Post by Harkovast on Sept 7, 2017 2:38:52 GMT
Glenn Beck
Remember Glenn Beck?
There was a time, just a few years ago that he was seemingly at the hub of a huge social movement. He was the defacto leader of the tea party movement, that shook up the American political establishment with massive protests and their own candidates taking positions in government. He even began to create his own media empire, at one point even talking about creating his own city (no really that was actually a thing!)
But as quickly as his star rose, it plummeted even faster. These days you barely here about him. He seems to have dropped right off the map.
So what happened?
To me, Beck's story has become like a classic tragedy, with Glenn as its doomed hero.
Honestly, not joking aside, I think it would make a good movie.
In his early days in radio, Beck was addled with drink and drugs that were threatening to destroy his life. Eventually he turned his life around, found religion in Mormonism and eventually broke into television.
I first became aware of Beck while I was in a motel in Utah.
I had lived in America for two years and was getting ready to move back to the UK (my house in America having been sold, hence the motel.)
Beck game across as ridiculous and opinionated, spouting poorly thought through, extreme biased right wing opinion like it was fact.
I immediately disliked him, and also felt confident he was destined to become very popular.
Sure enough, when I was back in the UK, Glenn's star began to rise.
Glenn was charismatic and fun to listen to, and soon became known for his outrageous claims and sometimes conspiratorial logic.
Increasingly he pushed the envelope, defining a new style of conservative politics, sharpening and exaggerating what had come before.
His views were simplistic, with clear good and evil. America and Israel were the good guys, and Capitalism and Conservatism were the good ideas. These good forces were fighting against evil forces of Socialism, Progressivism, Communism, Nazism and Islamism. There was no complexity, no gray areas or complex questions. The answers were simple matters or right and wrong. It was a view built around nationalism, paranoia, and jingoism with a sprinkling of racism. It was often apocalyptic, warning that disaster in one form or another was coming, and often religious in tone. America had been appointed by God, and its founders directly guided by the supreme being.
As a television show, seeing this strange, eccentric, enthusiastic figure lay out this world view with absolute conviction was undoubtedly compelling viewing.
Personally I hated what he had to say, but I was fascinated to watching him saying it.
Beck's appeal was largely based on shock, which inevitably led to a need to up the ante, getting more and more outrageous in his claims.
He threw out accusations of Nazism and claims new world order plots based around George Soros, saying there were hidden satanic messages on buildings and all manner of other strange and fantastical ideas.
Eventually this need to keep escalating led him to say he felt President Obama had a deep seated hatred of white people. This kind of racial turn was too much for the mainstream media and forced Beck off Fox News.
But Beck's star was still rising.
He was tapping into a sense of frustration and anger across sections of America and his brand continued to grow.
He launched his own media projects, buying expensive buildings and setting up a news website called "The Blaze" to offer a right wing alternative to the likes of Huffington Post or the Guardian.
It was around this time that the tea party movement began to gather steam, and Glenn Beck positioned himself at the forefront of this movement.
Their cries for reduced government, boarder control, lower taxes and patriotic, founding fathers rhetoric was strongly influenced by Beck and when he called for rallies to muster the faithful, there was massive attendance.
He was the figure head of a movement, his star rising to the point that in 2014 he was ranked amongst Forbes most influential celebrities, leaving offer right wing talking heads seeming tired and old hat.
But even as his star rose, there were problems.
Beck's business model had some serious problems. The older audience that followed conservative talking heads like him weren't ready to make the jump to online and he spent money on strange and indulgent projects. Seemingly high on his own success Beck attempted to expand his brand into almost everything, from tv dramas to clothing lines to the planned community I mentioned earlier. He had a set of the Oval offices constructed from which he could give talks about the state of the Union, as if offering an alternative to the Obama administration he railed against.
The Tea Party had some political success, but after providing the initial rallying point, Becks rhetoric and gatherings began to seem redundant. There are only so many inspiring speeches and rallys movement needs. Attendance to these events began to drop off. The enthusiasm just couldn't be maintained.
Beck's shocking speeches and crazy rants began to lose their shine. People had heard his angle at this point, his followers were no longer moved and his critics were no longer outraged.
Gradually, but with gaining speed, Beck began to drift from the lime light.
One of the cruellest things about Beck's decline was that he was on the right track (not morally or politically, but in terms of a road to success) but much of what he did was just a little too early.
Right wing independent media would later explode as an alternative to the mainstream narrative, and Trump would take the reigns of the political movement Beck had helped craft and ride it all the way to the White House.
Both times, someone took what Glenn had done, made it even more extreme and pushed it further and turned into a huge success, while Beck was left trailing things he had previously pioneered.
And this brings us to Trump.
Undoubtedly Trumps strange, new political movement built from what Beck had laid out and what the tea party had stood for.
Nationalism, paranoia, simplistic solutions and often ugly hints of racism were all present, but taken the next level and made into actual politics.
Beck's wild claims and strange theories were now not only being spoken by a politician, but taken further. Beck's rhetoric seemed tame compared to what Trump was peddling.
Now at this point, Glenn Beck called a halt.
This was going too far.
He was sure his movement was about principled conservative ideas founded in the constitution. He knew his fans weren't some mob of whackos, racists and conspiracy theorists, like Beck's critics had always asserted.
He had no doubt that Trump didn't represent their movement, nor did the lunatic Alex Jones or the extremist "news coverage" of Brietbart.
But then something went wrong.
Many people called Beck a con artist over the years, but it turned out the biggest con was the one he played on himself.
Beck's fans, once loyal and devoted, hanging his every word and embracing his vision, turned on him.
Beck was now a traitor, turning his back on their cause at the moment when it mattered most.
Beck had made calling his opponents Nazis and brown shirts, but when he turned this on Trump and his supporters, he didnt' realise that the people cheering Trump were the same people who had been cheering him. He was insulting his own fan base. To make matters worse, he was accusing them of the things the left (the people Beck had taught them were communist, globalist traitors to the republic) had always accused them of.
Beck, in their eyes, now appeared to have completely sold out to their enemies.
Beck pinned his hopes to Ted Cruz, a very right wing, religious but more conventional candidate. But Becks followers, primed for revolution, had nothing but contempt for conventional politics.
While Beck's paranoia and nationalism had found root, his religious appeals and what a friend of mine called his "founding fathers cosplay" no longer found much purchase with this new kind of right wing politics.
His fasting for Cruz and claims that God had divinely appointed Cruz for this purpose seemed laughably out of touch with the mood of right wing Americans.
Failure began to turn to humiliation.
As Beck gave one of his trade mark passionate speeches about why America was great and socialism was bad when Trump entered the building.
It was Trump and Beck's entire relationship summed up in a single moment.
Trump took Becks audience in a very real way.
Seeing Beck's voice shake here as he is at first confused and then realises the futility of what he is saying.
Beck, once shocking and cutting age, was old news. His message had fallen behind the times. You weren't wondering what he would say next, you were thinking you had heard all this before.
Cruz was not only defeated by Trump, Cruz went on to endorse Trump.
Yet Beck stuck to his guns.
We cant' know if it was pride or principle that kept Beck being against Trump, but he stayed true to his convictions.
He wouldn't go so far as to endorse Hillary, but he urged his listeners to vote for a third party. It was an obviously meaningless statement, at this point the audience was barely even there any more.
Trump's victory just drew a line under Beck irrelevance.
At this point Beck tried to reinvent himself. It seemed he had a realisation, and it dawned on his what he had done. In his effort to build a new, noble movement he had built something horrible.
He had set loose a monster, and when he thought he was steering it he was really just clinging to its back. Then when he tried to make it change direction, it through him off and trampled him.
Beck started trying to communicate with the left, trying to reach across the isle, finally expressing an understanding about how divisive the politics he had pushed really were.
The left met this with vague amusement and moved on.
Beck was no longer important, and they were never going to embrace a figure they had disliked for so long.
Besides, Beck had no political capital to wield anymore.
His followers had not just deserted him, they had turned on him.
The liberal indifference was matched by conservative contempt.
His appeals to the left to build bridges only solidified the view on the right that he was a traitor, who had never truly believed in the cause.
Beck had burned his bridges with both sides, and there was no one remaining for him to appeal to.
At the time of writing this, Beck recently fired 20% of his total work force. This is the latest in a series of layoffs and scaling backs of his companies.
On youtube, his latest podcast is a boring rambling affair, with no real agenda and little passion. Beck was always many things, but this is the first time he had become dull.
When I looked at the video, which was posted today, it had 75 views and 2 likes.
There were four comments, mostly mocking Beck, especially for his past drug addictions. These insults seemed to be from right wing listeners.
The previous days episode managed 1751 views, with 15 likes and 1 dislike. Again, 4 comments.
I used to really dislike Beck and what he stood for and what he encouraged...and I still do strongly dislike what he ushered in.
But for Beck himself, I can't bring myself to dislike him anymore.
To see him so reduced, so humiliated, I end up feeling pity.
To mock or attack Beck seems meaningless.
Beck's plans have not only failed, he has created something he hates and his legacy will be that all his opponents were right and he was wrong.
What's worse is that Beck is well aware of this, and has talked about it in interviews. He can't go back and change what he did, and he can't undo the damage.
His legacy has now been built and he has no power left to alter it.
I honestly feel bad for the guy.
When I said he was the hero of a tragedy I didn't mean he is a heroic person in the sense of being brave or noble.
What I meant was that he is the main character in a story like Macbeth or Citizen Kane, a classic tail of a rise and fall.
Beck started a terrible low, built himself up to incredible heights and then through his own hubris brought about his own ruination.
And now all that remains is a pathetic figure, a fossil from an earlier age of politics, growing ever more irrelevant and more easily ignored.
When you step back and look at it, its a sad story.
A fascinating one, undoubtedly.
But still a very sad one.
Remember Glenn Beck?
There was a time, just a few years ago that he was seemingly at the hub of a huge social movement. He was the defacto leader of the tea party movement, that shook up the American political establishment with massive protests and their own candidates taking positions in government. He even began to create his own media empire, at one point even talking about creating his own city (no really that was actually a thing!)
But as quickly as his star rose, it plummeted even faster. These days you barely here about him. He seems to have dropped right off the map.
So what happened?
To me, Beck's story has become like a classic tragedy, with Glenn as its doomed hero.
Honestly, not joking aside, I think it would make a good movie.
In his early days in radio, Beck was addled with drink and drugs that were threatening to destroy his life. Eventually he turned his life around, found religion in Mormonism and eventually broke into television.
I first became aware of Beck while I was in a motel in Utah.
I had lived in America for two years and was getting ready to move back to the UK (my house in America having been sold, hence the motel.)
Beck game across as ridiculous and opinionated, spouting poorly thought through, extreme biased right wing opinion like it was fact.
I immediately disliked him, and also felt confident he was destined to become very popular.
Sure enough, when I was back in the UK, Glenn's star began to rise.
Glenn was charismatic and fun to listen to, and soon became known for his outrageous claims and sometimes conspiratorial logic.
Increasingly he pushed the envelope, defining a new style of conservative politics, sharpening and exaggerating what had come before.
His views were simplistic, with clear good and evil. America and Israel were the good guys, and Capitalism and Conservatism were the good ideas. These good forces were fighting against evil forces of Socialism, Progressivism, Communism, Nazism and Islamism. There was no complexity, no gray areas or complex questions. The answers were simple matters or right and wrong. It was a view built around nationalism, paranoia, and jingoism with a sprinkling of racism. It was often apocalyptic, warning that disaster in one form or another was coming, and often religious in tone. America had been appointed by God, and its founders directly guided by the supreme being.
As a television show, seeing this strange, eccentric, enthusiastic figure lay out this world view with absolute conviction was undoubtedly compelling viewing.
Personally I hated what he had to say, but I was fascinated to watching him saying it.
Beck's appeal was largely based on shock, which inevitably led to a need to up the ante, getting more and more outrageous in his claims.
He threw out accusations of Nazism and claims new world order plots based around George Soros, saying there were hidden satanic messages on buildings and all manner of other strange and fantastical ideas.
Eventually this need to keep escalating led him to say he felt President Obama had a deep seated hatred of white people. This kind of racial turn was too much for the mainstream media and forced Beck off Fox News.
But Beck's star was still rising.
He was tapping into a sense of frustration and anger across sections of America and his brand continued to grow.
He launched his own media projects, buying expensive buildings and setting up a news website called "The Blaze" to offer a right wing alternative to the likes of Huffington Post or the Guardian.
It was around this time that the tea party movement began to gather steam, and Glenn Beck positioned himself at the forefront of this movement.
Their cries for reduced government, boarder control, lower taxes and patriotic, founding fathers rhetoric was strongly influenced by Beck and when he called for rallies to muster the faithful, there was massive attendance.
He was the figure head of a movement, his star rising to the point that in 2014 he was ranked amongst Forbes most influential celebrities, leaving offer right wing talking heads seeming tired and old hat.
But even as his star rose, there were problems.
Beck's business model had some serious problems. The older audience that followed conservative talking heads like him weren't ready to make the jump to online and he spent money on strange and indulgent projects. Seemingly high on his own success Beck attempted to expand his brand into almost everything, from tv dramas to clothing lines to the planned community I mentioned earlier. He had a set of the Oval offices constructed from which he could give talks about the state of the Union, as if offering an alternative to the Obama administration he railed against.
The Tea Party had some political success, but after providing the initial rallying point, Becks rhetoric and gatherings began to seem redundant. There are only so many inspiring speeches and rallys movement needs. Attendance to these events began to drop off. The enthusiasm just couldn't be maintained.
Beck's shocking speeches and crazy rants began to lose their shine. People had heard his angle at this point, his followers were no longer moved and his critics were no longer outraged.
Gradually, but with gaining speed, Beck began to drift from the lime light.
One of the cruellest things about Beck's decline was that he was on the right track (not morally or politically, but in terms of a road to success) but much of what he did was just a little too early.
Right wing independent media would later explode as an alternative to the mainstream narrative, and Trump would take the reigns of the political movement Beck had helped craft and ride it all the way to the White House.
Both times, someone took what Glenn had done, made it even more extreme and pushed it further and turned into a huge success, while Beck was left trailing things he had previously pioneered.
And this brings us to Trump.
Undoubtedly Trumps strange, new political movement built from what Beck had laid out and what the tea party had stood for.
Nationalism, paranoia, simplistic solutions and often ugly hints of racism were all present, but taken the next level and made into actual politics.
Beck's wild claims and strange theories were now not only being spoken by a politician, but taken further. Beck's rhetoric seemed tame compared to what Trump was peddling.
Now at this point, Glenn Beck called a halt.
This was going too far.
He was sure his movement was about principled conservative ideas founded in the constitution. He knew his fans weren't some mob of whackos, racists and conspiracy theorists, like Beck's critics had always asserted.
He had no doubt that Trump didn't represent their movement, nor did the lunatic Alex Jones or the extremist "news coverage" of Brietbart.
But then something went wrong.
Many people called Beck a con artist over the years, but it turned out the biggest con was the one he played on himself.
Beck's fans, once loyal and devoted, hanging his every word and embracing his vision, turned on him.
Beck was now a traitor, turning his back on their cause at the moment when it mattered most.
Beck had made calling his opponents Nazis and brown shirts, but when he turned this on Trump and his supporters, he didnt' realise that the people cheering Trump were the same people who had been cheering him. He was insulting his own fan base. To make matters worse, he was accusing them of the things the left (the people Beck had taught them were communist, globalist traitors to the republic) had always accused them of.
Beck, in their eyes, now appeared to have completely sold out to their enemies.
Beck pinned his hopes to Ted Cruz, a very right wing, religious but more conventional candidate. But Becks followers, primed for revolution, had nothing but contempt for conventional politics.
While Beck's paranoia and nationalism had found root, his religious appeals and what a friend of mine called his "founding fathers cosplay" no longer found much purchase with this new kind of right wing politics.
His fasting for Cruz and claims that God had divinely appointed Cruz for this purpose seemed laughably out of touch with the mood of right wing Americans.
Failure began to turn to humiliation.
As Beck gave one of his trade mark passionate speeches about why America was great and socialism was bad when Trump entered the building.
It was Trump and Beck's entire relationship summed up in a single moment.
Trump took Becks audience in a very real way.
Seeing Beck's voice shake here as he is at first confused and then realises the futility of what he is saying.
Beck, once shocking and cutting age, was old news. His message had fallen behind the times. You weren't wondering what he would say next, you were thinking you had heard all this before.
Cruz was not only defeated by Trump, Cruz went on to endorse Trump.
Yet Beck stuck to his guns.
We cant' know if it was pride or principle that kept Beck being against Trump, but he stayed true to his convictions.
He wouldn't go so far as to endorse Hillary, but he urged his listeners to vote for a third party. It was an obviously meaningless statement, at this point the audience was barely even there any more.
Trump's victory just drew a line under Beck irrelevance.
At this point Beck tried to reinvent himself. It seemed he had a realisation, and it dawned on his what he had done. In his effort to build a new, noble movement he had built something horrible.
He had set loose a monster, and when he thought he was steering it he was really just clinging to its back. Then when he tried to make it change direction, it through him off and trampled him.
Beck started trying to communicate with the left, trying to reach across the isle, finally expressing an understanding about how divisive the politics he had pushed really were.
The left met this with vague amusement and moved on.
Beck was no longer important, and they were never going to embrace a figure they had disliked for so long.
Besides, Beck had no political capital to wield anymore.
His followers had not just deserted him, they had turned on him.
The liberal indifference was matched by conservative contempt.
His appeals to the left to build bridges only solidified the view on the right that he was a traitor, who had never truly believed in the cause.
Beck had burned his bridges with both sides, and there was no one remaining for him to appeal to.
At the time of writing this, Beck recently fired 20% of his total work force. This is the latest in a series of layoffs and scaling backs of his companies.
On youtube, his latest podcast is a boring rambling affair, with no real agenda and little passion. Beck was always many things, but this is the first time he had become dull.
When I looked at the video, which was posted today, it had 75 views and 2 likes.
There were four comments, mostly mocking Beck, especially for his past drug addictions. These insults seemed to be from right wing listeners.
The previous days episode managed 1751 views, with 15 likes and 1 dislike. Again, 4 comments.
I used to really dislike Beck and what he stood for and what he encouraged...and I still do strongly dislike what he ushered in.
But for Beck himself, I can't bring myself to dislike him anymore.
To see him so reduced, so humiliated, I end up feeling pity.
To mock or attack Beck seems meaningless.
Beck's plans have not only failed, he has created something he hates and his legacy will be that all his opponents were right and he was wrong.
What's worse is that Beck is well aware of this, and has talked about it in interviews. He can't go back and change what he did, and he can't undo the damage.
His legacy has now been built and he has no power left to alter it.
I honestly feel bad for the guy.
When I said he was the hero of a tragedy I didn't mean he is a heroic person in the sense of being brave or noble.
What I meant was that he is the main character in a story like Macbeth or Citizen Kane, a classic tail of a rise and fall.
Beck started a terrible low, built himself up to incredible heights and then through his own hubris brought about his own ruination.
And now all that remains is a pathetic figure, a fossil from an earlier age of politics, growing ever more irrelevant and more easily ignored.
When you step back and look at it, its a sad story.
A fascinating one, undoubtedly.
But still a very sad one.
