This just makes me sad.
This is from Glenn Greenwald’s substack account. It makes me sad because I remember when Glenn Greenwald was a voice of reason on the Left. Now he carps at “liberals” for “censorship” at a time when the Right is campaigning to remove books from school libraries and prevent schools from teaching actual American history. Apparently that’s okay. But if people are refusing to do business with Spotify because Joe Rogan’s podcasts about covid could be getting people killed, this means all of liberalism is about censorship. I can’t even.
Florida school district cancels professor’s civil rights lecture over critical race theory concerns
Republicans Are Trying to Suppress More Than Votes
Conservatives Are Banning Books From Schools While Whining About ‘Cancel Culture’
Art Spiegelman sees the new ban of his book ‘Maus’ as a ‘red alert’
Greenwald pooh-poohs “the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID” which in fact have been supported by solid evidence. But notice that he skips the more critical issue of hospitalizations, now that Omicron has changed the transmission calculations (although “breakthrough” cases of the fully vaccinated are still much, much lower than the rate of cases among the unvaccinated).
As of January 12, data show the unvaccinated are 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people. Note that since the fully vaccinated population tends to be older, and with more health problems, than the unvaccinated, the actual protective benefits of vaccination for an individual would probably be a lot higher. See also.
https://time.com/6138566/pandemic-of-unvaccinated/
I’m really tired of having to explain this.
Further, let’s consider that the protests of Joe Rogan on Spotify are not coming from government or a political party or dark-money funded organizations, but just people. People voting with their pocketbooks by canceling subscriptions or boycotting businesses is a time-honored way of expressing approval or disapproval of public speech or action. The book and information banning going on right now in public school classrooms and public and school libraries is being organized and funded by conservative donors and enabled by high-level Republican officer holders. This comes closer to any definition of censorship than people canceling their Spotify accounts.
And the moral is, no matter how smart you are, there still could be a rabbit hole out there somewhere with your name on it. Take care.
Glenn Greenwald is and always has been a Reactionary Rightwing Ratfvcker.
Twenty years ago he was not right wing at all. Not only did I read his work, I met him at a progressive conference ca. 2006 or so. We had a long talk. He was pretty much in the main stream of lefty bloggers against the Bush Administration in those days. Around 2010 or so Rachel Maddow called him "the American left’s most fearless political commentator," according to his Wikipedia profile. But he's been living in Brazil most of the last 15 or so years, I understand, and maybe that changed him. He's purely knee-jerk right wing now.
Right on the money.
I wonder if once somebody reaches a level of notoriety and acclaim as a person whose opinions are worth listening to that when they start to decline in their perceived social standing that they grasp at any issue of controversy just to maintain a relevance in the world of opinions. Sorta like a shock jock journalist who will say anything just to be heard. Any love is good love?
He walked away from a regular gig at The Guardian and resigned (or was shoved out) from The Intercept, which he co-founded, and now he's just got a substack newsletter. Something happened to him. Brain parasites, maybe.
I respectfully disagree Maha. I will not discount your personal interaction but, GG supported the hell out of the Afghanistan and the Iraq War crimes no matter what he claims now. Then for a brief couple of years he turned against W to dupe the left into thinking he was an ally. His rank bigotry really flourished when PBO took over. He's not an ally. He's not progressive. He's a Putin loving Fascist.
Since his old Unclaimed Territory blog is no longer online, I can't disprove what you wrote. But I believe you are mistaken.
Since you know GG better than the rest of us, maha, would you say he begin to change when he got involved with Snowden and Assange?
That's what it seems like to me.
It seemed that way to me, too.
People who value money over reality move toward the dumb money, i.e., Republicon rubes. Several formerly honorable TV notables have done so in the last few years.
Yep.
Snowden and Assange are very different though they started from nearly the same place. Snowden went public with stuff the government was lying their asses off to hide. Snowden fled to Russia simply to avoid extradition.
Assange selectively released info to damage Clinton's candidacy using information that the Russians stole. This is known now, but Assange never admitted to his role as a Russian tool for the election of Donald Trump. I detest DWS for the same offense in reverse, acting for HRC while pretending neutrality.
The exact links aren't known but there was foreknowledge by Trump of what Assange was going to dump. Assange was operating in coordination with a foreign power to install Trump – and there remains every indication that Trump is under Putin's thumb.
Re GG: like Maha, I remember when Greenwald was a top journalist. Did he lose his mind? The qualities of critical thinking he had – the drivel he writes now makes no sense – Glen Beck territory. The other option is that someone got to him – blackmail is more likely than bribery if I was to guess.
Maha's conclusion is right – any of us could go off the deep end. Greenwald is proof of how far you can fall.