France Fox Piven defies death threats from Beck and followers

[LongTomH]

Article in the Guardian UK: Frances Fox Piven defies death threats after taunts by anchorman Glenn Beck. The 78 year-old, academic has gone from obscurity to being the latest target of hate speech by Fox's Glenn Beck, hate speech which is producing death threats directed at Ms. Piven and her colleagues at the City University of New York.

For the past three weeks Beck has relentlessly targeted Piven via his television and radio shows as a threat to the American way of life, seizing on an essay that she and her late husband wrote in 1966 as a sort of blueprint for bringing down the American economy.

Called The Weight of the Poor, it advocated signing up so many poor people for welfare payments that the cost would force the government to bring in a policy of a guaranteed income. For Piven, a committed voice of the left, known in academic circles but little recognised outside them, it was just one publication in a lifetime dedicated to political activism and theorising.

<snip>

It is typical of Piven. The spry, twinkle-eyed academic pulls no punches when talking of Beck. "He is a very neurotic and peculiar type of person. I don't think he is capable of sane discussion," she said. And his supporters? "They creep me out."

<snip>

Beck's conspiratorial rhetoric on Fox, which he now often backs with presentations on chalkboards and – in the case of Soros – a puppet show, might seem a bizarre stunt. But it has real-life repercussions. Last year Byron Williams stocked a truck full of guns and bullets with the stated intention of attacking liberal groups in San Francisco that Beck had mentioned. He was stopped by police before he arrived, but in a jailhouse interview Williams hailed the Fox frontman as an inspiration.

The irony of all this is that Beck's loopy rants have brought Piven, and her ideas, from near obscurity back into the public eye. She's given interviews to the New York Times and television talk shows.

Read the entire article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/frances-fox-piven-glenn-beck

[brewens]

1. I would never have heard of her or her ideas without Beck. n/t

[Mojeoux]

2. k n' r

[CTyankee]

3. Piven was on the Board of Directors of the ACLU when I was working there (NY headquarters) in

1973-76. She was an outspoken liberal and pretty brash in a way. She was not shy, retiring violet. I always got the feeling that she didn't suffer fools gladly (if at all). But she was nice. I liked her (altho I didn't know her really). She struck me as a dedicated liberal who stuck to her guns, as it were. The real deal, IMO...

[Canuckistanian]

4. Well. Thanks to Beck, we've heard of her

And her ideas. I heard an interview with her on NPR last week. She's a very committed activist for the poor and for unions.

If her work was heeded 30 or 40 years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess.