Domestic Terrorism Directly Sparked by Glenn Beck

Oh wait, he's white. He's not a terrorist, he's only a crazy person.

Back in July, a man named Byron Williams got into a shootout with cops on a highway, and eventually gave up and turned himself in. Thankfully, only two officers were injured, and no one was killed. Williams didn't want it to end like that. He wanted to go to San Francisco so he could murder members of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. And as Media Matters has uncovered, Glenn Beck inspired all of it.

"I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind."

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In an affidavit, an Oakland police investigator reported that during an interview at the hospital, Williams "stated that his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."

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Now, in exclusive interviews and written correspondence with journalist John Hamilton, Williams speaks for himself. He asks Hamilton to be his "media advocate" and repeatedly instructs him to watch specific broadcasts of Beck's show for information on the conspiracy theory that drove him over the edge: an intricate plot involving Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, a Brazilian oil company, and the BP disaster.

Williams also points to other media figures -- right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones -- as key sources of information to inspire his "revolution."

In a separate exchange with Examiner.com's Ed Walsh, Williams sought to defend Beck from "Obama and the liberals," whom he said are afraid of Beck "because he often exposes things that are simply forbidden in news." Williams said that Beck advocates non-violence and that he had already researched the conspiracy theories that informed his alleged plot -- before seeing them "confirm[ed]" on Beck's show.

Similarly, Williams tells Hamilton that "Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need."

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Beck, in particular, he says, is "like a schoolteacher on TV." Williams tells Hamilton, "You need to go back to June -- June of this year, 2010 -- and look at all his programs from June, and you'll see he's been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption."

This is a perfect example of why the American media is such an enormous failure. It was not a corporate-owned 24-hour news station that did this. It was Media Matters. More than anything, I think this shows that independent news organizations are the future.

The average age of Fox News' audience is over 65 and the average age of right wing talk radio listeners is 67. Most of the people who buy into this bullshit were the same people who opposed civil rights, and thought communists had infiltrated every corner of our society. When they say they 'want their country back,' they're talking about the country that was consumed in paranoia and fear. It's a good thing that they're so old. We can be assured that the only terrorist attacks we have to worry about will be coming from the dumbfuck children they abused, such as Byron Williams.