Projecting Again: Glenn Beck Says Progressives Are Planning A 'Summer Of Rage' Filled With Violence, Death And Chaos

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The hardest part about trying to follow the increasingly eliminationist -- and dangerous -- wingnuttery of Glenn Beck, beyond the unpleasant work of actually having to watch the entirety of his Fox News shows (so you don't have to), is trying to figure out new ways of saying that he's nuts.

On yesterday's show, he really just continued his freefall into incoherent babble, attacking progressives (again) by claiming that they are planning street violence this summer in order to push President Obama to enact their nefarious agenda.

He found his "evidence" for this by culling clips and Website info on the America's Future Now conference in Washington this past week. John and I were both in attendance, and the only "radicals" we saw in attendance were the Code Pink people who invaded and harassed Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday morning. In other words, they were outsiders. Otherwise, the conference was all about mainstream progressive causes, and largely attracted people who work well with moderates.

Typically -- as he did with Anita Dunn -- he truncated the clips to distort what people actually said. This was especially egregious in this bit:

BECK: The CEO of Green for All, here she is. She's a big player in Crime Inc. She sits on the board of Emerald Cities. She spoke at this America's Future Now. Here's what she had to say when she brought up my name.

ELLIS-LAMKINS [video clip]: When Glenn Beck started talking about me, someone said, "Are you angry?" And what I said to him is, "Absolutely, we have a plot to take over this country. Absolutely we do." It's not a hidden agenda.

BECK: Nope, it's not. It's not. Nope. It's right out in the open. And she's just like you. She is. She's just like you. Yeah. She's just like the American family of the 1950s. See, this is what it is. The crazy people, the people, the people just like you, and the man. See what's happening? They do have a plot, a plan to take over the country. And the mask is coming off. But will anyone join us in this conversation out in the light of day?

Well, as Media Matters points out, Lamkin's remarks in context are very different indeed:

ELLIS-LAMKINS: And so, you know, I thought about, well, who are we? Well, we believe that a coalition of working-class white men, people of color, environmentalists, that we're capable of change. We recognize there's honor in being a coal miner in West Virginia, and we don't blame the coal miner. But we recognize that the needs of the coal miner, of the white West Virginian coal miner, and the black woman working in Chevron in Richmond, that they have the same needs, and an agenda can meet both of their needs. That's who we are.

You know, I have a -- you know, I come out of the labor a moment so I am used to people yelling at me. And so -- members, politicians -- it doesn't hurt my feelings. So when Glenn Beck started talking about me, someone said, "Are you angry? He said you want to take over the world." Like maybe we shouldn't talk about it for awhile. And what I said to him is, "Absolutely, we have a plot to take over this country. Absolutely, we do."

It's not a hidden agenda. It's an agenda that says that all people deserve equality, that white coal miners in West Virginia and black women in Richmond, California, want the same thing. What they want is for us to divide ourselves. What they want is for us to say that one is better than another. That it's immigration versus coal mining, that it's this versus that. And what we say is no, because our vision of America has all of us, not some of us. That when we think about what green is, it is green for all, not for some. That's the difference.

Yeah, that's some daaaaangerous rhetoric there, isn't it?

Beck continued by playing a video of an FBI investigator describing the genocidal views of the Weather Underground, then claiming that these '60s radicals "are the same people that are everywhere in our government and our education system."

He wrapped it up with a bizarre and utterly incoherent rant about the coming "summer of rage" that he thinks progressives are planning. He quoted Robert Borosage urging progressives to follow the example of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement by being "off the reservation" from the White House -- and then urged his audience to likewise take up the MLK mantle. Eh?

Let's just put it simply: The guy is fricking nuts.

In the meantime, while we're awaiting all that looming left-wing violence, isn't it funny that neither Glenn Beck nor anyone else in the media bothered to pay any attention to the most recent right-wing bloodshed out in West Memphis, Arkansas?