Donald Duck, Glenn Beck, and the challenge for progressive populism
You probably don’t watch or listen to Glenn Beck much, for fear your head might explode, and maybe you’d prefer never to have to think about him at all. Maybe you think Beck is just a publicity-seeking megalomaniac who will do anything to get attention, and that every time his name is mentioned, another angel kills a kitten somewhere, so we’d all be much better off if we just ignored him (except perhaps to participate in the recent, remarkably effective petition to his advertisers to abandon his show).
I understand. I really wish I didn’t feel compelled to pay attention to him, that I didn’t already know much more about his life and his schtick than any normal, healthy human being should ever have to know.
But I just can’t help it. The fact that a stark-raving demagogue like Beck could help lead so many American people to the political lunatic fringe is both frightening and fascinating to me. Maybe it’s partly because he came from the Puget Sound region (he was in high school in Mt. Vernon while I was a college student just miles to the north in Bellingham); maybe it’s partly the same human impulse that draws our attention to major disasters, horror films, or car accidents on the highway.
Maybe it’s just that this “rodeo clown” is such an easy target for satire. Beck is often ridiculed, sometimes brilliantly, as Jon Stewart and The Onion have done. This week comes a new offering, from Rebellious Pixels, one of the best Beck send-ups I’ve seen. Don’t just take my word for it — as Beck himself declared, “It is some of the best well made propaganda I have ever seen… We are looking into this gentleman and this incredible propaganda against me.”
Not only is this media mashup brilliantly constructed, one of the things I like about it is the way it shows how someone (in this case, a down-&-out Donald Duck) could be initially taken in by Beck’s faux populist appeals.
And that’s really the thing that’s most interesting to me. How is it that a political snake-oil salesman like Beck is so effective at persuading so many people to embrace a political agenda so inimical to their own personal interests? And, more importantly, why have progressives been so much less effective in channelling legitimate popular anxieties toward progressive solutions that would genuinely benefit the majority?
One of the better explorations of these questions comes from Laura Flanders’ GRITtv, in an interview with Alexander Zaitchik, the man who literally wrote the book on Beck, and Rick Perlstein, who nails it at the end of the interview when he says, ”The Democrats have unilaterally disarmed on left-wing populism. So if you’re angry, there’s no place for you other than in the Republican Party [or] Tea Party movement.”
Okay, so it’s understandable why mainstream Democrats would be ineffective at articulating a progressive populist message (the DLC strategy of courting big-money donors, the tightening grip of corporate power on election campaigns, etc.), but what I really wonder is this: Why are there so few progressive voices outside the Democratic Party clearly and vigorously articulating a progressive populist message?
With the inequality of income and wealth in the US at an all-time high, with the power of corporate lobbyists in DC stronger than ever, with the floodgates of corporate donations to election campaigns thrown open by the Citizens United decision, you’d think progressives would be able to articulate a much more persuasive case than a huckster like Glenn Beck.
Where are the progressive voices doing that? Why is the message so weak and ineffective? What can be done to change that?
Your thoughts?
Comments
By MT on October 6th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Q: Where are the progressives?
A: They’re articulating. You just can’t hear them, since they’re not being amplified (with lots of money) like Beck. Also, look to Cuba.
Q: Why is the message so ineffective?
A: The short answer here: the path to progess looks much less comfortable than trusting in the system, so most people choose comfort. When most people don’t have a choice, you’ll see a change.
Q: What can be done?
A: Make people uncomfortable.
By Geov on October 7th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Look to Cuba? Are you serious? So we should mount an armed revolution, and then throw all our opponents in jail for the next 50 years? That’s even more delusional than Beck’s followers, which is saying something.
People are already uncomfortable, and already don’t trust the system. That’s what the well-financed Tea Party movement is all about: channelling that discomfort and mistrust into attacks on straw men like a socialist Kenyan Muslim president. Plain and simple, the reason millions of people believe this nonsense is repetition by authoritative voices. They have a TV network, dozens of Congresspeople, and a fawning legacy media that confers automatic credibility on anything said by people or institutions with power, no matter how absurd, for the sole reason that they have power. And, conversely, marginalizes those opposing viewpoints coming mostly from people without titles attached to our names.
Beyond amplification, the reason this idiocy is seductive, IMO, isn’t so much that people want to believe in the system as that they want hope – see Obama’s success. If they believe they have a chance to one day be wealthy via Randian capitalism, that’s hope, no matter how statistically improbable it actually is. Telling people instead that the current system is rigged and that they have virtually no hope without a nearly unfathomable (from where we are today) amount of change isn’t very hopeful.
By that logic, our job isn’t just to get people to distrust the current system, but to offer something both achievable and better. And progressives are a lot better and more united in articulating the problems than the solutions. Though “the opposite of whatever they’re doing” is a fine place to start.
By JT on February 17th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC is doing it….but I can’t think of anyone else at the moment.
I hate to be a pessimist but it would seem we have already lost the war and also are losing the battle. Citizens United?….what a crock of sh**. This country is swirling down the rabbit hole quicker than one can say Rush Dimwit Limbaugh!
But then there is still hope. Look at what just happened in Egypt.
Where do we start? Start anywhere. Things are so broken at this point it doesn’t matter.
Good night and good luck! (We are going to need it).
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