• March 29, 2024

Glenn Beck Says He ‘Understands’ And Can ‘Relate To’ Black Lives Matter Cause

 Glenn Beck Says He ‘Understands’ And Can ‘Relate To’ Black Lives Matter Cause

In an ill-timed interview with National Public Radio, leading NeverTrump pundit Glenn Beck told the NPR host that he can “relate to” Black Lives Matter organizers and that he has changed his position on the group’s slogan. Using a strange analogy about pie, Beck lectured people on the right that they “aren’t really listening” to Black Lives Matter in a segment that aired just before black rioters in Milwaukee targeted white people, attacking police and setting fires.

Beck told NPR:

The best way to explain it is: if we’re all sitting around at a table having dinner and everybody gets pie except for you and you say “my pie matters, I don’t have pie” and everybody at the table looks at you and says “I know. All pie matters,” it shows that the people at the table aren’t really listening.

I don’t agree with the Black Lives Matter organizers—they are stated as anti-capitalists and it’s much more than just the police to them, it’s about changing society entirely—but I can relate to them and understand them on many different fronts and we need to start listening to each other and getting out of our own little labeled bubbles.

Beck’s new position is an 180-degree turn from what he himself said in 2014 on his radio show.

At that time, Beck said:

What do you say we stop listening to the clerics like Al Sharpton? The people who are just using their religion for their own power. What do you say we stop listening to the Communist, the anarchist or anyone else that has an agenda other than saying all life matters. Why does black life only matter? Why does all life or twenty something or children’s lives or American lives? When you say all life matters and we tried to fix that?

Despite his admonition that people on the right should get out of their “little-labeled bubbles,” he himself had no problem putting labels on the Republican nominee Donald Trump, including stating that the businessman had “deep socialist leanings,” telling NPR:

No matter what Donald Trump says he has deep socialist leanings, he’s a nationalist and a populist and throughout history whenever you combine those three things it never ends well.

Beck has repeatedly referred to Donald Trump as a Nazi and has called his supporters brownshirts. Beck was also an enthusiastic supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who famously blamed Donald Trump for anti-Trump rioting in Chicago during the primary election.

It’s one thing to be sympathetic to black Americans who have suffered 50 years of fealty to the Democrat party. Grassroots black citizens have reason to be upset about being used as political pawns with few results to show for their party loyalty. Glenn Beck, however, has gone beyond that and is actually repeating a talking point of the Black Lives Matter founders themselves. Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza wrote in an article on the “Herstory” of Black Lives Matter Movement:

#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important–it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide reaching and transformative for society as a whole. When we are able to end hyper-criminalization and sexualization of Black people and end the poverty, control, and surveillance of Black people, every single person in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free. When Black people get free, everybody gets free. This is why we call on Black people and our allies to take up the call that Black lives matter. We’re not saying Black lives are more important than other lives, or that other lives are not criminalized and oppressed in various ways. We remain in active solidarity with all oppressed people who are fighting for their liberation and we know that our destinies are intertwined.

This is the exact point that Beck now finds himself in agreement with.

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