Glenn Beck slammed by ADL

Glenn Beck had it coming. The obnoxious right-wing commentator, the one which makes Bill O'Reilly look sane, aired a full episode devoted to attacking George Soros.

On his radio show, Beck described Soros as someone that "used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."

Something tells me, Glenn Beck never took a class related to the Shoah. When Glenn Beck worked on the radio in Louisville, he never met Ernie Marx or the others that suffered through the pain of the Shoah. Glenn Beck did not learn from them what it was like to lose a family in front of your own eyes.

Abraham Foxman of the ADL released a statement:

Glenn Beck's description of George Soros' actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top. For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say – inaccurately – that there's a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that's horrific.

While I, too, may disagree with many of Soros' views and analysis on the issues, to bring in this kind of innuendo about his past is unacceptable. To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant.

The Holocaust was a horrific time, and many people had to make excruciating choices to ensure their survival. George Soros has been forthright about his childhood experiences and his family's history, and there the matter should rest.

The New York Times has an article published, containing excerpts from the ADL statement along with that of FOX News officials:

The Fox News host Glenn Beck was criticized Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish advocacy organization, in response to a televised segment about the financier George Soros and the Holocaust.

Throughout three programs this week, Mr. Beck has portrayed Mr. Soros, a billionaire investor and philanthropist, as a “puppet master” who is “notorious for collapsing economies and regimes all around the world” and whose “next target” is the United States. Citing Mr. Soros’s statements about the decline of the dollar, Mr. Beck said, “Not only does he want to bring America to her knees, financially, he wants to reap obscene profits off us as well.”[...]

Fox stood by Mr. Beck. Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president at Fox News, said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the “information regarding Mr. Soros’s experiences growing up were taken directly from his writings and from interviews given by him to the media, and no negative opinion was offered as to his actions as a child.”[...]

Writing on The Daily Beast, the author Michelle Goldberg said Mr. Beck’s Tuesday and Wednesday programs were a “symphony of anti-Semitic dog whistles.”

Soros is not an anti-Semite. He may be a self-hating Jew but he is certainly not an anti-Semite.

In Michelle Goldberg's article, previously linked in that final paragraph, she quotes J.J. Goldberg:

“There’s a difference between first-degree murder and vehicular homicide, which is intentionality,” says J.J. Goldberg, a columnist and former editor in chief of The Forward, America’s leading Jewish newspaper. Goldberg wasn’t convinced that Beck meant to attack Jews. Nevertheless, he described the show as “as close as I’ve heard on mainstream television to fascism.”