The feud between Glenn Beck and William Kristol over Beck’s bizarre and paranoid ranting about the crisis in Egypt has become increasingly bitter. Beck prophesizes an alliance between the political left and an Islamic caliphate that he claims will takes over Europe and the Middle East. Beck believes that progressives and Islamists “stand together” as “one nation” and predicts that the anti-Mubarak uprising will engender a pernicious socialist-Islamist-Chinese union will try to takeover the world. Conservative writer William Kristol responded in his Weekly Standard column that as Beck “lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.”
Beck, in his own signature obsessive way, has struck back at Kristol, earning further criticism from conservative writers including the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. But not all neoconservatives are defending Kristol, who unlike Beck supports Egypt’s democracy movement. One major backer of Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy is rushing to Beck’s defense. David Horowitz has a long-held belief that an axis between radical Islamists and progressive activists and university professors will attempt to topple the US government (among others), a claim embraced by other right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Cliff Kincaid, and Robert Spencer. Even Gateway Pundit is trying to use Code Pink’s support for the anti-Mubarak protests to tie the group to the Muslim Brotherhood.
On his blog, Horowitz writes that Kristol should immediately apologize to Beck and “should be embarrassed by his own ignorance of the agendas of both American radicals and their jihadist allies.” He continues:
Bill Kristol is entitled to his optimism about democratic revolutions in the Islamic world. Perhaps the elections in Egypt will turn out better than those in Gaza where Hamas now rules a terrorist state; Iraq, which has instituted an Islamic Republic; Lebanon, where Hezbollah now rules a terrorist state; and Afghanistan, which is a kleptocracy wooing the terrorist theocracy in Iran. What he should not be doing as a conservative leader is demonizing Glenn Beck, who has done more to educate Americans about the unholy alliance between the secular left and the Islamic jihadists than anyone else. Kristol needs to apologize to Beck for comparing him — outrageously — to the conspiracist Robert Welch, and should be embarrassed by his own ignorance of the agendas of both American radicals and their jihadist allies. At this point in time, such ignorance is not only inexcusable but dangerous.
Previously, Horowitz even tried to link right-wing boogeyman Bill Ayres to the Muslim Brothers:
We saw the unholy alliance at work in the Hamas inspired campaign to break the Gaza blockade. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were leaders of the American wing of the Hamas coalition against the blockade and went to Gaza to meet with Hamas shortly before the terrorist Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces. The Gaza blockade was jointly instituted by Israel and Egypt – by the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s army. If the Muslim Brotherhood topples the Mubarak regime, Hamas’s war against the Jews will be immeasureably [sic] strengthened. The radical left in America and internationally is committed to Hamas and its genocidal campaign against the Jews and its general war against the United States. That is why the fate of Egypt in this crisis resonates for all of us.
