Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck

Last week, Glenn Beck devoted three hours of TV time and several hours of radio to exposing a shadow government in America with a radical far left agenda. This effort to subvert American democracy is led, he believes, by George Soros, a billionaire financier who channels funds to charitable causes and non-profits through his Open Society Institute (OSI).



The Open Society Institute is George Soros's most important group. It is really spectacular. It is his philanthropist arm. This is where he really, he looks for Mother Theresa to give out his precious money. [View clip here]

It is not so much the giving of money that Beck objects to as the groups that receive it, such as the progressive organisation Moveon.org and the Tides Foundation, a charity whose aim is to promote social justice. Social Justice, I've already learned is a bad thing in Mr Beck's circles, but when did progress lose its allure?

Beck goes on to show in great detail how all this charitable giving is just the first step in the creation of a "new world order". In a video overview of Soros's past, he tries to explain how this will come about – thus:

Eighty years ago, George Soros was born. Little did the world know then that economies would collapse, currencies would become worthless, elections would be stolen and one billionaire would find himself, coincidentally, at the centre of it all. [View clip here, about 3 mins in]

If you inferred from this that Soros was personally responsible for bringing down currencies and collapsing regimes, then you would be on the right track, at least according to Beck's way of thinking. It is true that Soros made some enemies as well as $1bn back in 1992, by betting on the devaluation of the pound, but when it comes to collapsing regimes, this is more than a bit of a stretch.

One of the regimes (there were four in all, apparently) that Soros allegedly collapsed was the former Soviet Union. A profile of Soros in the New Yorker offers a different perspective on this particularly outlandish claim. During the nineties, George Soros donated an estimated $1bn to civic and cultural institutions and democracy-building groups in the Soviet Union, and became something of a hero to those on the receiving end of his largesse.

But Beck concludes from this that, because Soros now donates hundreds of millions of dollars to charities and non-profits in America, he has set his sights on collapsing the "regime" here, as well. (Beck seems to have forgotten that America already is a democracy.)

The shadow party he has built here greatly resembles those he created in other countries before instigating a coup.

But it's when Beck delves into Soros' childhood in Nazi-occupied Hungary that he gets really creative. He claims that Soros himself said his mother was "wildly antisemitic". [View clip here, 4 mins in]

In fact, what Soros said was:

"My mother was quite antisemitic and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which one lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, a disadvantage, a handicap, and therefore, there was always the desire to transcend it, to escape it."

Sounds more like self preservation philosophy than wild antisemitism. But Beck had this spin on it:

I would love to understand how it must have affected his psyche, having his mother basically agree, apparently – I don't mean to judge – with the Germans on hatred of Jews.

And then he has the following to say about George Soros hiding his own Jewish identity during the occupation:

Now, imagine you are Jewish and you have to go and confiscate the property of fellow Jews. And you are pretending to not be a Jew and if anyone finds out you are dead. He actually had to endure watching people sent off to their potential murders. Watching people gathering their stuff, sending them off, knowing they were going to go to their deaths.



Mr Beck may finally have crossed the slippery line of acceptable discourse by these claims. In fact, Soros's father helped his own family and other Jews to safety by giving them false papers, as the New Yorker profile reported.

This particular piece of Holocaust revisionism is not sitting well with the Jewish community. Beck is also losing sponsors: 200 companies, including Apple, are boycotting the show. And he has lost almost 30% of his viewers since last year.

The ratings drop may have less to do with the people finding the material offensive, however, than the fact that the relentless focus on one subject has led the programme to become repetitive and, well, more than a little dull.

Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly

I tuned into the more moderate and reasonable Mr Reilly to see what he had to say about all of the above.

He introduced an interview with Beck as follows:

"The G-man has been investigating radical left guy George Soros who funds a number of organisations designed to change the country in ways that Beck does not like. So you're picking on poor George Soros all this week. Come on! You're really working the guy over!" [View clip here]

As Beck tried to justify his assertions about Soros, O'Reilly looked at him with the indulgence of an older sibling whose young charge had developed an unhealthy obsession with Star Trek – though he did offer this encouragement:

You don't have to convince me or anybody else watching that Soros wants a far left county and will do what he has to do to get it.

When Beck talked about Soros funding media outlets (such as the mild-mannered NPR, for instance) to push his radical agenda, he did protest:

I don't think they have as much power as you think they have but I could be wrong.

And when Beck said that he had been asked by Soros' people to stop the vendetta, O'Reilly responded:

Why would you reconsider (exposing him)? I mean you know Dr Evil and you're going after him.

This tacit endorsement by Bill O' Reilly surprised me a bit, but then I came across a clip from the O'Reilly Factor in 2008 called "Buying Political Power". It began thus:

The factor has been investigating far left billionaire George Soros a man who wants to impose a radical left agenda on America and, under the radar, he is making great progress. Soros has set up a complicated political operation to do two things, buy people with influence among liberal politicians and smear people with whom he disagrees.

And then, O'Reilly produces a chart, which looked like a template for the more elaborate charts Beck has since designed, showing all the organisations that have received some funding by Soros:

Most of Soros political money flows through his Open Society Institute. Since 2001, according to federal documents, the OSI has given nearly $20m to the Tides Foundation. Tides in turn funnels the money to a variety of radical hatchet men who are all well-paid. For example, Tides has donated millions to vile propaganda outfit Media Matters, which specialises in distorting comments made by politicians, pundits and media people.

Could it be that Bill O'Reilly has merely passed the mantle of exposing Soros unto someone with less savvy who could risk his own reputation taking it to a new and more dangerous level?

Or maybe it's all part of a coordinated effort by Fox News to suppress any voices that challenge their more conservative worldview?

Oh dear. You see what happens when watch too much Glenn Beck – you start getting paranoid and developing all kinds of wacko conspiracy theories.

• Editor's note: to complete the feedback loop, last week's The Right Word review, which related Michael Savage's attack on George Bush as a fiscal liberal, was featured by Michael Savage on his show, noting his mention in "an obscure British newspaper". "I'll show you shockjock, lady," Savage vowed. We look forward to that.