Now Glenn Beck loves American Nazi sympathizers: Promotes book by prominent Hitler advocate of the 1

[RamboLiberal]

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck heralded and promoted the work of Nazi sympathizer Elizabeth Dilling, who spoke at rallies hosted by the leading American Nazi group and praised Hitler. Today, Dilling is heralded by White Supremacists and White Aryans who revere her "fearless" work against Jewish people.

As Media Matters' Simon Maloy noted, Beck had kind words for Dilling's 1934 anti-communist book, The Red Network, saying: "This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it." Maloy noted that Dilling has a long history of rabid anti-Semitism, such as calling President Eisenhower "Ike the Kike" and labeling President Kennedy's New Frontier program the "Jew frontier."

Professor Glen Jeansonne and writer David Luhrssen note in the encyclopedia Women and War that Dilling wasn't only anti-Semitic, but a sympathizer and supporter of the Nazis and Hitler:

When World War II began in 1939, Dilling was part of the national network of anti-Semitics, anti-Communists, and Nazi sympathizers such as Father Charles Coughlin, Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, Reverend Gerald Winrod, and William Dudley Pelley. Material generated by Nazi organizations in Germany to inspire race hated and exploit dissatisfaction in the United States found its way into Dilling's publications. She spoke at rallies hosted by the leading U.S. Nazi organization, the German-American Bund, and had traveled to Germany, pronouncing the country as flourishing under Hitler

Dilling called for appeasing Germany; she blamed the war on Jews and Communists and accused the Roosevelt administration of being controlled by Jewish Communists. ... After Pearl Harbor, Dilling resisted wartime rationing and denounced the Allies

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/now-glenn-beck-loves-american-nazis

When Dilling returned home to Illinois, she went on tour showing her movies and describing the "workers' paradise" as anything but. She wrote The Red Network—A Who's Who of Radicalism for Patriots (1934), a self-declared exposé of communist front activity in the U.S., which was widely circulated (100,000 copies are claimed). As an example of her technique, in the entry for Albert Einstein, which links him to various communist organizations, Dilling notes: "married to Russian; his much press-agented relativity theory is supposedly beyond the intelligence of almost everyone except himself." She offers an apologia for the Nazi confiscation of Einstein's property in Germany, saying it was because he was a Communist. The entry for Eleanor Roosevelt reads "Socialist sympathizer and associate, pacifist". A Protestant minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick, was listed because his books were "highly recommended by socialists and other radicals"

She then wrote The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (1936), condemning the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and officials in his administration, claiming they had strong links to Communists. In The Octopus (1940), which she wrote under the pseudonym of Rev. Frank Woodruff Johnson, she attacked the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and linked Jews to communism. It was then that she shifted her emphasis to Jews as causing all the trouble in the world, partly based on her readings of the Talmud.

As debate raged about whether the U.S. should get involved in World War II, she became an activist in two organizations inspired by the antisemitic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin: Mothers' Peace Movement, which she co-founded with Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, and We the Mothers Mobilize for America, based in Chicago. She was also involved with the America First Committee, famously associated with Charles Lindbergh and other prominent isolationists and opponents of the war.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Dilling was indicted, along with 28 others, which led to the Great Sedition Trial of 1944.<1> The case finally ended in a mistrial after the death of the presiding judge, Edward C. Eicher. The Chicago Tribune editorialized on the trial as "one of the blackest marks on the record of American jurisprudence". The Smith Act under which the prosecution took place was later found to be unconstitutional in several rulings by the Supreme Court.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Dilling

[Ian David]

1. Maybe THIS time Glenn Beck has jumped the shark?

[pnorman]

2. K & R!

I didn't know that about Beck, but I'm hardly surprised!

[madrchsod]

3. i have read her book--"the octopus"!

i can see where beck would love this woman. the book is really frighting to read and try to comprehend the paranoia of this women...

[starroute]

4. The sedition trial was questionable -- but the people it targeted were scum

I looked into that period a few years ago when there were numerous threads here investigating the Bush family background. What I found was that those put on trial were a miscellaneous assortment of fascists and right-wing troublemakers who were charged with being part of an organized pro-Nazi conspiracy. That was probably stretching things a bit, which is why the case failed -- but since most of what you find about the trial online is from revisionist right-wing sources, it's hard to know the truth of the matter.

General Robert E. Wood -- whose daughter Mary married William Stamps Farish Jr. and later became a close friend of George H.W. and Barbara Bush -- took a close interest in the trial. He himself never quite stepped over the line into overt fascism, but he was the chairman of the America First Committee in 1940, and after the war he was a supporter of Joe McCarthy and of various anti-Roosevelt revisionist historians.

Among Wood's correspondents was Lawrence Dennis, who was one of those tried for sedition. Dennis was the author of The Coming American Fascism (1936), which argued that an elite corporate state was preferable to a Soviet-style state. He later claimed that even though he'd called his system "fascism," it wasn't really the same as European-style fascism, which is why he comes off just a bit better in retrospect than the rest.

On the other hand, William Dudley Pelley, another defendant, was a virulent anti-Semite and the founder in 1933 of the openly pro-Hitler Silver Shirts -- which he described as a Christian militia and which directly influenced present-day white supremacist militia groups.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from looking into these people is that even though the right since World War II has managed to convince everyone that it's completely free of fascist connections, that isn't actually the case. Whether you look at the bankers and corporate owners like Wood (who was chairman of the board of Sears) or at the redneck militia members, their roots go deep into 30's fascism.

[Scuba]

5. One Nazi supporting another. Not surprising.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Sickening

[Heywood J]

7. Beck probably came on the microphone as he

announced what he would be promoting that day. From now on, he should only be referred to as "Nazi sympathizer Glenn Beck", because he's publicly announced that he is one.