Beck casually accuses "the Jews" of deicide

From Talk 2 Action

[D]uring the Glenn Beck Show, Beck stated the following:

"Jesus conquered death. He wasn't victimized. He chose to give his life. He did have a choice. If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the the Jews pay for what they did."

While the Anti-Defamation League has not been especially vigorous recently in opposing virulently anti-Semitic claims from Christian Zionists such as John Hagee, the ADL nonetheless can be considered an authoritative source concerning what anti-Semitism is. The ADL identifies Glenn Beck's claim that "the Jews" killed Jesus as one of the top four most destructive of anti-Semitic lies.

The fact that Beck himself may not hold a grudge against "the Jews" for killing Jesus does not change the fact that Beck is casually propagating an idea that has been at the root of the very sort of anti-semitism that he likes to pretend is an outgrowth of progressive politics. (See Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ for example.)

As Joe Conason puts it,

Dubious and deluded though Skousen surely was, he is not the most disreputable figure admired by Beck. That distinction still belongs to Elizabeth Dilling, Nazi propagandist and Axis agent, whose 1935 tract "The Red Network" he endorsed just last month.

On June 4, Beck told his radio audience that he had been reading Dilling's book, sent to him by a fan, "last night," and that it was a "handbook ... for patriots." If he actually read the book, he must have perused the sections in which Dilling blamed the anti-Semitic outrages of the Nazi regime on the Jews themselves because of "the large number of revolutionary Russian Jews in Germany," who "doubtless contributed toward making Fascist Germany anti-Semitic." A few years later she revealed her unabashed admiration of Hitler, attending Nazi party rallies in Germany and conspiring with Axis and Nazi elements in the United States.

How does Beck compare with Thomas, whose scandalous babble reverberated so powerfully through the American media? Although her statement was undoubtedly offensive and clearly subject to interpretation as anti-Semitic, she said nothing about Jews per se. She repeated none of the classic slurs of anti-Semitism and endorsed no Nazi authors.

In fact, she apologized humbly before resigning from Hearst and surrendering her seat in the front row of the White House press room. Beck has yet to apologize for his promotion of the Nazi Dilling, let alone his rancid remark about making the Christ-killing Jews "pay for what they did."

...

Perhaps it is most appropriate to turn to Beck's own judgment, however, at the time of the Thomas blowup. On June 7, when he aired the Thomas sound bite that quickly became so notorious, Beck was unsparing. "The old hatreds are reappearing," he said. "Now, how Helen Thomas has a job today is beyond me ... You know, may I tell you, this Jewish-run media, really, they're bad at running the media, if they are indeed Jewish. You know what I mean? The Zionist masters really suck at being Zionist masters ... if you still have Helen Thomas sitting in the front row after saying go back to Germany, go back to Poland. Play it again, please."

Fox News should replay Beck's rancid blather so he can hear it again -- and then, if he has any self-respect, he should resign.

Unfortunately, Beck has no self-respect and Fox News has no decency, so the show will go on.