Washington Post On Beck’s New Book: It’ll Probably Make People Want To Bomb Federal Buildings
I haven’t read Glenn Beck’s new book yet. Per my inbox this morning, I see it’s been downloaded to my Kindle for reading. But I have been watching the reviews closely to get a reaction. The Washington Post’s Steven Levingston writes this under the headline “Glenn Beck’s paranoid thriller.”
The danger of books like this is that radical readers may take the story’s fiction for fact, or interpret the fiction — which Beck encourages — as a reflection of a reality that they must fend off by any means necessary. “The Overton Window” risks falling into the tradition of other anti-government novels such as “The Turner Diaries” by William L. Pierce, which became a handbook of extremists and inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Paranoid? Even without reading Beck’s new book, I think that title probably more aptly applies to Mr. Levingston.
“The Turner Diaries” is a notoriously racist book about an international Jewish conspiracy and race war. It was part of McVeigh’s library, and has been a staple of white supremacist literature for decades.
But does Beck’s book really deserve a comparison to this notorious work? I doubt it.
Remember when Sarah Palin was being accused (unjustly) of being a book banner? For all the blather we here from the left about fascist conservatives and their intolerance for others, it’s the left who is accusing Beck of having written a “dangerous” book. Levingston worries about this book being an inspiration for anti-government extremists. Yet, Levingston is the one who is all but calling for the book to be banned.
I don’t know if Beck’s book is good or not. I’ll find out when I start reading it later today. But I do know that I clearly can’t trust many in the mainstream media to be intellectually honest about it.
Tags: book banning, glenn beck, overton window, sarah palin, steven levingston, washington post
