Jewish Funds For Justice's Moore: “Why Glenn Beck Is Special”

Mik Moore of Jewish Funds for Justice wrote an op-ed headlined “Why Glenn Beck Is Special,” explaining why his organization published a letter, signed by 400 rabbis, calling on Rupert Murdoch to sanction Glenn Beck for his ongoing invocation of Nazis and the Holocaust:

So if the left makes trivializing comparisons to the Nazis, and the right makes trivializing comparisons to the Nazis, why single out Fox News and Glenn Beck? For us, there were several reasons.

First, the equivalency being drawn here is wrong. Both sides don't “share equal guilt,” as Foxman put it. Glenn Beck in particular and Fox News in general do it much, much more than any other news channel.

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Third, through its actions and statements, Fox News has demonstrated that it either doesn't understand or has no regard for our community's concerns about this issue. Not only did Fox break a commitment to Jewish leaders, but when asked in an interview what he thought about the widespread (and bipartisan) condemnation of “The Puppet Master” special, Ailes was dismissive. There are some “left-wing rabbis who basically don't think that anybody can ever use the word, Holocaust, on the air,” he said. In the same interview, Ailes referred to the heads of National Public Radio as “Nazis” because of their decision to fire Juan Williams.

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Fourth, Fox News is not some fringe public-access channel. It has more viewers than the next two most popular cable news networks combined. Beck alone reaches millions of devoted viewers every day. This gives Fox more power to shape our public discourse than almost any other entity. We must demand greater accountability from those with greater influence.

Finally, Beck doesn't just invoke Nazis and the Holocaust to demonize people more often than any other prominent figure in America. He is advancing a worldview that asserts, counterfactually, that progressives during the first half of the 20th century paved the way for Nazism -- and that today's progressives are doing the same thing.