problem in that leftists live in the past.

    When you look at photos of the occupy crowd, they look like they’re either lined up for a Sex Pistol’s concert ( circa 1977) or else they’re waiting for Jimi Hendrix to come on stage at Woodstock.

    Also, as can be attested to atyHarry’s Place, leftist groups like Hope Not Hate have only just discovered the problem of honour killings in the U.K.

    These people aren’t avat-garde. They’ve actually tried to supress knowledge of what was happening and have been portraying people pointing out what was going on as rascit bigots.

    And you , Mr Bart, denounced and ridiculed certain individuals when they, and quite rightly so, came to the aid of Rifka Barry , a young girl who was most likely in danger of being killed by her family for apostasy.

    But you can come out from hiding now.

    The coast is clear.

    The Beeb reported on it so talking about the subject won’t get you labelled a racist.

  6. And you , Mr Bart, denounced and ridiculed certain individuals when they, and quite rightly so, came to the aid of Rifka Barry

    I thought they did a good enough job denouncing and ridiculing each other – how are things between Stemberger and Geller these days? Anyway, I dealt with your main point more than two years ago:

    Incidentally, some have suggested that because of my distaste for the bandwagon of hucksters and demagogues who have attached themselves to this case, and because I have pointed out some problematic aspects to the story, it must therefore be the case that I wish to deny the existence of honour killing or the traditional death sentence for apostasy (two separate issues, by the way), and also that I must therefore disbelieve her account in favour of her father. Of course, that’s not my perspective at all – we all know that killings do occur, and my view is that an allegation of this sort ought to be investigated. However, that investigation needs to focus on the particular home situation; the idea that the father must be a potential killer simply because he’s a Muslim is not a serious way of proceeding.

Leave a Reply to Bill Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.