Don Palabraz

[Don't think too hard now Glenn, you may pop a vein in your forehead!]

The brain-cell challenged television and radio host Glenn Beck recently distorted an Uprising interview with Van Jones as part of his final crusade against one-time White House green jobs adviser. I discovered this today as a random youtube video appeared on a google search for our show’s name. The audio from the video was from the last question of a pre-taped interview that Sonali Kolhatkar conducted with Jones that aired on April 4th 2008 – the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The former White House adviser, who was forced to resign his post after demagogic pressures from the likes of Beck, was present in Memphis – the site of the tragic killing – as part of the “Dream Reborn” conference that re-imagined Dr. King’s vision for social justice to include the ecological concerns that define the twenty-first century. None of this context matters to those who utilized the words that Jones expressed in the course of this interview. They simply wanted to isolate the last exchange and present it within their warped sense of reality in order to advance nefarious political aims.

The video in question made the rounds on the right-wing blogosphere as it was first credited to “Naked Emperor News.” From there it went to Breibart TV – which Glenn Beck cited as the outlet that found the interview -  and on to the  website “Hot Air,”that conservative windbag Michelle Malkin herself had a hand in starting. Pam Key of Naked Emperor News wouldn’t reveal how she found the archived exchange, but she’s from Los Angeles.

The entire segment – again – was in the context of the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s murder. Has Glenn Beck ever played an excerpt from the late civil rights leader? That I do not know, but we, on the other hand, have done so on numerous occasions. On April 3rd 1968, Dr. King, with the Civil Rights Act years behind him, continued to push for justice the night before he died by joining in solidarity with striking sanitary workers and rallying them with a profound address. We played an excerpt from that final speech before turning to the Jones interview. In it, Dr. King spoke of the dichotomy that presented itself to the future of humanity. He said to those gathered that the choice between non-violence and non-existence is what faced them at their juncture of history.

Forty years later, Van Jones spoke in the same spirit of Dr. King. As the great orator’s speech traversed the annuls of history that last night of his life, Jones picked up where he left off. The choice that faces us now is informed by the specter of ecological catastrophe. When Dr. King spoke decades ago, the scientific knowledge that wised humanity to the dangers of climate change was years and years away. We can not say that now. Jones is exceptional in understanding that the ecological question is not separate from the social question and that economics or “suicidal gray capitalism” is the key root of the problem.

Do we receive the full depth and perception of this in the red-baiting crusade against Jones displayed in this particular instance? Of course not. Instead, we can be best informed in how this interview with Jones was used by the political right to achieve their ends by reviewing the transcript of Beck’s show:

VAN JONES: One of the things that has happened I think too often to progressives is that we don’t understand the relationship between minimum goals and maximum goals.

GLENN: Stop. Minimum goals and maximum goals. He’s going to explain this, but I want you to realize this goes to remember when I talked about Gandalf and I said, “You shall not pass!” I’ve been telling you for a while there’s things in this framework. They are building something. I don’t know what they’re building, but they’re building something. Don’t allow anything else to go through. Listen to how he explains minimum and maximum goals.

VAN JONES: Right after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, if the civil rights leaders had jumped out and said, okay, now, we

GLENN: Stop. This is Rosa Parks. He is now tying the civil rights movement to three very important things. The civil rights movement he is now saying, at least the way I read it, that the goal was this. Listen.

VAN JONES: Reparations for slavery

GLENN: Stop. We want reparations for slavery. Two.

VAN JONES: We want redistribution of all wealth.

GLENN: Stop. We want redistribution of all wealth. Redistribution of all wealth. And three.

VAN JONES: And we want to legalize mixed marriages.

GLENN: Stop. I was that the goal in the 1950s and Sixties?

PAT: That’s not the goal now.

GLENN: I mean, I

PAT: For blacks, they were the largest voting Block against Prop 8 in California. 67% of blacks voted against Prop 8. For

GLENN: Wait, wait. Mixed marriages?

PAT: Oh, we’re thinking the other kind of marriages, all right.

GLENN: All right. So mixed marriages, white and black. You think that’s what he means?

STU: That’s what I took from that because I could be wrong.

GLENN: I wonder, I believe

PAT: Well, they weren’t illegal, were they? In the south maybe?

STU: I don’t know. I’m not

GLENN: That I don’t know. I don’t know. Well, give him the benefit of the doubt that he means black and white marriages. I don’t think that’s what he means but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. Okay. Go ahead.

Given the information about the full context of this interview, we see Beck and his cohorts hilariously trying to wrap their heads around the civil rights movement! First, I know that the mere mention of reparations for slavery must have caused heart palpitations for Beck’s audience, but government compensation was a part of Dr. King’s vision. The Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute notes that the civil rights leader, “maintained that African-Americans could never be adequately compensated for the “exploitation and humiliation” they had suffered in the past, but he proposed a “Negro Bill of Rights” as a partial remedy for these wrongs. He insisted that African-Americans should be compensated through “a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.”

Second, Dr. King developed an analysis that came to the conclusion that a redistribution of wealth was a necessary means to achieve a just society. “True compassion,”  he declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” The masterful eloquence Dr. King displayed in this notion is what Jones is assuming the mantle of in the interview quote from our program that most furiously stroked  the conspiratorial ire of the right-wing. The third part is perhaps the most amusing. Beck and his cohorts fail to comprehend Jones’ citation of mixed marriages, first proposing it to mean same-sex marriages! They sober up some and realize that the issue at hand was interracial marriage and, being the superb civil rights scholars that they are, Beck and the club couldn’t figure out if that was actually a call to justice during the civil rights movement! Of course, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on June 12th 1967 to overturn a Virginia statute that held that whites couldn’t marry non-whites in the state. The decision lead to similar discontinuations of such bans in numerous other states. Notwithstanding their lack of historical insights, Beck and crew continue on:

VAN JONES: If they come out with a maximum program the very next day, they would have been laughed at. Instead they came out with a very minimum program: You know, we just want to integrate these buses. The students a few years later came out with a very minimum program, we just want to sit at the lunch counter. But inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1954 to 1958, you know, complete revolution was on the table.

GLENN: Stop. Inside that plan was a very radical kernel. Inside that plan was a very radical kernel. What have I been telling you? There are things inside of these bills. It’s why they have been overwhelming the system because inside these gigantic bills there are radical kernels. Now, Van Jones is only one piece of this puzzle. Cass Sunstein is the other. Cass Sunstein is the nudge guy. He is, he’s the regulatory czar. This guy is a genius at flipping switches. He can move this one up by 5%, this one up by 5%, this one up by 8%, this one down by 10%, and nobody knows. But it fundamentally transforms America. See, we don’t know what the structure is that they they have not articulated. This is why people could make the claim that this is a Velvet Revolution because they’re not telling us who they are. They are telling us one thing. But inside that one thing is a radical kernel. Now listen.

VAN JONES: For this country. And I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we’re saying we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco capitalism.

GLENN: Stop. Okay. Capitalism. Suicidal gray capitalism. He’s a capitalist? When did he become a big capitalist? When he was describing in 2008 capitalism as suicidal? Suicidal gray capitalism. The key words are really not even that. The key words are the two words in that sentence. It leads the sentence. What was it? “Right now.” We’re talking about going from suicidal gray capitalism to some sort of eco capitalism. Right now. That’s what we’re talking about. But remember the paragraph before: Inside there is a kernel of radicalism. Right now we are talking about going from suicidal gray capitalism to some sort of eco capitalism. But then he goes on.

VAN JONES: Where, you know, at least we’re not, you know, fast tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Well will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough.

GLENN: Stop. Will that be enough? No, it will not be enough. Please help me out. Show me where I’m wrong. Show me how to read this any other way. I will tell you that the forces against me and the forces against me getting this word out are biblical almost in nature, and I fear they are going to get much, much stronger. If this guy resigns or is fired or whatever, I can’t imagine how this administration keeps this man on. But understand that this exposes, because of who introduced him at the audio that we played for you a minute ago, the woman who vacationed with the Obamas. Good friends. Known them forever. She says we’re excited, we have known him and been watching him since his days in Oakland. He was a communist when he was in Oakland! This is not about Van Jones. This is about the true intent of this administration. You now have the path, but I’m telling you that I fear that my voice will be snuffed, my voice will be silenced. I will tell you, the forces arrayed against in the other direction are awfully darn powerful and awfully darn committed. But I ask that you keep us, this program, our affiliates, Fox News in your prayers because these are revolutionaries. Make no mistake about it. Can we play the last part when we come back about something else I have been telling you for a while now that my gut has been screaming, screaming. He has, I believe, verified it. You decide, next.

As we see here, Jones’ use of the term ‘radical kernel’ sent Beck ablaze. The right-wing demagogue felt he had found a term that perfectly fit within the conspiratorial framework he evaluates both Jones and, by extension, the Obama administration. Next, the “Green Collar Economy”  author charts his course explaining that suicidal gray capitalism must be replaced by eco-capitalism. If capitalism as it stands today was not fitting of this description, why is it that the reduction of carbon emissions is seen as a necessity to stave off worsening ecological conditions for the planet? Could it be that business as usual is…suicidal? Beck here doesn’t make such a distinction and used the opportunity to question any adherence by Jones to market economics.

Of course, the right-wing television and radio host feels that the end of our interview was the most shocking and revealing portion of the discussion. In it, Jones asks if the stopping the fast track destruction of our ecosystems will be enough before answering no. In that, Beck feels vindication. In his mind, Jones is a communist who wants to transcend eco-capitalism even though he never specified what that elevation entailed or what philosophy it closely mirrored. Of course, this entire enterprise by Beck is aimed solely at President Obama himself. Jones was just a proxy target. Attempts to fully link Jones’ progressivism with Obama’s politics are ridiculous. For all the scant left of centrists in the administration, there are numerous folks like Rahm Emmanuel, Tim Geithner and even Obama’s OSM pick Joe Pizarchik to rationally jettison such notions of a radical takeover of government.

Instead, media personalities like Beck only serve to build upon irrationality. After the end of the transcript offered on his website, Beck goes on to play a  portion of the interview where Jones states that “We want to go beyond systems of exploitation and oppression all together, but that’s a process.” Again, is this not concurrent with the philosophy of Dr. King that the “Dream Reborn” conference was called in the spirit of? Naked Emperor News, the website that started this particular instance of the controversy, has a quote from the anti-Fascist theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself who said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Dr. King spoke and resisted in actions against the evils of exploitation and oppression. There will never be a time when this task will not be called upon the living generations because as the great civil rights leader understood we are not free until we are ALL free.

That Glenn Beck and his ilk do not understand this is all that we need to know…

Here is Van Jones’ interview on Uprising Radio broadcast on the 40th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in its entirety:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.