Glenn Beck compares social media bans to what Germans did to Jews: 'The digital ghetto'

On Tucker Carlson Tonight Tuesday, conservative radio host Glenn Beck made a shocking comparison that garnered fierce backlash online. Following the deadly insurrection attempt at the Capitol last week, President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, indefinitely lost his Facebook privileges and has been temporarily muted by multiple other platforms. Twitter also purged over 70,000 accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Beck equated these to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

“This is like the Germans with the Jews behind the wall,” Beck said. “They would put them in the ghetto. Well this is the digital ghetto. ‘You can talk all you want, Jews. You do whatever you want behind the wall.’ Well, that’s not meaningful, and that’s where we are. That’s where millions of Americans will be.”

Beck also compared the treatment of Trump and other conservatives on social media to Japanese internment camps here in the U.S.

“We made one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century by taking our own citizens and, listen to this, confiscating their wealth, making sure they couldn't work, shutting them down, and then putting them in camps,” Beck said. “Tucker, this is the road we’re on again.”

Video Transcript

GLENN BECK: This is like the Germans with the Jews behind the wall. They would put them in the ghetto. Well, this is the digital ghetto.

- On "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Tuesday, conservative radio host Glenn Beck spoke about recent social media crackdowns and made a shocking comparison. Following the deadly siege on the Capitol last week, President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter and indefinitely lost his Facebook privileges. Twitter also purged more than 70,000 accounts linked to QAnon conspiracy theories. Beck compared these things to how Jews were treated in Nazi Germany.

GLENN BECK: You can talk all you want. Jews, you do whatever you want behind the wall. Well, that's not meaningful. And that's where we are. That's where millions of Americans will be.

- Beck immediately faced fierce backlash online, including from CNN's Jake Tapper, who tweeted, "This is nothing like what the Nazis did to the Jews and if you think that you're an absolute moron."

And keeping with his World War II analogy, Beck also compared the treatment of Trump and other conservatives on social media to Japanese internment camps here in the US.

GLENN BECK: We made one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th century by taking our own citizens-- and listen to this-- confiscating their wealth, making sure they couldn't work, shutting them down, and then putting them in camps.

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