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Dublin: 15 °C Wednesday 19 June, 2013

Glenn Beck defends use of Nazi comparisons after likening Utoya victims to Hitler Youth

The radio show host also compared Obama’s position on the US debt crisis to the early days of Hitler’s administration.

Radio talk show host and former Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
Radio talk show host and former Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
Image: AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner

JUST ONE DAY after comparing the teenage victims of the mass shooting on Norway’s Utoya Island to the Hitler Youth, US broadcaster Glenn Beck defended the use of Hitler analogies “in logical conversation”.

While discussing the ongoing negotiations in the US over its mounting debt crisis on his radio show yesterday, Beck countered his co-host’s comments about not making gas chamber references, saying:

Don’t start. Don’t even start. If you can’t say… If we’re living in a society where we can’t say X in the same paragraph as Y and not be told we are comparing it… as a society we are doomed.

He then continued to say that restrictions on making Hitler and Nazi comparisons would mean that the US is “going to be a society of gas chambers”.

Beck has been criticised for his comments on Monday during a discussion on the Norway attacks in which he said:

There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler youth, or, whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing.

In yesterday’s programme, Beck also likened President Obama’s position on the debt crisis to Hitler’s, saying that the Nazi government blamed the Weimar Republic for inheriting a “bad situation”. In a televised address on Monday, Obama blamed his presidential predecessors’ economic choices for compounding the national deficit problem.

Listen: Norway attacks: Glenn Beck likens teenage victims to Hitler Youth >

Watch: Obama and Boehner spar over mounting US debt crisis >

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Comments (16 Comments)

  • Here is the news: “Glenn Beck ensures that Glenn Beck’s name stays in the headlines.”

    Idiot.

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  • These American right wing shock jockeys are total assholes. If a comparison with nazi Germany is de rigeur, they are pretty close to fascists themselves. It is such a pity they hold such sway in American society. In my view they are absolutely toxic.

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  • He clearly has no idea about the Hitler Youth or young political groups… He makes it sound as though they were forced to attend and they were brainwashed, nothing could be further from the truth. These are kids who do know exactly what they are talking about, they have made a conscious effort to involve themselves in politics as a choice. The exact opposite of what went on in the Hitler Youth where from a young age they were told to believe in their doctrines

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  • “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing.”

    Well, there’s the republican party for one…

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  • What a gobshite.

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  • As the comedian Lewis Black once said about Glenn Beck: “he has Nazi tourettes…”

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  • That’s vile. American politics has been getting more and more polarised over the last few decades and Glenn Beck is another example.

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  • This person known as Glenn Beck could not be a member of the human race nor is he worthy to be so
    At his birth, the baby was thrown out and the placenta kept.
    Despicable, arrogant, inhuman , uneducated, s%^& stirrer, all for ratings, to hell with the parents and friends of the youth of Norway that were assasinated, going after red neck ratings counts for more, obviously.

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  • It’s no wonder Glenn Beck would be concerned about kids who have an active interest in real politics and are keen to educate themselves about how to make a difference in society. Less gullible, impressionable folk to lap up his rantings.

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  • He knew exactly what he doing,everything that he doesn’t agree with is either socialist and or Nazi-esk.He is a slimey piece of work, for goodness sake, he once rang a lady after a few days after her miscarrage to mock her husband, rival DJ,commenting if he was more of a man it wouldn’t have happened, the worst kind of scum

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  • Tea Party? I think he’s on more than just tea. What an absolute idiot.

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  • He didn’t actually say it WAS a Hitler Youth like organisation, he said a political camp for children sounds like Hitler Youth. I see nothing wrong with the logic of his comment, people are having a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he used the word “Hitler” in the same sentence as victims of a massacre. If you want to deride him for his beliefs, go ahead (I’ve never listened to him, don’t know/care who he is), but not for this statement. I too find the idea of a political party having a summer camp for kids a little… disconcerting. Making teenagers politically aware is admirable, political camps sound weird.

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    • Oh please, shut up. He was quite specifically questioning why young people were attending a political camp. We know very well the insinuation he was making.

      ” I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing.”

      No Glenn – What was disturbing was that fact that a religious right-wing lunatic like yourself, probably spoon-fed by right-wing media, like yourself – callously gunned down innocent children. That’s what’s disturbing – and not because they were enlightening themselves and becoming more politically aware by attending a youth camp.

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    • So are you actually saying it’s not in bad taste to compare dozens of murdered innocent children with the Hitler youth? Because that sure as hell seems to be what you’re implying…. In which case I don’t need to tell you what you are, but here’s a clue: It begins with ‘Braindead’ and ends with ‘Twat’.

      Here’s an example of how stupid Glenn Beck is, using HIS logic to make this statement:
      “People dying of starvation in Somalia? Well they’re all half naked and lying about, sounds like an orgy at Caligula’s to me….”

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    • Seán, people are going to have different opinions on matters. You don’t have to respect their opinion, but respect their right to voice it. This is a forum of sorts, if everybody agreed with you it would be pointless, so try to refrain from telling people to shut up.
      The argument is not about whether or not gunning down kids is sick, I don’t know where you got that suggestion from, it’s about political youth camps.
      I clearly stated that I was in favor of creating political awareness amongst youth, as are you. My argument, and possibly this is what Glenn Beck was “insinuating”, is that having individual political parties have their own summer camps is undesirable. Is it not more favorable to have the range of political and economical theories presented to teenagers, than to simply have them subjected to one opinion? This stifles individual though, and that is were Beck drew the comparison with Hitler Youth.

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    • Daffers. That statement is as odd as my big toe, which is very friggin odd looking.

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