On April, 22, Glenn Beck admonished a symposium at Brandeis University on “New Right-Wing Radicalism” (video of this segment at the bottom of the post).  Without regard for the facts and without even bothering to verify, Glenn Beck recklessly peddled false claims about the symposium.  And, based on this hoax, Glenn Beck urged his fans to harang Brandeis over a  non-existent controversy.

Chip Berlet, one of the conference participants, pens a lengthy explanation of the hoax irresponsibly promoted by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

The story surfaces nationally with a surreal Glenn Beck segment and two ludicrous Fox News discussions highlighting the false claim that Brandeis University was hosting an international conference linking the Tea Party movement to Nazis in Europe. The conference, which took place yesterday, revealed the entire propaganda campaign was a hoax, but not before anguished Holocaust survivors, conservative Jews in the Tea Party movement, and others had deluged Brandeis University with complaints.

Regarding Beck’s tirade, Berlet notes:

As Media Matters for America observed, apparently the most significant aspect of the story for Beck was that the university was named after the late Jewish scholar and Supreme Court justice, Louis D. Brandeis. For Beck, wrote a Media Matters researcher, the “Brandeis University symposium on political extremism is suspect because Louis Brandeis was in [Woodrow] Wilson’s cabinet;” the quip accompanies a link to that portion of Beck’s tirade which skirted on the thin ice of classic antisemitic conspiracy claims about manipulation of politics by powerful elite Jews.

I suggest reading Berlet’s full account. It’s provides yet another example of the recklessness and vitriol that we have come to expect from Mr. Beck and that we are trying to hold him accountable for.

And, this, also from Berlet’s account is worth keeping in mind:

The discussion of the role of angry middle-class right-wing populist movements intersecting with opportunistic politicians and media demagogues to facilitate the formation of fascist and neo fascist movements is well studied in scholarly literature. But hyperbolic claims from the political Left that the Tea Party movement itself is a Nazi movement flow from deeply inaccurate and superficial perceptions about the nature of fascism and the actual attitudes within the Tea Party movement.

Video of Beck’s segment: