Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Glenn Beck Calls Geert Wilders "Fascist"

A year ago Glenn Beck hailed Geert Wilders as a hero of free speech (click here to watch it on youtube). Just yesterday, though, Beck decried Wilders as a "fascist"!! Glenn Beck's exact words were:
Also, you have far right Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders. Last year, he was banned from the U.K. They said his presence could threaten community a harmony and therefore public safety. Last week, not only was he allowed into England, he was at the House of Lords, where he screened a film on the Quran.

The right and left are growing again in Europe. The left — listen carefully — the left in Europe is communism. The right is fascism, in Europe.
In the same segment Beck demonstrated that he doesn't know the difference between Dominique de Villepin and Jean-Marie Le Pen (the former being a conservative, the latter being a genuine fascist and racist).

Wilders has consistently denounced Le Pen (and knows who he is!), as well as the British National Party and similar racist groups in Europe. Wilders is also strongly in favor of gay rights, an issue on which he is to the left of Barack Obama. And Wilders is a feminist who criticizes the Left in Europe for not standing up for women's rights in deference to seeking more votes from Muslim immigrants.

The American far-right is predictably apopleptic over Glenn Beck's sudden change of heart with respect to Wilders. I suppose it is possible, although extremely unlikely, that Beck's tiny, primitive reptilian brain somehow managed to realize that Geert Wilders supports (and exercises!) the right to criticize, and even condemn, theocratic totalitarianism, and that that is not really a position that Beck and his ilk want to encourage.