Beck: Youth Climate Activists Are ‘Radicals’ Being Organized To ‘Kill The Parents’

By Brad Johnson

Today, lame-duck Fox News host Glenn Beck equated the 10,000 youth climate activists who participated in the Power Shift conference this weekend with dangerous “radicals” who want to kill their parents. At Power Shift, climate leaders Van Jones and Al Gore exhorted the mostly college-age participants to engage with the older generations by asking moral questions about American values, just as young people did during the Jim Crow era. Beck falsely claimed the advice was to “not to listen to your parents!” Continuing further, Beck said these are “the same radicals” who talked about “kill[ing] the parents”:

The more things change, you see, the more they stay the same. These radicals are the same radicals that used to tell each other in the 1960s, “Don’t trust anybody over thirty. Don’t trust your parents!” Bill Ayers said, “Kill the parents! Kill your parents!”

Watch it:

During his attack, Beck interrupted a clip of Van Jones’ keynote address, which began, “When your uncle Joe, who loves Fox News, starts talking to you, and starts dominating the discussion . . . ” Beck then broke in, “Listen to what he’s saying. ‘Don’t listen to the elders in your family.’”

Of course, Beck didn’t let his audience listen to the respectful and honest message Van Jones had for the “uncle Joes” of America:

You have the opportunity to say to your uncle Joe, “Excuse me, sir, don’t you believe in liberty? And if you do, how can you live in a country where every American is forced to be an energy consumer for the rest of our lives? Shouldn’t we have the right as Americans to be energy producers?”

Watch what Beck wouldn’t let his Fox News audience see:

See the full Glenn Beck segment at Media Matters.

UPDATEBeck isn't the only agent of the corporate right to attack the Power Shift activists today. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce belittled the youth who organized aprotest of their climate denial and their polluter cash at their Washington headquarters as an "anti-business crowd" like "an off-pitch band marching past your office window."