Beck's Law: If Obama did it, always say that Hitler did it, too
On June 30, Wal-Mart joined the Center for American Progress and SEIU in announcing support for health care reform efforts. The next day on his Fox News show, Beck made one of the countless Nazi and Hitler comparisons he made this year:
BECK: This is what happened in the 1940s. Look, this is what happened in Europe in the 1930s. It's what happened in Italy. It's what happened in the national socialist country of Germany in the 1930s under Hitler. These companies get into bed and think, "Well, we're going to be fine. We'll just take a little bit of this."
Then, they're trapped. These are bullies that are pushing these companies. And these companies are naive, at best, that they think they can get into bed with the devil, and then be able to control it.
And there's your "history" lesson du jour you spoke of.
In his uninterrupted efforts to attack and smear progressives, Beck would repeatedly prove the accuracy of Godwin's Law. Beck called Obama's proposal to expand the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps "what Hitler did with the SS" and compared the closing of car dealerships to what happened under the Nazis, warning, "Gang, at some point, they're going to come for you." Incidentally, this would not be Beck's only reference to Martin Niemoller's lectures. Responding to Anita Dunn's criticism of Fox News' overt partisanship, Beck compared the channel to Jews during the Holocaust, with other media outlets representing the silent bystanders.
Beck's embrace of violent, anti-government rhetoric
Beck's adoration of theatrics reached a fevered pitch in April. After claiming, "I think it would be just faster if they just shot me in the head," Beck created a classic cable news moment when, in criticizing the president's policies, he pretended to pour gasoline on an average American, stating, "President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire? For the love of Pete, what are you doing?"
Beck would go on to use violent imagery throughout the year, distorting the face and voice of a "concerned parent" who attacked Dunn for her Mao reference as if he were a mafia informant, purporting to boil a frog to illustrate that "we've been tossed quickly into boiling water," and invoking civil rights marchers having fire hoses turned on them to spur opposition to health care reform.
Rhetorically as well, Beck spent 2009 at the forefront of the emerging right-wing culture of paranoia, his persecution complex manifesting itself in claims that "they are going to silence voices like mine" and suggestions that "you" would "have to shoot me in the forehead before I will let you into my house to tell me how to raise my children; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent." This especially unhinged rallying cry continued:
BECK: [T]hey cannot move on these things, because they are building a machine that will crush the entrepreneurial sprit and the freedom that our founding fathers designed. This machine, whatever it is they are building, will crush it. Do not let them build another piece. So while I turn away, I want to make sure that I have at least 10 million eyes watching -- watching every single move they're making.