Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:44 pm
Glenn Beck took his anti-global warming rhetoric to a new high or low, depending on your perspective today by comparing former vice president Al Gore’s congressional testimony on the importance of cap and trade legislation to the lies of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazis.
Here is the audio courtesy of Media Matters
Beck is referring to Al Gore’s testimony before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
“Here is what Gore said, I believe we have arrived at such a moment. Our country is at risk on three fronts. The economic crisis is clear. Our national security remains at risk so long as we remain dangerously dependent on flows of foreign oil from reserves owned by sovereign states that are vulnerable to disruption. The rate of new discoveries, as you know, is falling even as demand elsewhere in the world is rising. Most importantly, of course, we are— along with the rest of humanity—facing the dire and growing threat of the climate crisis.”
Here is the statement that Beck had such a problem with, “It is at the very heart of those threats that this Committee and this Congress must direct its focus. I am here today to lend my support to one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in the Congress. I believe this legislation has the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940’s.”
Beck falsely claimed that Gore compared cap and trade to the Marshall Plan and the civil rights movement. What they didn’t bother to tell his listeners is that Gore said that this was the moral significance equivalent. to the Marshall Plan and civil rights This is a textbook example talk radio’s ability to distort facts. Beck claimed that fewer people believe Al Gore. Once again, this is not true. Depending on the poll 82%-85% of those surveyed believe that global warming is real. This has not changed.
In case you didn’t notice, Glenn Beck has a Nazi fetish. He compares everyone and everything that he feels threatened by to either fascists or Nazis. He uses the two terms interchangeably.
Sorry, but I don’t see Al Gore as a totalitarian figure. He may be a policy wonk, and a climate change zealot, but I don’t view him as a threatening figure. For as long as there has been a conservative movement, it has been at war with science, and almost always science wins.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
