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Glenn Greenwald: ‘Journalists Are Authoritarians’
- op03 6y agoAs much as I can't stand the type of people he is talking about, Glenn Greenwald has slowly been loosing his mind. If someone is studying what happens to people who spend 24x7 reacting to Hypocrisy, that too on fucking Twitter of all places, please study Glenn.
- gfodor 6y agoI happen to think Glenn is right about a lot of things, so if your claim that he has lost his mind is true, what falsifiable prediction would you propose as a way to determine if it is the case?
- free_rms 6y agoI don't think they meant literally lost his mind. I'd be happy to see more reporting on other topics mixed in with the media contrarianism. It's an important point and I agree with it but he becomes the thing he criticizes at a certain point.
- mancerayder 6y agoGlenn has been making reasoned arguments about the threat posed by centralized control of information, which isn't controversial. He uses examples to support his statements of principles he's defending, and makes predictions about what will happen next. That the takeaway from his opponents is that he's crazy, is very 1984-like, and a testament to how ad hominem argumentation dominates the discourse.
- crocodiletears 6y agoUsed to be, people we disagreed with were bots. Now we just pathologize them.
- cbozeman 6y agoIs he losing his mind, or is it more along the lines of, if you find out just how fucking corrupt the interplay between business, media, and government is, you become so angry and jaded that it looks like you're losing your mind? For all the shit you know, there's more out there that even's worse, and there's another load of shit that's classified that you'll never know. When I was attached to a Naval special operations unit as their quartermaster and small boat coxswain, I had a top secret clearance and I had access to Intellipedia. I made the mistake of just sitting down after watch and reading. And reading. And reading more. I quickly came to the realization that its a good thing I don't have Superman's powers. The amount of people that not only deserve to be dead, but need to be dead is enormous.
- chippy 6y agoToday I learnt about Intellipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia Thanks!
- newacct583 6y agoCan we get this flagged right now (see last sentence about people needing to be killed)? This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that is going to get people killed. Not cool.
- Helloworldboy 6y agoSo?
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoThis is exactly the sort of mind reading and motive attributing that we don't need. The US has the death penalty. How do you know the GP isn't advocating for them to be tried and sentenced for actions carrying that penalty, such as murder or treason?
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- soloninja 6y agoTwitter does have the affect on people to go crazy. I think your wrong about Glenn he is correct. Just look up the facts. Glenn gets more respect the more you study him.
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- 99_00 6y agoBut what is the reason you think he is "loosing his mind"?
- fullshark 6y agoProbably because he's starting to call out hypocrisy on OP's team instead of the other team.
- lettergram 6y agoAnother possibility... everyone else is loosing their minds and ushering an authoritarian pseudo-communist state in the United States. Glenn sees it, and is trying desperately to warn us. I happen to agree with Glenn on most things, in fact I think most people do. Probably <10% of the US is on Twitter regularly. Everyone off Twitter thinks the world has lost their minds.
- hire_charts 6y agoA third possibility: Greenwald has bought heavily into the same cultural zeitgeist that is extremely prevalent on this forum: that "SJWs" and progressives will somehow destroy the fabric of neoliberalism. He's not warning us of something only he can see, so much as he's repurposing the same, tired alt-right arguments for an audience that doesn't necessarily identify as alt-right.
- zpeti 6y agoExcept it was Obama that jailed the most whistleblowers in history. Who didn’t pardon Snowden either. But yeah, it’s all an alt right conspiracy.
- hire_charts 6y agoExcept this exact same argument, nearly verbatim, was one of the alt-right anti-Obama talking points! It's a solid criticism too - don't get me wrong. But it's a single argument, reused over and over, to do more than simply criticize the actions of an administration - rather, to construct a grand conspiracy about how modern Democrats and progressives are secretly authoritarians. Nothing Greenwald writes these days goes beyond this tired trope. (Which, I suppose, would make perfect sense to anyone who has similarly bought into this conspiracy.)
- zepto 6y ago“to construct a grand conspiracy about how modern Democrats and progressives are secretly authoritarians“ Can you explain where the idea that there is a conspiracy, or a secret comes from? I don’t see Greenwald or the other repeaters of this ‘tired’ argument actually claiming there is a conspiracy. The argument seems to be that people who say they are liberals are behaving like authoritarians when you actually look at their actions, rather than their words. I don’t see why a conspiracy is needed for that to be true.
- snicksnak 6y ago> Glenn Greenwald has slowly been loosing his mind what do you mean by that. From my perspective, Gleen Greenwald has remained consistent with his views, the news media just went entirely insane.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoI think this is what creates that perception. People whose worldview is shaped predominantly by the media outlets that have jumped the shark encounter cognitive dissonance when someone correctly points out their failings, and are more invested in trusting the establishment than what some guy has to say about them, even if that guy is correct. Notice that it's "Glenn Greenwald has gone crazy" and not any substantive refutation of anything he said.
- captain_price7 6y agoSo what happened to him? I follow him on twitter too. I don't see what's wrong with him. Some people complain he isn't "balanced" i.e. 9/10 of his criticisms are aimed at comparatively "good guys" i.e. liberals, while he rarely talks about conservatives. But I think that's perfectly fine, his niche is feeling a void left by hyper-partisan mainstream media- not everybody have to be expert on everything.
- dc2k08 6y agoWhat's good about forcing women's sports to allow men to compete?
- newacct583 6y agoThe problem is that if you read Greenwald during the Bush years, you'd see a very different person. And not just for partisan reasons. Greenwald during the Iraq was absolutely was an expert on the stuff he wrote about, and took shots that were well-aimed and decisively argued. Now he whines abstractly about vaguely libertarian ideas and complains about democrats and establishment journalists almost exclusively. He used to be a serious foreign policy wonk!
- papaf 6y agoGlenn Greenwald has slowly been loosing his mind. Is this something he said in the interview or on Twitter? Do you have a particular quote?
- tootie 6y agoHe has absolutely always been like this.
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- throwaway5752 6y agoDefinitely not. He started on a blogspot site, Unclaimed Territory and argued about free speech and got into fights with Andrew Sullivan. This is well before he got married and moved to Brazil, started the Intercept. He has not always been like this. I stopped reading him before the Intercept. The old Glenn Greenwald would have never have written this article.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoReally? I started reading him when he was on Salon back in the Bush years (remember when Democrats believed Dominion had hacked the voting machines?) and he's been super consistent in his views, at least from my perspective. Someone like Greenwald will always end up in trouble, because he appears to have principles that don't match neatly to either Team A or B, with the result that everyone ends up hating him.
- tootie 6y agoI read some of his stuff back then and remember thinking that was being an illogical contrarian. He didn't break much news at all but rather layered lots of opinions that I didn't think we're well supported by facts.
- DC1350 6y agoJournalists love Twitter, and I don't think it's possible to spend any significant amount of time on there without losing your mind. Is it just a Glenn Greenwald issue, or something with all journalists? I wish there was a way to get decent quality news from people who stay away from its influence. I've never met a person in real life who acts like the people on blue checkmark Twitter do.
- newacct583 6y agoI'm genuinely of the opinion that Greenwald was compromised somehow right around the time of the Snowden revelations. Before then, he was an acerbic jerk writing with moral clarity about the persistent overreach of the US security state. His writing had crunch and specificity, and his targets were all over the political map. But post-Snowden, he took a hard partisan turn. He'd enter regular tiresome disagreements where really the only argument was over who was being more hyperbolic or hypocritical. And he... ignore stuff you're really expect he'd care about. He spent years flogging the media for overemphasis of Russian interference because it was a "crazy conspiracy theory" but I swear he never once said a peep about Q. Really, if you knew nothing about the guy's history and just read his 2016-20 writing, you'd just figure he was an oddbally high brow Trump fan. And very notably: this was true ONLY in his writing about US policy. His Brazil stuff was widely regarded (by others -- I don't speak Portuguese nor am I an expert on Brazilian politics) as just as good (and acerbic) as his earlier work about the Bush administration. Maybe it's just branding. Maybe he figured he'd do better career-wise selling his work into a right wing market than he would continuing to criticize everyone. But... that doesn't sound right to me, because he's not exploiting typical right wing audiences nor using right wing platforms to do it. Something happened to Greenwald c. 2013-14
- lazulicurio 6y agoTo me, I think that the core of his criticisms are still valid, but it seems like he's adopted an accelerationist's take on politics. That it's possible to provoke the security state to self-destruction. Which I feel is, at best, a naive take.
- zpeti 6y agoCome on, you are saying that greenwald is compromised because he attacks the left, yet he’s done good work at the same time on Brazil and bush? So which is it? He’s crazy when he’s talking about others but not your side? Could it be that he is correct and you are unable to process the fact that Obama was in fact absolutely terrible for whisteblowers and journalists? Btw, just look at the statistics.
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- chishaku 6y agoPlease study this comment and thread to see how ad hominem attacks completely distract from the critical issues being discussed in the article.
- coffeefirst 6y agoAlternately, maybe he was always a little bit crazy, but had the editors to push back on the parts he didn't have evidence to support. This isn't to say he's not right about some things, but this interview is 20% paranoid delusion.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoCan you specify what of the interview you think is paranoid delusion? Honestly, I would be really interested.
- eplanit 6y agoHe was a hero until people found he doesn't adhere to a single narrative. He's an unreliable source for zealots.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments, flamewar-style comments, or personal attacks to HN. It's exactly what we're trying to avoid on this site, and you predictably provoked a flamewar. Maybe you don't owe Greenwald better but you definitely owe this community better if you're posting here. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- poxwole 6y agoGlenn Greenwald - literally the definition of too 3Dgy 4 u
- todipa 6y agoI think he is completely right. Journalism today looks more like advocacy. Free-speech liberalism are at odds with the political establishment. The liberal camp has been decimated recently with the rise of both the authoritarian right/left. From my perspective, what is happening in the US right now is somewhat similar to what happened in the Latin American countries in the 60s and 70s. I'm very happy I discovered https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news It gives me access to articles written about the same subject from both perspectives. What I think it super interesting is how journalists omit certain facts to further their point of view.
- pohl 6y agoGlenn’s shtick as a writer has been to deliberately avoid hewing to the meaning of words that make useful cudgels.
- seventytwo 6y agoGreenwald is a nut job.
- dang 6y agoOK, but please do not post unsubstantive or flamebait comments here, and especially not name-calling or personal attacks. That's what used to be called trolling. It maybe still is, but it used to be as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tootie 6y ago> Facebook and Google and Twitter, and Silicon Valley in general, from the beginning was not to censor. They began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians There's the headline quotation right there and I gotta say it does not make a lick of sense to me. Journalists didn't drive this at all.
- zpeti 6y agoYes they did. For 4 years they blamed and attacked FB and Twitter for letting trump win. The pressure was enough. Enough for these platforms to disable private messaging of bad Biden news story links. Whether you think it was true or not, it’s insane that these platforms did this 2 weeks before an election.
- threatofrain 6y agoIt's notable that the US local news landscape is dominated by the Sinclair media group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
- tootie 6y ago"There is bias in the media" Obviously true and uncontroversial. "Some media outlets pursue political agendas from the top down" Seemingly true in a few places "Journalists are authoritarians" Meaningless blanket generalization and definitely false.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> Meaningless blanket generalization and definitely false. You're just parsing it uncharitably. Saying journalists are authoritarians is like saying turtles are slow. The fact that you can find the occasional turtle with a rocket sled and is thereby not slow doesn't really disprove the general principle. The context also indicates that he's referring to journalists at specific enumerated publications, in which case it might reasonably refer to the entirety of them if the structure of those institutions is pushing out anyone who isn't.
- TedShiller 6y agoAfter Trump's election, journalists couldn't stop talking about foreign interference. After biden's election, nobody mentioned foreign interference.
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- motohagiography 6y agoCan you keep a professional job in media if you believe public institutions are corrupted and you bring that standard to your work? You can write, you can be popular on social media, and you can even get the odd freelance gig, but if you align yourself against real power itself, I think he's saying you cannot be an employee, editor, or producer. I can't see how a serious writer would want to be a journalist now anyway, and Greenwald seems to recognize that there is no "back" to go to. What forward looks like for writers is much more interesting.
- sthnblllII 6y agoCorrect. A lot of millennials have a warped view of power. Greenwald is very gen-x: skeptical, questioning authority, seeking out the organic and real ("i listen to 'alternative' music, dude"). Millennial culture is heavily trusting, self-righteous and therefore heavily media influenced. Fertile ground for authoritarian regimes and corruption. The right defends the Kushners, the left defends the Bidens, everyone loses.
- jagger27 6y agoThese HN threads are seriously toxic.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago100% on point, they always are. Thankyou for reminding me to not engage. It's honestly too much despite having a strong opinion on the matter.
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoIt's sad that just because Greenwald doesn't toe the line, he's considered fringe and insane. Our Overton window is in a weird spot these days.
- happytoexplain 6y ago>just because Greenwald doesn't toe the line, he's considered fringe and insane Is there a reason you're painting his critics as so simple-minded? I've seen a lot of seemingly reasonable criticism of him.
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoNot all his critics. If you disagree with him and can provide substance, that's fine and we can debate it. But there were a lot of comments in this thread that were literally just saying "Greenwald is losing his mind". No argument, just that.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoIt’s getting smaller and tighter. I think it’s on purpose.
- zug_zug 6y agoI'm reading this hoping for good points, but I mostly am seeing weak arguments. Also the title is baity. >> The worst thing Trump ever did to any of them was to say mean things about them in tweets. Those aren't assaults on press freedom. It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter. >> [Facebook and Twitter] had to start censoring…because journalists at CNN and NBC and The New York Times demanded they do so. I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative. >> [Seems to be arguing that millenials care about free speech less because they are coddled] I'm not even gonna touch that one. >> They began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians who believe that the modes of information [should be] regulated by them and by others. That's just unfortunately the modern-day mentality of the journalist. If he hadn't slipped the word authoritarian in there, I think this might be the most interesting point of the piece. I think a lot of people, including journalists, scientific journals, textbooks, wikipedia, even HN believe in rating/filtering information on its quality (is it true?, is it divisive?, does it have an agenda?). In fact, the filtering/amplifying of information is the primary job of such platforms. As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers). This is where a good-faith exploration would really be interesting. >> [Seems to insinuate that the NYT doesn't believe in whistleblowers like Snowden.] I hope that's not true.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter. What's the alternative? Traditional media gets a pass for everything wrong they do because pizzagate? > I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative. Not when they've been calling for it since long before the riot. (I'm not sure when it became riots. Was there a second one?) > As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism And lest we not forget state-sponsored media. > We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. The experiment we tried was a Facebook algorithm designed to increase "engagement" by promoting controversy. That was a Bad Idea. Maybe time to smash them up instead of appointing them arbiters of the discourse.
- nicolasp 6y agoI'm very ambivalent about Greenwald. One the one hand he produced essential work with the Snowden revelations and his exposure of corruption in Brazil. He also makes good points about the moral evil of the Bush/Cheney administrations and Obama's continuation of the war on terror. But on the other hand it feels like he spends a lot of time attacking strawmen just for the sake of being contrarian. Saying that journalists are authoritarians who want to protect the secrets of the powerful [1] and control access to platforms [2] has a tiny grain of truth in it but is mainly a massive oversimplification that paints a group of thousands of professionals who have a myriad of varying incentives with an incredibly broad brush. He seems to be incapable of nuance in his critique of the journalistic profession, and that renders his message mostly inaudible to me because it feels like it's coming from some form of resentment rather than reasoned arguments. [1] "Journalists view the dissemination of information about what powerful people are doing in the dark not as their principal function and purpose—which is what it ought to be if we had a healthy media—but as something to be denounced and condemned." [2] "[Facebook and Google and Twitter, and Silicon Valley in general] began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians who believe that the modes of information [should be] regulated by them and by others.
- Shivetya 6y agoIt isn't that journalist see social media as a threat but so do the politicians they report on. Prior to the rise of social media, this should not be simply considered Facebook, Twitter, and like, but all the internet as a whole, we relied on the idea that the press, print, radio, and televised, told us the truth. However the internet showed this was never true. Yes elements of the media did report the truth but they also produced some stories that were outright fabrications or purposefully did not include information that did not support the narrative; three very big stories that fall under this are the GM pickup fires which were assisted in catching fire, that chemical and biological weapons were widespread in Iraq, and of course Dan Rather's fake National Guard document. Both the media and the political class help each other. One does it to gain favor and the other does it control the message. The internet took the ability to control the message, the narrative, away from the established media and politicians. It put it back into the hands of everyone. So Greenwald's assertion is true in many ways. A return to where politicians used the media to control the message is a return to a system which allowed the Iraq war to come to fruition. The claim he makes that the press holds the office of the Presidency to different standards based on the party that controls it is easily provable as well. We never saw a level of press persecution before that occurred under Obama yet all of Trump's rambling diatribe was considered worse? On what planet? Hell this site is guilty of the same as well. We have people here cheering on the FBI, likely the same that screamed when the same agencies trampled on people they liked. This is the society the old media and politicians gave us, putting us at each others throats and taught to revel in it
- pmoriarty 6y ago"I'll give you just one example, which is press freedom. Under Obama, as I'm sure you know, the Espionage Act of 1917--one of the most pernicious laws we have on our books; it was enacted under Woodrow Wilson, and it was designed to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I--was invoked against whistleblowers and sources, like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and a dozen others, more under Obama than every other prior president combined. It ended up being three times more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for our sources as journalists than all previous presidents, including Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever you want to pick. And the press said almost nothing." I'd like to know what exactly is so "insane" about pointing this out. Glenn Greenwald has always been actually on the left, unlike the milk-toast "leftism" (or really "centrism" or rightism) of outlets like the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, etc.. This is what bothers people, and they can't take people actually on the left pointing out what hypocrites and right-wingers many liberals are. This is why Glenn Greenwald gets censored, but I'm pleased to see that he still has the balls to speak truth to power.
- microtherion 6y ago> Glenn Greenwald has always been actually on the left Over the last couple of years, he has consistently supported Trump, down to echoing Parler administrators' easily disproven talking points that none of their users were involved in the Capitol riots. It's entirely consistent with his earlier positions that Greenwald opposed Obama/Clinton-era drone warfare, but from his writings, you'd have a difficult time learning how much drone strikes have expanded under Trump. And finally, since 2016, Greenwald (as well as Assange and Snowden) have essentially turned into full blown instruments of Putinist propaganda (In Greenwald's case including the denial that Russia engaged in Novichok attacks against critics). This is neither a "leftist" nor an "anti-war" position, he simply favors a different bunch of war mongers.
- pohl 6y agoThe through line over that whole period, including the present piece, is the pattern of bending over backwards to align with Putin’s messaging goals.
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- DennisP 6y agoFwiw, here's TheIntercept's response to his resignation: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-the-intercept/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...
- colordrops 6y agoThey didn't address any of the very specific and long form claims that he made in his article about his exit. Seems like long winded ad hominem attack against him.
- tzs 6y ago> I'll give you just one example, which is press freedom. Under Obama, as I'm sure you know, the Espionage Act of 1917—one of the most pernicious laws we have on our books; it was enacted under Woodrow Wilson, and it was designed to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I—was invoked against whistleblowers and sources, like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and a dozen others, more under Obama than every other prior president combined. It ended up being three times more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for our sources as journalists than all previous presidents, including Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever you want to pick. And the press said almost nothing. That's fairly meaningless without a comparison of the number of people for whom it could have been applied under Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever. Was it applied more under Obama than, say, Eisenhower because Obama applied it to cases that Eisenhower would not have applied it to if they had occurred during his administration? Or were there more people leaking classified information during Obama's time in office than there were during Eisenhower's and that explains why it was applied more under Obama.
- nbzso 6y agoI thank our generous corporate saviours for this reality : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RSruvBJdrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RSruvBJdrM ##### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muxJxNl0IK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muxJxNl0IK0
- goalieca 6y agoWhether you agree with the government response to covid or not, I think it’s fair to say it was authoritarian. Journalists generally took the position that more rules and restrictions were necessary and often applauded the strongest government responses from other countries. For that reason alone, it would seem there is an authoritarian bend.