Glenn Beck: Facebook Employees ‘Liberal’ but ‘Not Progressives’

Glenn Beck’s blog on Medium dishing on his trip to Facebook headquarters declares that the employees he met, while left-wing, were not “progressives,” a term he has used to label Republican politicians such as Newt Gingrich.

“I understand why conservatives are suspicious of Silicon Valley,” Beck writes. “It can feel a lot like the main stream media. But I’ve told you many times that I feel at home in Silicon Valley. I love the energy.”

He then argues that Facebook’s employees, while socially liberal, want fewer government regulations:

These are people who want to innovate and disrupt, they want the government to stop regulating their businesses, they want small business to succeed, they value personal responsibility, etc. Why they are liberal? I don’t know, but in general, they’re not Progressives, at least not the folks I met with today (though I’m sure there were a few).

A press representative for Beck declined to clarify whether he considers CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg a progressive or not–or whether he considers Zuckerberg’s lobbying organization, FWD.us, to have a progressive agenda.

FWD.us, founded by Zuckerberg and several other Silicon Valley bigwigs, has pushed for looser immigration laws and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the country. The organization encouraged and endorsed President Barack Obama’s executive action granting amnesty to illegal immigrants — even after a federal judge halted it. It has pushed for a “permanent legislative solution” to push the country’s immigration policy beyond even Obama’s actions, primarily to increase the number of guest-worker visas and expand the pool of low-cost employees for companies like Facebook.

Beck framed the controversy over Facebook’s “Trending Topics” management as the first public evidence of an anti-conservative agenda at the company:

In a country that is deeply divided, the largest and most important company in human interaction and content consumption saw the conservative movement in an uproar over ONE person, making ONE accusation, against ONE of their products. One story and the pitchforks came out.

Beck’s press representative declined to comment on Facebook’s open partnership with the German government to remove “hate speech” from the platform — effectively silencing citizens who criticized the country’s large influx of Muslim migrants.

The libertarian radio host has labeled Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich “progressive” during their respective primary runs. In 2011, he insinuated Gingrich’s policy positions were the same as President Obama’s, but Tea Partiers found Gingrich’s progressivism palatable because he is white. Beck declared Donald Trump a progressive in 2015, arguing that the billionaire candidate hopes to achieve his signature immigration policies “through bigger government.”

Beck appears to wave off Zuckerberg’s positions on social issues as merely “liberal,” but in the past he has warned that stances like Zuckerberg’s will lead to greater government tyranny or are more sinister than the mainstream media portrays them.

Zuckerberg cheered the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage across the United States. The next day, Beck said on his radio program that the Court’s decision would steepen a slippery slope of politically correct fascism: “The term ‘mom and dad’ in the traditional family is over… This could mean the end of radio broadcasts like mine… It puts anybody who stands up for traditional marriage in jeopardy at work because you are now going against what the federal government says we must now all accept.”

Beck’s warnings have been vindicated, as several bakers, photographers, and Christian-run small businesses have been sued and punished for not providing their services to gay couples’ weddings. Zuckerberg’s reaction to Obergefell concluded: “We still have much more to do to achieve full equality for everyone in our community, but we are moving in the right direction.”

This past February, Zuckerberg chastised Facebook employees for crossing out “Black Lives Matter” messages on the company’s chalkboard walls and writing “All Lives Matter” over them. He warned he was “investigating” who was responsible for the infractions and encouraged employees to “educate themselves on what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about” at a town hall.

Beck, just a few months earlier, compared BLM to terrorism. As reported by The Blaze:

“What is the point of terrorism?” Beck said. “It is to get you to change to be so afraid that you change your behavior and you do as they want you to do. So while they haven’t used guns, they are using intimidation and threats of violence and shouting you down, blackballing you — whatever it takes.”

These stark social differences, apparently, did not affect Wednesday’s summit. Tucker Carlson, a fellow attendee of the Facebook meeting, derided Beck for “sucking up” to Zuckerberg. “There’s a billionaire there, so he sniffs the throne,” the Daily Caller co-founder and Fox News contributor told Politico.