Yes. He was quite violent. He was also apparently quite lucid, and quite a believer in right wing ideology. Quite the person you don’t want to be whipping into a frenzy with crazy ranting.
I don’t believe Glen Beck is any more liable/culpable for Poplawski than any of the radical 60s liberal professors were responsible for The Weather Underground.
Because he’s gay, he’s not a U.S. citizen, and he’s critcized the Republican Party.
You could have memorized the collected works of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Newt Gingrich, idolized Antonin Scalia, hoarded guns and ammunition in your basement for years, and denounced Obama as a Muslim and a communist, but with those three strikes against you, the current crop of conservatives will never let you in the club.
No, I do not.
If one claims Beck is morally accountable, then one probably feels that every Christian preacher of any denomination was responsible for the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Then perhaps you should stop.
But it wasn’t “imminent,” and his language wasn’t necessarily violent. The protest Sharpton spoke at was days (I think weeks, actually, but I can’t find a clear chronology on the web anywhere) before the incident.
And the Sharpton statement that people point to “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” It was similar to Beck’s language, IMO. Ugly, with the potential of being interpreted as a call to violence by some of the fringe of the crowd.
Maybe some of them were, if they were making speeches that could be construed as motivating their students to take direct action against the government.
And college professers tend to have much smaller audiences than TV commentators. You could have to indentify them, quote their rhetoric, and show that members of the Weather Underground were among their students.
We know that Poplawshi was listening to Beck.
Having said that, no, I don’t hold Beck strongly responsible for the incident. One guy killing 3 people is statistically insignificant.
(And BTW, someone can’t be both radical and liberal. In the 60’s, “liberal” meant “not radical” as often as it meant “not conservative”.)
Tell that to Supertramp.
I’m with Rand Rover, scarily enough. Regardless of his rhetoric increasing the climate of fear, I think Beck WOULD be responsible in part if he’d said “shoot the police who come to your door, because (X)” or even “right-thinking people might soon have to shoot police”.
The same as I’d hold him partially responsible if a would-be Obama assassin cited Obama’s similarity to Hitler, since that’s a view Beck’s specifically encouraged.
I don’t think Beck’s statements in the latter paragraph have any real bearing on the nutter’s actual actions in the former paragraph. I don’t think commentators should be held partially responsible for acts potentially linked to their rhetoric unless those acts are either specifically advocated in the rhetoric or linked directly to the rhetoric’s pronouncements.
Watch what you say!
It seems like this killer was pretty far gone to begin with, and was just pushed over the edge by Beck’s stuff but was already clearly crazy. It could have been anything that pushed him over the edge. So I’m not sure Beck is to blame any more than Jodie Foster is for inspiring John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan. Lunatics have their own crazy reasons for doing what they do.
Yeah. When otherwise healthy people start watching Glenn Beck and then shooting people*, we’ll talk. I note here that, like the anti-video game crusaders, some people here are assuming that watching Beck makes people go crazy when it’s more logical to conclude that crazy people watch Beck.
*Beck not included.
Okay, I’ll ask a third time: If Glenn Beck says things that will raise the level of fear in his audience, is he responsible if their level of fear is raised?
In general, I don’t think it’s very controversial to suggest that if a child watches Sesame Street, and ends up with an improved facility for the alphabet, Sesame Street has some responsibility for that. If I watch a show on the Hitlery Channel, and come away with a better understanding of the Kar 98 or the MP 40, I’d say the makers of that show have some level of responsibility for that understanding. Does anyone contend that a show designed to increase the knowledge of the viewer has some responsibility for the increase in knowledge of the viewer?
Okay, let’s consider messages that not only involve fact, but emotion and motivation.
What about a guy in my office who tells me it is raining outside? Is he responsible if the srength of my belief that it is raining has increased? Given that I was excited about taking a walk in the sunshine, is he responsible for me feeling a bit bummed, or if I grab my umbrella on the way out the door?
How about if I watch a show made by Ed Begley, Jr., about the environment, and I end up feeling concerned that the environment is being harmed, and that I should do a better job of throwing my aluminum cans in the recycling bin, does Ed Begley, Jr. have some responsibility for my feelings and my behavior?
If I watch a news report, and the Director of Homeland Security is shown telling me that I should buy duct tape and plastic sheeting because of the possibility that I might experience a chemical attack, is he responsible if I have an increased level of fear about a chemical attack and if I go out and buy duct tape and plastic sheeting?
If I watch a show about the flu, potential consequences of the flu and the benefits of getting a flu vaccination, is that show responsible for my increased level of concern about the flu? Does it have any level of responsibility for my behavior the next day when I call to see where and how I can get a flu vaccination?
I don’t think it’s very controversial to suggest that any disseminator of information has some responsibility when that information is received. If that information has a likelihood of impacting someone’s motivation and emotion, I think that they bear responsibility for that as well. When someone’s behavior is impacted by that, I think there remains a diminished but still meaningful level of responsibility on the part of the person who originally passed along the information.
The problem with this viewpoint is that it often ends with music and video games being banned because they cause school massacres.
Really? Which music and video games have been so banned?
I’m glad I put effort into considering the issue as I did. You’ve clearly thought it through thoroughly.
I still think the Al Sharpton comparison is a good one. It’s completely non-controversial for people to blame him for the Freddie’s Fashion Mart fire, based on the fact that Rev. Al gave an ugly speech at a protest days or weeks before the fire (like I said previously, I can’t find a reliable timeline online anywhere. I’m just going by memory.), and it’s assumed that the killer was present for that speech. Why wouldn’t Beck’s ugly speech be viewed the same way?
Why would be it Beck? He’s clearly just a pawn.
It’s pretty clear that ultimate responsibility of this falls on Bush. He’s the one that went around giving all the liberals wedgies and taunting them with malapropisms, inspiring all the copycats like Beck.
I’m all for personal responsibility too.
The shooter is respnsible for the shooting. We can’t get away from that. However, people like Beck, who plant these ideas, or somehow “legitimize” them, are guilty as hell too.
Beck is a hatemonger. He peddles hate. he is, after all, the piece of shit who went on a diatribe against the people who died on 9/11 and also attacked their surviving family members. He is a piece of shit. Hell yes, he shares a part of the blame for the shootings.
For him to say he is just an entertainer, or just a radio guy, is bullshit. He planted the seed. He gave voice to the idea. For him to say the hateful things he does, and then fall back on some “just an entertainer” excuse, makes him a damn coward too. And guilty as hell.
Video games have a protection in that they don’t profess to affect the outside world. Sure, games like Grand Theft Auto are violent and lawless, but there is no message that you should behave in the real world the way you would in the game. It’s a closed box where you can act out things you couldn’t in the real world and I can’t think of any video game that advocates taking what you do in the game to the real world.
Music’s a little less protected. Honestly, I don’t think I’d be terribly upset if a song that went something like “Kill the cops, kill the cops, take your gun and kill the cops” was scrutinized and/or banned. That’s incitement or the nearest thing to it.
I find it hard to absolve Beck of all responsibility. Yes, Poplawski was crazy and may have been ready to kill a cop before Beck came around, but I look at Beck and think, “This homicidal nutcase and others like him like what you have to say. What do you think that says about your message?”
I cannot buy such a thorough hand washing of the issue the OP is asking.
I agree the guy was a loony all on his own and that Beck was not directly responsible for making the guy go shoot police officers.
But that is not what the OP is asking. I think it is more how much of a role did Beck play in this guy’s going off the deep end?
That cannot be answered definitively of course. However, I am uncomfortable with the notion that if you are somehow at some slight remove from an issue you can absolve yourself of any responsibility (moral if not legal).
We are the sum of our parts. However those parts added up in the shooter at least some of those parts were Glenn Beck’s words. Certainly Beck alone did not motivate this guy but just as certainly he was a part of it and did not help matters. It is akin to a parent who severely abuses their child and then that kid grows up to be violent. So far we do not hold the parents responsible for this but surely they had a hand in making the person the way they are.
I find it more than a little disturbing how free speech can coddle hate and fear mongers. People who with only a little rhetorical effort can easily sidestep things like “incite to violence” when that is exactly what they are doing. (NOTE: I am a huge Free Speech fan…just noting its dark side.)
Beck could never be held liable in a legal sense for this nor do I think he should be (down that road lies a nightmare of problems). I do however think we can hold him out for contempt as someone who is making the world a far worse place and as someone who at least helps to create the sort of guy mentioned in the OP.