On his show today (August 5), Beck showed the quote from Bonhoeffer which reads:
"Silence in the face of evil is evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
Of course, Beck is here proof-texting, as it were, Bonhoeffer in order to promote Beck's own special brand of hate-filled fear-mongering. No mention is made of the corpus of Bonhoeffer's work, which is Christian theology that is consistently pacifistic and politically subversive in nature. Nor is there any mention of how Bonhoeffer wrestled with his involvement in the plot against Hitler for he continued to think that killing was a sin even after he joined the plot.
I'll write a more substantive post next week regarding this; I just needed to express my anger and frustration with Beck's complete dismissal of Bonhoeffer: for example, Beck called Bonhoeffer, "a hero of the left," launching what was no-doubt a preemptive strike against Bonhoeffer (even as he celebrated him) by making Bonhoeffer's political thoughts irrelevant for Beck's viewers ... because after all, politically, Bonhoeffer is just a "hero of the left." Beck said he didn't like Bonhoeffer's politics but that he instead wanted to talk about Bonhoeffer's "character." And this is just a further devaluing of Bonhoeffer because, in Beck's thought, Bonhoeffer's politics belong in the private parts of Bonhoeffer's own mind; they have no use in the public arena. Thus, Beck privatizes Bonhoeffer's politics and makes his theology irrelevant -- but he sure does have a nice four line quote that is worth citing and crying theatrically over.
More next week after I take the GRE.
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