Glenn Beck has once again taken out his secret decoder ring to play his favorite game of finding ways to link everything he doesn’t like to Adolf Hitler. This time it’s the UN Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, which is causing a spasm of outrage and fear mongering throughout the far right.
He had Rick Santorum, who is leading the fear campaign, on his radio show to talk about the treaty and they focused especially on language in the treaty that says “children with disabilities shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by their parents.” Beck reacted with mock horror, saying this is “really Orwellian or, quite honestly, fascistic from the Nazi days.”
Right Wing Watch has the video and points out that this exact language is already in numerous treaties that we ratified long ago. Like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, written in 1976 and ratified by the United States in 1992:
1. Every child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.
2. Every child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have a name.
3. Every child has the right to acquire a nationality.
Egads! We’ve been a Nazi state for 20 years now! Or we haven’t, of course, but those pesky facts shall not get in the way of a perfectly good right wing screed. It’s almost like the entire world is a Rorschach test for Beck and the only thing he ever sees in a picture is Hitler.
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raven
December 5, 2012 at 2:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t forget that other evil UN plot, Agenda 21.
It has something to do with sustainable development which is somehow a commie plot. Or something.
Because unsustainable development is god’s plan. Or something.
Beck has a long list of words to watch out for. One of them is “sustainable”.
Moggie
December 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If there was one defining characteristic of the Nazis, it was their respect for people with disabilities.
composer99
December 5, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I can only marvel at the kind of deliberate obtuseness required to read “children with disabilities [...] shall have the right [...] to know and be cared for by their parents” and come away thinking it’s fascistic.
Tobinius
December 5, 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think Beck’s man crush for Hitler is showing again.
baal
December 5, 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Beck’s grasping at imaginary straws is absurdist. It’s pretty hard to have a decent existence as a human (disabled or not) with out a name or nationality. There are real world examples of what the alternative looks like. For example, Germany has a class of not-citizens who were born there to (mostly Turkish) ‘guest workers’.
Fred Salvador - The Public Sucks; Fuck Hope
December 5, 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If ever there was a reason to abandon all faith in humanity, it’s this sentence.
Chiroptera
December 5, 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, because if there is one thing we all remember about Hitler, it’s concern he had for the protection of the rights of the disabled.
holytape
December 5, 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have never been a fan of history. In fact, I am aggressively ignorant. I refuse to learn about what happened yesterday, more less what happened sixty years ago. With that said, I had never heard of this Adolf guy or his so called “Nazis” until I started watching Glenn Beck. So far listening to God’s prophet Glenn Beck, I have learned that Nazi’s had universal health care, gun control laws, environmental protection laws, and wanted disable children to have a name and a loving family. No wonder this Nazis are the worst of the worst.
Synfandel
December 5, 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not to take Mr. Beck’s side, but it is possible, if you try really hard, to read “children with disabilities shall be registered immediately after birth” to mean that a registry of disabled persons is to be created. That does echo the Nazis’ registries of people considered less than ideal. However, that does require a willful misreading.
raven
December 5, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here is a list of scary words according to Beck.
communities, quality, justice, sustainable, education, development
This is a partial list, there are about 50 or so, all equally innocuous.
Given how common these words are, his followers must wander around perpetually terrified of everything.
Sastra
December 5, 2012 at 2:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven #10 wrote:
True, but I can sort of understand it a little. I’m starting to get nervous every time I run across the innocuous words “family values.” No idea why.
slc1
December 5, 2012 at 2:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re holytape @ #8
Yeah, ole Frankenberger built the autobahn, reduced unemployment a lot faster then Roosevelt did, and set up the Volkswagen company. What do you want, blood (got plenty of that too)?
slc1
December 5, 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re holytape @ #8
Actually, the German health care system was set up by that dangerous Socialist, Otto von Bismarck in the 19th century.
raven
December 5, 2012 at 3:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
LOL. I know the feeling.
I have the same reaction to the word “xian”. Even though, up until a few years ago, I was a… xian.
cottonnero
December 5, 2012 at 3:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lewis Black’s “Nazi Tourette’s” remains accurate.
jnorris
December 5, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Raven, add to the list: birth certificate.
It appears the Republican Tea Party is going to be against children having long-form birth certificates. We will call them ‘Free Birthers’.
JoeBuddha
December 5, 2012 at 5:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Now, I get it! Hitler didn’t have all of those people persecuted, tortured, and killed because he HATED them! It was because he LOVED and IDENTIFIED with them. Too much. Or something.
Ichthyic
December 5, 2012 at 5:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t want to live on this planet any more.
Dr X
December 5, 2012 at 7:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Birth certificates, names, parents! The horror!
StevoR
December 5, 2012 at 8:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Did /does he look in the mirror and see him there?
Wonders if there’s a technical name for someoen who sees’ Hitler in everything equivalent of pareidolia? Pareidolia Hitlerium?
Area Man
December 5, 2012 at 9:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly, only a Nazi could want a child to have a name and know his or her parents.
What’s most striking, as usual, isn’t just that right-wing nutballs have managed to wring a nonsensical conspiracy theory out of something both harmless and salutary, but that it requires them to think that their own side is in on it. The treaty was negotiated by the George W Bush administration, is basically identical to existing US law (passed during the GHW Bush administration), was passionately supported by a floor speech from Bob Dole (himself disabled), is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, and so on and so forth.
Anyway, the treaty failed to pass. It has little practical consequence for the US, but yet again makes us look like idiots in front of the rest of the world. Thanks a lot, conservative assholes.
d.c.wilson
December 5, 2012 at 9:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Isn’t that their default setting?
Nemo
December 5, 2012 at 10:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, like Synfandel says @ #9, it’s all hanging on a perverse interpretation of the word “registered”, taking it not as the obvious “registered like any normal child” (i.e. they get a birth certificate), but as “registered on the sinister secret list of the disabled, perhaps for future extermination”. But given the context, it almost would have to be a willful misinterpretation.
Almost. I doubt that it’s really willful, in the sense that Beck et al. read it, know what it means, and consciously choose to lie about it. Rather, I think that their perspective is so warped that they assume anything that comes out of the U.N. has to be bad, and they seize on anything that (in their minds) confirms that, ignoring the context and shunning common sense in the process.
mikel
December 6, 2012 at 12:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Speaking of Beck…
matty1
December 6, 2012 at 5:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You know who else saw Hitler every time he looked in a mirror?
matty1
December 6, 2012 at 5:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair if I made my money the way Beck does I’d be scared of education too.
democommie
December 6, 2012 at 7:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Almost. I doubt that it’s really willful, in the sense that Beck et al. read it, know what it means, and consciously choose to lie about it.”
I’m going to assume that Beck is a deliberately dishonest fuckbag, regardless the fact that he’s crazier than a shithouse rat in a methlab.
I mean, it’s not like anyone is holding his head in a grocery bag with a half gallon of airplane glue in it–he chose to act nuts; he just didn’t know that the situation had reached the point where it was no longer an act.
dingojack
December 6, 2012 at 7:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
JoeBuddha (#17) – well of course he did – he was just following the example of the christian god he worshipped.
Dingo
khms
December 6, 2012 at 7:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@baal
You do know that all these people have names and a nationality (usually Turkish – as in, if they visit Turkey at the relevant age, they get drafted into the Turkish military), yes?
Whatever it is an example for, not having names and/or nationalities is not it.
dingojack
December 6, 2012 at 7:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
khms – tell that to their German employers.
Dingo
bradleybetts
December 6, 2012 at 8:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
… guaranteeing a disabled child the right to be registered at birth, the right to a name, a nationality and the right to know their parents where possible is “Orwellian and Fascistic”? So guaranteeing disabled children the same rights as abled children is “Orwellian and Fascistic”? Why, have they annoyed God somehow as well? The man’s a fucking idiot.
baal
December 6, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ khms
My point stands but I will amend it for your objection. The UN’s rights of children declaration is specifically written to address the children of guestworkers and means to change the Jus Sanguine default for citizenship.
Turkey and Germany both have a default that you acquire citizenship as a matter of blood. You’re right then that the children of Turks living in Germany are in fact Turkish citizens. Were the Turks forced to rotate back to Turkey, maintain ties to Turkey and if the guestworkers couldn’t have family live with them in Turkey, this would be ok. Turns out it is not ok.
The children of guestworkers, having lived their entire lives in Germany, are reminded in big and small ways that they are not German and despite legal right to citizenship in Turkey, they run into non-citizen status hiccups in Germany. Worse, the guestworkers have been there for 40 years in some cases and a cohort of grandchildren is well underway. This begins to create evidentiary problems for proving ancestry.
The exact language from the UN is meant to address the problems created by the default rule and change it. The UN wants birthright citizenship (or an expedited route to citizenship) for children. This would give additional reason for guestworkers to more fully integrate (one of the big arguments against guestworkers from the German Govt.) and ensure the children of guestworkers are not second class citizen.
Please note I’m not picking on Germany, it’s one example and there are others. The US has ongoing serious problems with our own underclass of migrant workers. Even with birth right citizenship, they are still subjected to much discrimination. The piece on recording of births with a name is partially to solve that problem by shifting some of the burden of documentation from the migrant to the government.
So yes, Turkish citizenship flows in your veins but the problem and solution is to regularize the status of children based on birth location (and putatively due to living their lives where they are born).
eddarrell
December 6, 2012 at 12:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Registered” birth, meaning a birth that is officially documented, which secures the rights of citizenship for the baby — in fact, it makes it difficult later to deny the birth. It discourages taking newborns out into the wilderness and leaving them to the wolves.
But Santorum figures, wolves gotta eat, too.
Rick Santorum is walking denial of the existence of Jesus. He proposes Nazi-like opposition to protections of basic human rights, claiming to be protecting rights. If Jesus existed, wouldn’t He smite Santorum somehow?
eddarrell
December 6, 2012 at 1:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t assume Beck’s stupid. Don’t assume he doesn’t know that “registered” means that a kid gets a birth certificate with which come human rights.
He knows. That’s what he opposes, I’ll wager.