The New York Times reports:

Two days before a mob of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol, upending the nation’s peaceful transition of power and leaving at least five people dead, the right-wing radio star Glenn Beck delivered a message to his flock of 10.5 million listeners: “It is time to fight.”

“It is time to rip and claw and rake,” Mr. Beck said on his Jan. 4 broadcast. “It is time to go to war, as the left went to war four years ago.”

A former Fox News host, Mr. Beck had speculated for weeks about baseless claims of voter fraud in the presidential race. He told listeners that Donald J. Trump had taught conservatives that “you don’t have to cower anymore, you don’t have to back down when ridiculed into oblivion. You can fight back.”

Mr. Beck did not lobby for his listeners to invade the Capitol, and a day later, he urged marchers in Washington “to really kind of channel your inner Martin Luther King,” adding that violence is “just not who we’ve ever been.” But the language he used on his Jan. 4 show was typical of the aggressive rhetoric that permeated conservative talk radio in the weeks before the Washington siege.

Talk radio is perhaps the most influential and under-chronicled part of right-wing media, where the voices of Mr. Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other star hosts waft through the homes, workplaces and commutes of tens of millions of listeners. Before the riot, the shows were often unrestrained forums for claims of rigged voting machines and a liberal conspiracy to steal the presidency for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mark Levin, who reaches an estimated 11 million listeners a week, said in a Christmas broadcast that stealing elections “is becoming the norm for the Democrat Party” and called on his listeners to “crush them, crush them. We need to kick their ass.” [Continue reading…]