September 4, 2009
Beck’s Visual Analysis
1. To post this video and then dismiss Beck’s narrative as simply bizarre is to completely miss the point.
Non-sense and anti-intellectualism form the crux of what Beck is about. What you can bank on is a delusional form of argumentation and case-making where simple and highly repetitive hate- and scare-mongering is couched around a (indecipherable) internal logic that, by virtue of Beck’s conviction, convinces those susceptible that he knows exactly what he’s talking about. It’s textbook paranoia.
2. Writes Hissyspit in a discussion thread at DemocraticUnderground:
“It’s association technique. It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just about putting the things next to each other. He mentioned Obama and the Green “czar” along with Marx and Lenin and the Rockefeller foundation. It makes no sense, but it doesn’t have to.”
It’s a good take. What Beck is doing is further linking the left-wing to the bogey man of communism and fascism, and doing it by attacking omnipresent but otherwise hifalutin artistic symbolism.
3. Another good take in the same discussion thread:
Notice how he’s using the word “progressive” now instead of liberal, to drag it through the slime and demonize it?
4. What’s chilling and completely noteworthy about this is the further demagoguery of the left through an attack on art.
Just as Hitler applied a degenerate label to most contemporary art, Beck is attacking art and sculpture as a left-wing subliminal vehicle — a Trojan Horse — to brainwash and control the masses. The arts and artistic freedom represent a sacred hallmark of free society. As TPM reader SG describes (as cited by Josh Marshall), the insanity of the wingnuts has been mainstreamed over the past few weeks and months and has completely crossed the line. Beck is in very dangerous territory here.
