Beck goes bonkers: Communism is coming to the U.S.

By Nicholas Wilbur

Glenn Beck is worried. Not quite trembling, and not yet so crazy that he's barking at squirrels, but worried. The uprising in Egypt marks the beginning of the end. Communists and Islamic extremists are mounting an offensive against the Western world.

As proof of this "communist revolt," Beck cited a story in The New York Times:

This is what I've been called nuts for for the last two weeks. And basically, it's on the front page story, "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt," and what it talks about is how the Islamic extremists have gotten together with socialists and communists and they have sown the seeds of revolt.

It goes without saying that people who watch Beck's show on Fox News aren't big fans of The New York Times. Probably many of his fans (literally, fanatics) were offended by Beck's reliance on the unpatriotic, anti-American, and undeniably traitorous manifesto as evidence of this "insurrection" heading to the United States.

In the interests of context, I have lifted the following passages from the above-referenced news article, which Beck cites as proof of a communist-socialist-Islamic extremist movement:

• They are the young professionals, mostly doctors and lawyers, who touched off and then guided the revolt shaking Egypt, members of the Facebook generation who have remained mostly faceless — very deliberately so, given the threat of arrest or abduction by the secret police.

• In the process many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the singularly non-ideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

• Islam Lotfi, a lawyer who is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, said his group used to enlist others from the tiny leftist parties to stand with them in calling for civil liberties, to make their cause seem more universal. Many are now allies in the revolt, including Zyad el-Elaimy, a 30-year-old lawyer who was then the leader of a communist group.

Mr. Elaimy, who was imprisoned four times and suffered multiple broken limbs from torture for his political work, now works as an assistant to Mohamed ElBaradei, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In turn, his group built ties to other young organizers....

• Most of the group are liberals or leftists, and all, including the Brotherhood members among them, say they aspire to a Western-style constitutional democracy where civic institutions are stronger than individuals.

But they also acknowledge deep divides, especially over the role of Islam in public life. Mr. Lotfi points to pluralistic Turkey. On the question of alcohol — forbidden by Islam — he suggested that drinking was a private matter but that perhaps it should be forbidden in public.

Asked if he could imagine an Egyptian president who was a Christian woman, he paused. "If it is a government of institutions," he said, "I don't care if the president is a monkey."

Okay, so to be clear there are, as Beck professes, communists, socialists, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood behind the organized rallies that, as of February 11, 2010, successfully overthrew an oppressive and corrupt dictator in Egypt.

But as the article clearly shows, these are not anarchists, radicals, or extremist Muslims aspiring for some new world order run by a fundamentalist Caliphate, as Beck believes. They are college-educated professionals, "mostly doctors and lawyers" (one of whom is Wael Ghonim, "a Google executive who was detained for 12 days but emerged this week as the movement's most potent spokesman") who were "born roughly around the time that President Hosni Mubarak first came to power... and [who] all have spent their adult lives bridling at the restrictions of the Egyptian police state – some undergoing repeated arrests and torture for the cause." Their cause being "a Western-style constitutional democracy."

If, as Beck claims, there are "communist revolutionaries who are willing to band with anyone here in America" and who are ready to spread their "cause" across the world, then America better brace for its own revolution. "It will come to America," according to Beck.

Grab your tinfoil helmets, pull out your Bibles, and sharpen your bayonets, folks. A "Western-style constitutional democracy" is heading this way.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)