The Coming Insurrection's condemnation at the hands of Fox News commentator provides huge boost to anonymous authors
Alison Flood | guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010
'This is evil stuff' ... Glenn Beck. Photograph: Mike Mergen/AP
The book, by an anonymous collective of French authors calling themselves the Invisible Committee, is a "call to arms", rejecting the official left and "aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the war on terror".
Describing itself as "a prescription for an emergent war-machine to spread anarchy and live communism", it has caused ructions in France, where it was proclaimed a manual of terrorism by the French government and where it has also been selling in its thousands. In 2008, the French government arrested four men and five women known as the Tarnac Nine over far-left terrorism, alleging that one of them was the book's author.
Published in the US by tiny Californian press Semiotext(e) last August with an initial print run of just 3,000, a barrage of anti-endorsements from Beck on Fox News has apparently led to it hovering around the top 10 of Amazon's US bestseller charts for the last week, alongside more recognisable titles by the likes of Stieg Larsson and Rick Riordan.
"This is quite possibly the most evil thing I've ever read and it's about to play out in streets of Greece. It's been played out in France," Beck said last week, brandishing a copy of the book. "The story is written by 12 people. Some of them are in jail now over in Europe. They're actual communists. They've been masquerading as democratic socialists: 'Oh, we're not Marxists, we're not communists, we're like you' … This is evil stuff … In it there's one chapter on how to destroy the family". The book promptly soared up Amazon's charts from below the 400 mark where it had been languishing to a high of seventh and a current place of 12th, ahead of Stephenie Meyer's hit Breaking Dawn and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol – particularly impressive given that it's available for free online in both English and French.
Beck had previously given the book a boost last year even before it was published. Pointing to an extract from the book – "Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary ... There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary" – he told his viewers to read it. "People on the extreme left are calling people to arms. I am not calling for a ban on this book. It's important that you read this book [...] And let me tell you something: Don't dismiss these people. Don't dismiss them."
Publisher Semiotexte has been lapping up Beck's words, using them as part of its collection of reviews to promote the book and seeing a spike in sales every time he mentions it. "We're having trouble keeping stock in the warehouse," Rebecca Schrader at the book's distributor MIT Press told US publishing magazine Publishers Weekly. "And we're dealing with reprint quantities that we don't see every day."
Beck is probably more pleased with the effect his recent endorsement had on A Patriot's History of the United States, which claims to correct the "biases" that have "distort[ed] the way America's past is taught", rejecting previous history books' searches for "instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in [America's] history while downplaying the greatness of America's patriots" in favour of recounting the "public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful".
After Beck spoke about the book on his show last week, he claimed that it moved from around 58,000 on Amazon.com to a current position of one. "I read a lot of in-depth history," said Beck. "This is a beginner's book of history, it is a gateway into the history that no one is teaching ... Last night I mentioned this book, it was 58,000 on Amazon.com. I got off the air, it was number one. It's still number one. Good. Please, please read it."
