Frances Fox Piven's Violent Agenda

This is the first of a series of Glenn Beck broadcasts whereby he really started hammering on Frances Fox Piven, or at least this year.

Sometimes Beck is a little loose with his typologies --- for example, I doubt that the Federal Reserve System was established as an institution of the "socialist-progressive hegemonic" takeover of the state. That said, at about 3:20 minutes Beck suggests that "what I would call socialist or communist they call just social justice or progressive --- that is critical to understand, because it really helps these people sleep at night and what's allowing them to get away with it." That's one of those statements that's laser-beam concentrated to nuclear-level gradient. The left-wing blogs and the Democrat-Media-Complex can't have that, so they strike back with a vicious inhuman fury. It's frightening, really. And of course, Beck's lengthy discussion after the program begins is a striking build-up to the introduction of the Cloward and Piven strategy (at about halfway through the clip). And oh boy, did that release Hell's wrath these last few days!

For example, see Stanley Kurtz, at National Review (via Instapundit):

The campaign to use the tragic shootings in Tucson to silence conservatives continues. The latest twist is an attempt to highlight anonymous threats against leftist scholar and strategist Frances Fox Piven as a way of forcing Glenn Beck, a critic of Piven, off the air, or at least prohibiting him from mentioning her on his Fox News television show. This affects me as well, since an excerpt from my recent appearance on Beck’s show to discuss Piven has been aired in the course of the controversy. My new book, Radical-in-Chief, extensively treats Piven’s influence on contemporary leftist strategy, and on Barack Obama’s political development. If Beck is forced to stop talking about Piven, efforts will surely be made to silence me and other conservative critics of Piven.

It is extraordinary that conservatives should be charged with stirring up violence at a moment when Piven, in an editorial in The Nation, has called for an American movement of “strikes and riots” on the model of the one recently seen in Greece. The anonymous threats against Piven are reprehensible. I condemn them in the strongest terms. Yet it is not conservatives but Piven and The Nation who advocate violence. Neither Piven nor The Nation should be forcibly silenced, but they certainly ought to be criticized. Instead, The Nation is leading the effort to silence those who have rightly condemned Piven’s call for rioting in America.

An article by Brian Stelter in Saturday’s New York Times is a thinly disguised gesture of support for The Nation’s campaign. The piece downplays Piven’s radicalism, noting that her widely criticized call for intentionally creating a political and economic crisis in America’s welfare system was made 45 long years ago. Although Piven has freely described her own strategy as an effort to set off “fiscal and political crises in the cities,” Stelter delicately avoids the word “crises,” writing instead of “fiscal and political stress.”

Absolutely perfect. Be sure to read the whole thing.

And see also James Taranto, "Advocate of Violence: Frances Fox Piven and the New York Times's Dishonest Campaign for 'Civility'":

Why is a newspaper that has been posturing as the scourge of violent rhetoric now siding with a purveyor of such rhetoric, and blatantly slanting the news as it does so? Because her opponent is a prominent media figure from outside the old media establishment. Because Glenn Beck is a threat to the authority of the New York Times.

Taranto make a careful distinction been advocating violence and inciting it, and so far Frances Fox Piven hasn't done the latter. But read this one in full as well. While Piven hasn't crossed a legal line, she's crossed a moral one, and so has the New York Times.

RELATED: "Henry Farrell, GWU Political Scientist, Falsely Attacks Glenn Beck Over Alleged Threats to Frances Fox Piven."