Andrew Sullivan Thinks Glenn Beck Is Creating A ‘Proto-Fascist Political Party’

Andrew Sullivan’s reaction to Glenn Beck’s hour of mutual affection with Sarah Palin yesterday was slightly more, shall we say, alarmed than ours. And considering Beck’s newfound prominence in the more established wing of the Republican party maybe there is some cause for alarm. Says Sullivan:

FNC is now the RNC. The strategy is clear: demonize Obama as a threat from within (the classic McCarthyite paranoid tradition, given more oomph by race and religion), add a whiff of the idea that he is deliberately weakening America to allow Islamic terrorists kill us, portray even obviously emergency moves, like bailing out the banks, as a plan to take over the entire economy and socialize it, and wrap it all up in a coded religious eschatology.

If you are not alarmed by this development – a new, proto-fascist political party being recreated on television in front of our very eyes – then you have not read much history.

Admittedly, this may be overstating matters just a tad. That said, I suspect it’s just that lack of “reading history” that Beck may be counting on.

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