Glenn Beck: My listeners are 'civil rights leaders' who will 'save the nation'

Fashioning himself as a kind of new wave civil rights prophet on Monday, conspiracy talk show host Glenn Beck predicted that his "long term" listeners would rise up and become "civil rights leaders" themselves before going on to "save the nation" from an unspecified threat.

"Things are going to get tougher," he solemnly said. "And quite honestly, I believe I have said from the beginning, and I know this to be true more and more every day, that it will be this audience that saves the nation."

"I no longer believe that it's going to be saved in the way that we thought it would be," Beck went on. "It may only be saved in remnants and pieces. There may only be portions of people that are actually living the constitution, but it will be saved. The American spirit will not be snuffed out."

"I don't know what's coming," he added. "I do know tough times are coming. And I do know that real civil rights leaders will rise. I don't know who they are. If you're listening to this program and you're listening long term, they're probably going to be you."

Beck has long tried to position himself and the tea party movement as the modern day heirs to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., going so far as to stage his "Rally to Restore Honor" on the anniversary of King's "I Have A Dream" speech, giving his own talk just steps away from where King stood.

Despite his attempts to co-opt the civil rights movement, Beck is adamantly opposed to a key tentpost of Dr. King's legacy: economic justice. “I think that is part of it but that’s a part of it that I don’t agree with,” he told Fox News host Chris Wallace in 2010. “The real agenda should be equal justice, an equal shot."

Beck also once shamed an actual civil rights leader -- Rep. John Lewis (R-GA), who famously marched with King -- after he walked arm-in-arm with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "They locked arms because they wanted to compare themselves to the civil rights activists," Beck said during a 2010 Fox News broadcast. "How dare you?! Look at these people! They refused to get up! But Nancy Pelosi? I don't know how you can't be offended by that."

It was just a year later when he was forced off the network, amid an advertiser boycott staged in response to his claim that President Barack Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."

This video is from "The Glenn Beck Show," published Monday, June 3, 2013, snipped by Right Wing Watch.