3 Votes
Glenn Beck Claims 10% of Muslims are Terrorists
On his radio show, Glenn Beck tells all of his listeners that 10% of Muslims are terrorists and 1.5% of Americans want to violently overthrow their government. Fareed Zakaria decides to challenge the numbers noting that means Beck is accusing 157 million Muslims of being terrorists. Using State Department figures and generously inflating the participation required to plan and execute them, Zakaria comes up with a number 150 times smaller than Beck’s claim. The highly regarded journalist Peter Bergen says Beck’s numbers are off by 1000%. As part of a PR spin, Beck’s producer claimed Glenn was technically correct because the dictionary defines terrorists as inclusive of those advocating terrorism. Zakaria finishes with a beautiful snipe on Beck using his violent overthrow of the government numbers, his anger-fueling radio program and sweepingly broad terrorist definition.
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This article was edited after publication by the author on 17 Dec 2010.
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Expectation of Beck by Anonymous
What else would you expect from Beck. The guy is not a professional journalist just a loudmouth bigot.
His audience deserves to be fed crap like this.
Intended Audience by Jackson
I was talking about this with a friend and he said he totally believes Beck and disbelieves Zakaria… because he is Muslim so you can’t believe anything he says when talking about Islam. He said he has too much experience with Muslims, so he believes they are all lying, cheating, killing, raping evil doers.
I tried to point out the disconnect in him trusting the anti-Muslim source (Beck) over the Muslim (Zakaria, even though he is pretty much secular) in matters about Islam and how annoyed he is when people who want to know about Mormons (he is Mormon) go to “anti-mormon” sources instead of Mormons themselves. He said that while it is wrong in the Mormon case, it is justified in the Muslim case… because of all the bad Muslims he’s known. At this point, my head was bleeding pretty badly from hitting it up against a brick wall, so I wrote the conversation off as a lost cause.
Beck said this knowing his target audience would believe it even when faced with evidence to the contrary.He knows they want to believe it. It’s irresponsible and sleazy (when he hides behind the whole “I’m an entertainer, not a journalist” dodge), but he will continue to get away with it… no, strike that, be praised for it by his supporters.
Sick Twisted Freaks by Travis
I’m not saying I don’t believe Matthew, but I haven’t seen a link or heard the original source where Beck makes such a claim, however it would not surprise me the least bit.
I’m a Christian and a conservative… and every now and then as I drive to work in the morning I find myself turning the AM radio on only to here… “Good morning you sick twisted freaks… 3rd most listened to in the nation.” By then I’ve already turned back to the FM.
A couple of things come to mind every this happens…
I’ll here every now and again and finally I see the complaints and anger have hit Omni Nerd against Glen Beck. Why does he deserve any air time besides what he is given on his own radio and TV show? As a Christian Conservative, I don’t believe that the population that literally believes every word as gospel in Politics is very big (perhaps I’m naive). It would be interesting to see the numbers and criteria that supports his claim that he is the 3rd most listened to radio show. Are those numbers/criteria for political, or comedy, or entertainment radio show. I think most everything he spews out is rather his own absurd and misleading opinions and falls short to and standard of political journalism. Hence my amazement that he gets attacked so often.