Diana West pierces the Saudi veil at Fox News, where Geert Wilders is suddenly odd man out

It was pile-on time at Fox News tonight as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, a gal whose name I missed [update -- A.B. Stoddard] and Bill Kristol all branded Geert Wilders beyond the pale tonight.

Beck classified Geert as a fascist.

Krauthammer said Geert didn't know the difference between Islam and Islamism -- never mind that according to Krauthammer's idea of Islamic scholarship, neither did Mohammed.

[Stoddard] said she agreed with Imam Krauthammer and added that if people like this (Geert) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.

Kristol called Geert a demagogue.

In other words, a stomach-turning display -- or should I say halal?

Fact is, this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight Newscorp stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. That's because it is Wilders in the Netherlands who stands as the unexpectedly strong spearhead of resistance to the Islamization of Europe and the wider West. As a scion of the most powerful sharia dictatorship in the world, Prince Talal doesn't like that. How fortunate for him that Fox News doesn't like it, either.

The Daily Beast on the Daily Nervous Breakdown

Now the torch has been passed to Beck, a man who a decade ago was just starting his post top-40 DJ career with a talk show broadcast on a single station in Tampa. Today, he is the king of all conservative media, with a hit television show, a nationally syndicated radio program, and five books on the best-seller lists. Now the consummate showman is already promoting a new book, The Plan, which he will debut in August with an open-air rally of followers on the Washington Mall. Will his speech offer a glimpse into his “plan” to take America back from President Obama and what Beck has repeatedly called “the cancer of progressivism”?

One thing is certain: The man is crazy like a fox. The best way to get a sense of where Beck might steer the conservative debate in 2010 is to study his past—it’s a story of ambition and addiction, mixing politics and religion. He recycles old fears with apocalyptic urgency, polarizing for profit, making himself the Pied Piper for a new generation of angry, anxiety-ridden, and alienated Americans.