Right-Wing and Phony Left Slander Protests
Who didn’t see this coming? Every time real-live working people show the slightest hint of independent thought media clowns come out the woodwork to belittle, insult and undermine the movement in any way they can.
On February 18th, Glenn Beck claimed on his show that the protests in Wisconsin are chiefly the work of “one-world government” agents, Islamic fundamentalists and communists. He accused each of these three groups of plotting to use the protests and revolutionary fervor to overthrow the existing order and create a “New World Order.” He also accused the protests of trying to create chaos and “provoke” martial law.
Despite the fact that protests were made up of workers and unions, he accused them of “trying to create chaos on the backs of the worker”:
“Unions claim the cuts will affect teachers but it’s not the everyday teacher that this story is really all about,” Beck said.
“There are three groups of people. They want a new world order. This is your choice. One world government. This is open society. This is United Nations, whatever you want to call it. One world government. They have lots of money and lots of power and they have NGOs, non-governmental organizations.”
“This is the United Islamic Nations, this is the one the Muslim Brotherhood is going for now. But it all looked like this, a new world order. They are organized, too. They have the religion and mosques and apparently help from Google as well… at least in Egypt.
“Then you have this one, workers union, they call it state capitalism. Really what it was good old-fashioned communism. They have unions and community organizing.”
Finally, the coup-de-grâce came today (Feb. 22nd) when Beck’s level of hysterics went up a notch.
“Is it a little hard to deny that radicals, Islamists, the communists, socialists will work together against Israel against capitalism, and they’ll try to work together to overturn stability? Who in the media is telling you this? Who? NAME THEM! Where are they? How can they possibly deny it at this point, and why wouldn’t they tell you these things?”
“Protests become contagious. Can you deny this anymore? They’ll cascade. They will sweep the Middle East, and they will begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world. Tell me what the hell Madison is? Show that picture up in front of New York right now. Tell me what this is? What the hell is this? It’s the unions poking, pushing, prodding. They will lose because they don’t know who you are.”
The reaction from the so-called moderates was not much better. Comedian and television personality Jon Stewart, who has a long history of riding the fence when push comes to shove, had this to say about the protesters’ comparison of themselves to the protesters in Egypt and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to ousted Egyptian President Mubarak:
“The Egyptian protesters risked being shot. The Wisconsin protesters risked being caught in a drum circle,” Stewart said. “And as for protesters’ charge that [Gov. Scott] Walker is a tyrant, I will remind you that he was elected with 52 percent of the vote; tyrants tend to poll in the high-90s. C’mon, man, like 400 people died in those protests, reporters were brutally beaten, I’m sure you can come up with a more appropriate comparison” (1).
Not only did Stewart publically distort and minimize the very real threat posed to protesters by Gov. Scott Walker’s public threat to call in the National Guard if there were any unrest among state employees, he even went out of his way to reinforce the image of protesting workers as unwashed degenerates.
Clearly, such uprisings have flown in the face of the media, and can we honestly say this is a negative development? Despite the ignorant ramblings of media personalities, there are already people in the United States that think it’s high time we had an “Egypt Moment” in their own backyard.
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Categories: Egypt, Government, Labor, U.S. News, Videos, Workers Struggle
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