On Glenn Beck, Communism and an Offer He’ll Probably Refuse

The fight for communism is centrally a political battle. It takes place not simply as a contest of strength between the organized forces of the exploiters against the organized forced of the exploited, but also as an ongoing battle over the political ideas that shape society.

Over the years, numerous commentators, pundits and assorted pseudo-intellectuals have chosen to take up the rhetorical sword against the “specter” of communism. Some have been skillful in their use of the literary and visual weapon, while others have done more damage to themselves than to us while attempting to swing such a heavy object.

The latest in this long line of media-savvy punditry to take up arms against communism is Fox News’ Glenn Beck.

Recently, Beck aired a “special edition” of his show on Fox News called Revolutionary Holocaust. The show was billed as the start of a “new direction” for his program. Apparently, that “new direction” involves pushing the already dodgy journalistic standards of the network even lower.

The target of this show was supposed to be communism. However, most of the show was aimed at attacking that grotesque caricature, “official Communism,” in the form of Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China and Castro’s Cuba (including Ernesto “Che” Guevara personally). For good measure, Beck decided to throw in a few “quotes” from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to “reinforce” his argument.

That was Beck’s mistake. It is one thing to be sharply critical of the “official Communists” and what they did. After all, we criticize and condemn what they did to working people in the name of communism, and our predecessors fought against the “officials,” were the first to face their tribunals and gulags, and were purged and shot systematically.

But it is another thing entirely to lump Marx and Engels in with this lot. Virtually everything in the body of work of these two pioneer communist thinkers runs counter to the phony “socialism” of the likes of Stalin, Mao and Castro.

Therefore, it is necessary to set the record straight, to expose Beck’s falsifications and lies, and to explain what Marx and Engels really stood for and advocated. This article, and a companion video being produced by the League, will take on these issues and present the real principles of communism.

Let’s begin with the three “quotes” used by Beck in his Revolutionary Holocaust program. These three comments, attributed to Marx and Engels, are allegedly accurate quotations that represent their actual views.

The facts, however, show what can be described, at best, as shoddy fact-checking. At worst, blatant falsification.

The first “quote” from Beck is shamefully coupled with an attempt to link Marx’s views to that of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi movement: “Sometimes, it’s hard to tell Hitler and Marx apart. Who wrote that Germany’s neighbors should accept ‘the physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors’? That’s Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.”

First, this is not “Marx and Engels,” but Engels alone. Second, this was not written as a statement of what “Germany’s neighbors should accept,” but what took place historically. Here is what Engels actually wrote in 1852:

These dying nationalities, the Bohemians, Carinthians, Dalmatians, etc., had tried to profit by the universal confusion of 1848, in order to restore their political status quo of A. D. 800. The history of a thousand years ought to have shown them that such a retrogression was impossible; that if all the territory east of the Elbe and Saale had at one time been occupied by kindred Slavonians, this fact merely proved the historical tendency, and at the same time physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb, and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors. (“XIV. The Restoration of Order — Diet and Chamber,” Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany, Marxists Internet Archive [2009])

Not quite how Beck puts it, is it? In fact, what we have here is Engels pointing out how history shows the futility of nationalities that had been under the domination of others for centuries cannot roll the clock back a thousand years. He neither advocates nor necessarily believes that “Germany’s neighbors should accept” this historical development.

Marx and Engels’ writings on Ireland, India, China and other countries similarly dominated by European Great Powers quickly dispel this myth concocted by Beck.

The second “quote” used by Beck is attributed to Marx: “As the revolution happens, ‘the classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way’.”

Are these Marx’s words? Yes. But what is Marx talking about? Here is the passage this sentence is taken from:

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. (“Forced Emigration,” New York Tribune, March 22, 1853, ibid.)

What is the “silent revolution” Marx is writing about here? It is not the workers’ revolution he advocated, but the ongoing capitalist revolution taking place in Europe.

In other words, the brutality and barbarism that would force “classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life,” to “give way” is ... capitalist class society.

The third and final quotation used by Beck is a clumsy and deceitful attempt to falsify Marx. It would not even be worth discussing were it not that this “quote” represents the linchpin of Beck’s entire argument.

Here is what Beck attributes to Marx: “There is only one thing left for those too far behind in the process of societal evolution: ‘the chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust’.”

First of all, as with the first “quote,” this is not Marx, but Engels. Second, the phrase “revolutionary holocaust” is not even used in the passage quoted. Here is what Engels wrote:

All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, Poles and Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary. (“The Magyar Struggle,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13, 1849, ibid.)

Again, what we have here is a passage by Engels describing the events of a capitalist revolution, not a workers’ revolution. Moreover, Engels is analyzing the roles of each of the various nationalities in what became known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the fate each would inevitably face as a result of the unfolding revolution in that region.

But special note should be taken of Beck attempting to turn the phrase “revolutionary world storm” into the disgusting “revolutionary holocaust.” Apart from the fact that the word “holocaust” never even took on the meaning it has today until after the Second World War, the German word used by Engels (Weltsturm) is not translated as “holocaust.”

This word is not even used much in German any more, and no one we’ve spoken with who is an expert in the German language can fathom how Beck turns this into the term, “holocaust.” As one person commented, “‘Turmoil’ might be the fitting translation” for the archaic Weltsturm.

Related to this falsification is another gem from Beck. Armed with little more than an online translation website, it seems, Beck once again takes a passage from something Engels wrote and attempts to give it a barbaric meaning.

The word this time is Völkerabfälle, a German word that, when properly translated, means “residual (or leftover) nations.” Here Engels is referring to the remnants of nationalities that have long since been overrun by others in history. Specifically, he mentions the Gaels in Scotland, the Bretons in France and the Basques in Spain, as well as southern Slavs in the Balkan regions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But through the magic of machine translation, Beck turns “residual nations” into ... “racial trash!” It would be a laughable error if it were not intentional and slanderous.

On more than one occasion, we have commented on the problems with Engels as a representative of communist thought. Unlike Marx, who as he was nearing the end of his life finally succeeded in shaking off much of the Eurocentrism that was common and culturally acceptable in their time, Engels wallowed in it until his death in 1895.

But being critical about Engels’ problems is not the same as making up false “quotes” that attempt to make him and Marx out to be racists or German nationalists. The former is being politically honest; the latter is the opposite.

Beck also manages to raise the old canards of Marx and Engels being both racist and anti-Semitic. These have been raised and refuted so many times that it almost seems pointless to rehash the issue once more.

In Revolutionary Holocaust, no “quotes” are used to “prove” the contention. Rather, Beck employs Jonah Goldberg, a rightwing bloggermouth whose only real claim to fame is that his mother was largely responsible for the world learning that Bill Clinton got a blow job in the Oval Office.

Goldberg asserts Marx and Engels were “notorious racists and anti-Semites,” but offers no evidence to back it up.

Well, we’ve seen the passages often used to support the claims. At first glance, you might think they had a point. However, looking further, you find a strange thing: the argument only holds up as long as the words and passages are consciously removed from their historical or political context.

For example, one can do a Google search and find at least five instances where Marx or Engels uses “n****r” in personal correspondence or notes (never meant for the public). On the surface, looking from the perspective of the 21st century, the evidence appears to support Goldberg.

However, this ignore one small fact: In Britain (and, to a lesser extent, the United States) in the mid-19th century, “n****r” was not necessarily seen as a derogatory word for people of African descent, like it is today. Rather, it was a term that meant “dark-skinned foreigner.” Peoples from Africa, India, China and Latin America were all called “n****rs” by white British. Marx and Engels went along with this.

It should also be noted here that where Marx and Engels depart from their contemporaries is that, while they might have used this term in private, they also advocated that Africans in America be treated as equals and brothers of the white working class, that the peoples of Ireland, India and China be liberated from Britain’s domination, and that full equality be a central demand of the world’s working class.

As Marx eloquently put it: “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”

It is also in this context that the accusations of anti-Semitism can be rightly refuted. In 1844, Marx wrote “On the Jewish Question” as a retort to German philosopher Bruno Bauer. Bauer opposed civil and political rights for German Jews unless the converted to Christianity (which was the practice at the time). Marx, on the other hand, argued that German Jews deserved the same rights and freedoms that Christians received, including in employment.

Yes, Marx made this argument using a number of crude and, viewed from our standpoint, seemingly anti-Semitic comments, but it is still argued today about whether these were genuine sentiments or, as British professor David McLellan argues, these turns of phrase were Marx’s clumsy attempt at satirizing Bauer’s very real anti-Semitism.

Nevertheless, the bottom line, whether talking about perceived racism or anti-Semitism, is this: At all times, Marx and Engels advocated for the rights of all people, opposed racial, religious and national oppression at every turn, and upheld the principle of international workers’ unity.

This article only deals with a fraction of the lies, falsifications and half-truths in Glenn Beck’s Revolutionary Holocaust fiction. We see no real need at this time to try to parse out fact from fiction when it comes to the USSR, China, Cuba, “Che,” etc. We will leave it to you, our readers, to tell us if we should revisit this subject.

In the meantime, we address the last part of this article to Beck himself: Over the last period, you have invited self-described socialists and communists on to your show for the purposes of “exposing” them and their politics.

Your “hit-and-run” style left many of them — most notably Sam Webb of the “official” Communist Party USA — stammering and confused, like a deer caught in the headlights.

We might be wrong, but you don’t necessarily strike us as someone who likes to waste their time on lightweights and has-beens. So we would like to pose a challenge to you.

Contact us or the Workers Party in America. Invite one of us on to your program to deal directly with these issues. We are willing to commit to whatever amount of time you want to give to this debate, and we are willing to set aside our traditional policy of not engaging in pointless debates in order to provide an educational service to your viewers.

Come on, Glenn. You can do better than the likes of Webb or some mid-level activists that can’t tell the difference between Karl and Groucho Marx. Bring on a real communist. Commit yourself to a real political challenge.

We’ll even bring you some complimentary Peeps.