Beck praises The Red Network

On the June 4 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, Beck said:

BECK: This is a book, The Red Network. This came in from 1936. People -- McCarthy was absolutely right. Now he may not -- he may have used bad tactics or whatever, but he was absolutely right. This is a book -- and I'm a getting a ton of these -- from people who were doing what we're doing now. We now are documenting who all of these people are. Well, there were Americans in the first 50 years of this nation that took this seriously, and they documented it. And this is from 1936, and in it, it talks about -- it's the who's who and handbook for radicalism for patriots. This is “Who are the communists in America?” The overwhelming number of communists -- labor unions. The other thing that they talked about was, in this book that I was reading last night, they said, you know, there's this teachers union thing, but you really want to know who the real radical communists are? The NEA. That's 1936. And they're talking about this new organization that is really nasty, that you really have to look out for. The NEA. But everything this book has talked about they have mainstreamed.

The Red Network is rife with racism, anti-Semitism, and religious bigotry

“Un-Christianized” “colored people” are “savages” who owe success to Christian whites. As part of a chapter alleging communist and socialist infiltration of religious institutions, Dilling wrote:

The colored people are a sincerely religious race. As long as they stayed in Africa un-Christianized, they remained, as did pagan white men, savages. Their pagan brothers in Africa today are savages, while in a comparatively few years, under the opportunities of the American government and the inspiration of Christianity, the American Negroes have acquired professions, property, banks, homes, and produced a rising class of refined, home loving people. This is far more remarkable than that many Negroes are still backward. The Reds play upon the Negroes' love of their own people and represent them as persecuted in order to inflame them against the very white people who have in reality given the colored race far greater opportunities than their fellow negroes would give them in Africa today. [Pages 35-36]

Dilling reprised some of this language later in the book:

It is interesting to note in Communist literature that criminal violence is always promoted and excused under a cloak of supposed martyrdom. Negroes are urged to fight their white “oppressors,” who actually have freed them and given them better jobs and opportunities than exist in Africa. [Page 55]

“God created separate races, but Communism insists upon racial inter-mixture.” Dilling also wrote:

The time was, when Methodism in its zeal for personal purity frowned upon dancing. Some Methodists nowadays who are little opposed to dancing even in a church were a bit surprised, however, when several colored men were introduced into circle dances at a dance given in the parish house of Tittle's church and were thus forced upon the young white girls as partners. An M. E. Guild member whose daughter attended this dance reported that when she phoned the assistant pastor about this he said that these colored men had been invited by Dr. Tittle himself (one of them being the son of a classmate of his at college), who felt that it was now time that the young people learned to mingle with other races. (God created separate races, but Communism insists upon racial inter-mixture and inter-marriage.)

The great American colored man, Booker T. Washington, voiced the sentiment of the best elements in both races when he said the races should be as separate and distinct as the fingers of a hand and as united for the service of all humanity. Why should either race wish to lose its distinctive characteristics? Neither the races nor the sexes can ever be equal. They will always be different and have distinctive functions to perform in life. [Page 37]

Being “fair” to Nazi Germany's “anti-Jewish activities.” Dilling attacked an organization called Committees for Human Rights Against Naziism that boycotted Germany over its anti-Semitic policies. As part of her attack, Dilling wrote that “it is only fair to note” that Germany's Jewish population contained “Russian Jews” who “had made themselves prominent in the Red movement,” and if Germany “has discriminated against the innocent also, it has been with no such ferocity and loss of life as the planned and imminent Communist revolution would have wreaked upon the German population”:

National movement for boycotting Germany, supposedly because of its anti-Jewish activities, organized by Samuel Untermyer of N.Y. City. No one who treasures American freedom wants fascism or Hitlerism for America, but it is only fair to note that Germany had 6,000,000 Communists bent on Red terrorist revolution and that Russian Jews had made themselves prominent in the Red movement, and that Naziism has directed its attacks more against conspiring, revolutionary Communist Jews, than against nationalist German Jews who aided Germany during the war; if it has discriminated against the innocent also, it has been with no such ferocity and loss of life as the planned and imminent Communist revolution would have wreaked upon the German population, had it been successful as in Russia. Those making altruistic appeals for human rights for Jews in Germany, should at the same time raise their voices urging boycott of atheist Russia in behalf of its persecuted Christians and millions of “liquidated” starved Ukrainians, in order to escape the suspicion that they are protesting for Communist rather than “human” rights. [Page 138]

Dilling would later become a full-throated supporter of Nazism who reportedly attended Nazi party meetings in Germany and pro-Nazi rallies in the United States.

Blamed “revolutionary Russian Jews” for German anti-Semitism. Dilling attributed the anti-Semitic nature of German fascism in part to “the large number of revolutionary Russian Jews in Germany”:

Fascism, the bitterest enemy of Socialism-Communism, resembles Socialism in the respect that it gives great power to the State and dictatorship over all industry, employment, education, freedom of the press, etc. The points of difference which make it violently hated by the Reds are: its opposition to the “class struggle” and the subjugation of the bourgeoisie by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rather, it seeks a harmony between all classes and concedes to industrialists, white collar, professional, as well as laboring workers, a place in the social order as necessary parts, not “class enemies,” of the whole, but under State control. It defends some property rights and religion. It opposes Marxist philosophy and the Communist and Socialist Marxian parties. Fascism in Italy is not anti-Semitic. The problem of the large number of revolutionary Russian Jews in Germany doubtless contributed toward making Fascist Germany anti-Semitic. [Page 99]

Hinduism and Islam are “debasing and degrading”; Judaism and Hinduism spread “propaganda.” In her list of allegedly communist organizations in the United States, Dilling attacked the Fellowship of Faiths:

Like the Reconciliation Trips (see) of the Fell. Recon., it seeks to propagandize the anti-national internationalism and “reconciliation” of all races and creeds into one, or none, that is part of the program of Communism and Socialism. “How Expand Patriotism into World Consciousness” is a typical program subject. Speakers for the debasing and degrading Hindu, Mohammedan, Pagan, and Agnostic Cults are placed in “fellowship” and on an equal footing with speakers for Jesus Christ. The audiences chant a mixture of prayers and ritual from all of these. The savage Mohammedan call of the muezzin as heard in darkest Asia is mingled with the propaganda of the Hindu, Jew and agnostic. Negro choirs and performers give an interracial touch to the meetings. This jumbling of contradictory beliefs leads only to confusion and unbelief, and robs Jesus Christ of His rightful place as the Light of this World. [Page 152]

Dilling's long record of anti-Semitic extremism

Dilling authored many anti-Semitic books. Dilling was the author of several wildly anti-Semitic works in addition to The Red Network. One polemic titled The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today (originally titled “The Plot Against Christianity”) was highlighted by the Anti-Defamation League for its claims that Jews consider non-Jews to be sub-human, and that Jews have a hatred for Christians that is expressed in code in the Talmud. The Jewish Religion also made clear that anti-Semitism was a key component to Dilling's ant-communist philosophy; Dilling wrote: “Marxism, Socialism, or Communism in practice are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority having virtually no property or legal rights. As is discussed elsewhere herein, Talmudic Judaism is the progenitor of modem Communism and Marxist collectivism as it is now applied to a billion or more of the world's population.”

Another of Dilling's books, The Octopus, which she wrote under a pseudonym, was described by Life magazine in 1942 as “a yellow-covered compilation of anti-Jewish slanders.”

“Ike the kike” and the “Jew frontier.” The Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right devotes several pages to Dilling, describing her as “the grandmotherly, blue-haired old lady who could always be counted on to respond to a mail solicitation with a few dollars for a variety of anti-Semitic causes.” The book notes that Dilling was “the author of several of the most scurrilous attacks on Franklin Roosevelt,” and that her hatred of Roosevelt was inspired by her belief that he “was in all likelihood a Jew and his administration a Trojan horse for international communism.”

Dilling features prominently in Professor Glen Jeansonne's Women of the Far Right: The Mother's Movement and World War II. Jeansonne noted that Dilling referred to Dwight Eisenhower as “Ike the kike,” attacked Richard Nixon for his alleged “service to the synagogue,” and smeared John F. Kennedy's New Frontier program as the “Jew frontier.”

Nazi supporter who reportedly attended German Nazi party meetings. Media Matters noted that, according to Jeansonne and writer David Luhrssen, Dilling was an ardent supporter of Nazi Germany who incorporated German Nazi propaganda into her writings. Dilling also traveled to Germany in 1938, where she reportedly attended Nazi party meetings and praised Adolf Hitler's leadership.

Dilling's writings and philosophy have made her a popular figure among Aryan and white supremacist groups.

Historian slams Beck for promoting Dilling. Professor Jeansonne, in an interview with Media Matters, criticized Beck's “ludicrous” promotion of Dilling's The Red Network, saying that she was considered a “crackpot” in her own day who “appealed to the lunatic fringe.” Jeansonne characterized Dilling as probably the “most bigoted woman anti-Semite of the period around World War II,” and said she “did the cause of anti-Communism a disservice.”