Clown-Prop

by digby

Beck’s been flogging his “documentary” “Revolutionary Holocaust” for weeks. Here’s an example of his promotion:

Last night this shocking expose was finally aired. And Simon Maloy of Media Matters watched it so we didn’t have to:

The project, billed as an “exposé” of the “unseen history of Marxism, progressivism, and communism,” was little more than an hour-long, overly dramatized denunciation of the already well-known, thoroughly examined, and exhaustively studied atrocities committed by the leading communist statesmen of the 20th century. It broke absolutely no new ground, except perhaps in its ridiculous assertion that “history has erased” the genocidal policies of Josef Stalin.

But that was never the point. Beck never intended to “expose” anything or teach anything new. The purpose of Beck’s documentary was to link modern progressivism to the abhorrent violence the world saw under communism in the 20th century. Beck’s intention is to undercut the current administration and very idea of progressivism — or at least what he claims is progressivism — by associating them with the strong emotional rejection people have to the Holocaust and Soviet pogroms, making them radioactive, something to be feared and abhorred. And he’s doing it all under the guise of “education.”

There’s a word for that and it’s called propaganda. And the advertising and promotion that Beck does is as big a part of it as the “documentary itself” as Maloy rightly points out. His audience tunes in regularly and, over time, they get the picture he’s painting very clearly.

Ironically, nobody did that better than Stalinist Russia. I wonder if Beck’s read Orwell? I’d love to see his interpretation.

Beck is a clown, but I hope nobody thinks this stuff is benign.

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