Why Glenn Beck's Populism Means He Must Attack SEIU

Glenn Beck attacks the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) a lot. He attacks SEIU nearly daily on his radio and cable news shows. SEIU represents a special place in Glen Beck’s web of progressive conspirators who wish ill on America. Why? Who is SEIU and why are they an important enemy for Glenn Beck and his world view?

SEIU Represents Working People, Mostly Working Women of Color
SEIU is one of the largest labor unions in the country, representing nearly two million workers in the health care, child care, janitorial and private security fields, as well as in the public sector. SEIU, focused on the ever growing service industry, is the fastest growing union in the country. The membership is largely comprised of women and people of color.

Glenn Becks Audience is Rich, White Men
Glenn Beck holds himself out to be a populist who represents the disenfranchised American. Glenn Beck’s audience is rich, white, college educated and childless males (95% white, 60% male, 72% college educated, 60% with a household income above $60,000, and 37% with an a household income above $100,000, 75% childless). How do you make rich white men the most disenfranchised group in the country? How do you argue that defending the interest of the empowered minority is true populism? By explaining away the group that defends the disenfranchised.

Beck Claims SEIU is Not Like Normal Unions; SEIU Has a Hidden Agenda
Beck explains, “[SEIU] represents 2.2 million people. There are 3 million who watch this show.” When a guest attacked the Steel Workers and Auto Unions, Beck pushed back, stating that he is "against unions, but not all unions." Beck is careful to differentiate between the largely white and abandoned industrial/factory unions and the new, service oriented SEIU. Beck warns that SEIU is unlike other unions, a part of a shadowy cabal of progressive institutions that threaten the safety and fabric of American life. On October 25, 2010 Beck called out SEIU, alleging that “every day we are unmasking villains.”

Glenn Beck Claims SEIU Does Not Represent the People, But a Shadow Conspiracy
In the attack on liberal groups that Beck dubbed “Crime, Inc.,” which led California highway shooter Byron Williams to seek to murder liberal activists, Beck named SEIU an important pillar in the liberal plot to destroy America. On September 13, 2010 Beck cautioned, “[t]here are those people that really want this to collapse, and they are planning on violence. They're planning on it -- we've already shown you. We've already seen it with SEIU.” Beck, claiming that SEIU is “awakening a sleeping giant,” threatening a “revolution,” states “you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent."
In this week’s midterms, Beck warned that “SEIU [is] rigging voting machines.” On September 1, 2010 Beck threatened that “SEIU is going to come and deliver a beatdown to you if you are at a tea party,” and he has stated that "even the Boy Scouts aren't safe from SEIU's thuggery."
Beck recently attacked SEIU, again, by name, on September 21, 2010, warning “values of Union bosses… don’t match up with your values, and I am talking to Union members. … It is about a global idea of moving wealth around out of your pocket into the pocket of workers in third world nations.” Beck warns against “SEIU’s message,” calling it “Communist, Marxist, propaganda” and pleading that “we don't want to become a socialist nation.” Just because he attacks the leaders does not mean, however, that Beck is not also attacking the members of SEIU.

Glenn Beck Claims SEIU Members Are Thugs and Terrorists
Beck attacks the members of SEIU themselves. On November 8, 2009, Beck tweeted of SEIU, “It nvr has been members that bother me. Leadership & Thugs that R poisons NOT average members.” A few months later Beck called SEIU members “"burnout, loser hippies," and compared the members to al Qaeda suicide bombers, contending that “you'll notice that people in al Qaeda, the leaders never blow themselves up. They just get the youth to do it…. Well here you have SEIU and SDS in bed in California, or I mean in Arizona. Here you have these grand leaders ... that, you know, they did their tour of duty. Now it's the young. And they'll reap all of the benefits."

Without Delegitimizing SEIU, Glenn Beck is No Populist
In his invocation of terrorism and “thuggery,” and in his claim that SEIU, unlike “other” Unions who are less “radical,” Beck is tapping into a covert racism to draw distinctions between his wealthy white viewers and the “thugs” whose shadow plan is to redistribute their wealth. In so doing, Beck seeks to validate his audiences’ feelings of victimization and to delegitimize SEIU and its members’ status as underdogs. This reversal of roles is necessary to Beck’s populism. If SEIU is not a shadow conspiracy to violently redistribute wealth, Beck’s claims that the wealthy need to be protected from the working poor sounds outrageous.