8 ms·

Glenn Greenwald warned this would happen in 2013 – the definition of terrorism will continue to gradually expand to include harmful speech against the governmen

Glenn Greenwald warned this would happen in 2013 – the definition of terrorism will continue to gradually expand to include harmful speech against the government. Now it’s actually happening, Greenwald is still here and refreshingly consistent in his perspective, and yet for some reason it’s become popular to question the credibility of the things he says based on where he says them. It’s crazy enough that half this country is eager to slide down this slippery slope. But what’s even crazier is it’s the same half of the country that would have been completely opposed to it just eight years ago.

iammisc 5y ago
As a former democrat, now republican, I am honesty extremely surprised that it's the right being targeted. In 2002, I would have sworn the citizen databases would have been listing leftists. Reality is stranger than fiction.
- jdhn 5y ago
  >In 2002, I would have sworn the citizen databases would have been listing leftists I'm sure that when Republicans come back into power, the left will be targeted as well.
  - mc32 5y ago
    So you're saying it should be opposed now so it's not abused by anyone in power?
  - igravious 5y ago
    > Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manife... not dependent on who is in .gov Wouldn't you say that Big Tech (along with most of Big Media) has shown itself to have a (D) bias?
    - kokanator 5y ago
      It is true statistically. Big Media is generally Left Biased.[0] [0] https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444 https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444
      - igravious 5y ago
        Yo, thanks for this. The same should be ideological placement analysis should be done for Social Media – which is after all a type of Media and where lots of people get their news nowadays even if these places aren't the originators of the news. I feel like this isn't a controversial thing to say.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    When the republicans came into power from 2016-2020, they did not use the IRS to harass left-wing groups, which both Obama and Biden did. We can't pretend every party is equal. Things change, and parties obviously violate their principles (just look at the democratic party!), but when one party is disproportionately engaging in distortion and authoritarianism, they deserve the scorn heaped on them. This was true when Bush was enacting the patriot act against the GOP. And it's true today against the dems. Sorry, I'm not going to buy into 'everyone's the same mentality'. This is the same dribble the republicans were telling me during the Bush years -- Oh the democrats will take away your freedoms if they were in power. Well, I'm sure that's true, but actually in 2002, it was the GOP. Not going to pretend.
  - kokanator 5y ago
    That is odd, it didn't seem to happen when the Republicans were in power. Actually, quite the opposite. We saw a tremendous amount of censorship of Right content and people.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      I was going to say... when scary GOP was in power, the largest websites literally censored and removed the GOP president, to the applause of the left, except for the few reasonable people, like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - lazyeye 5y ago
      Maybe its no longer democrat/republican. Maybe its big tech and whatever directly or indirectly threatens it. For example, big tech likes to source workers globally (bigger labour pool, cheaper wages) so any form of patriotism/nationalism, no matter how reasonable or modest, is an anathema to it.
      - kokanator 5y ago
        You could be very correct on this. I do see that the Big Tech leaders tend support left candidates/positions consistently. Perhaps this is because it is beneficial to their business as a whole and nothing to do with their ideology. Regardless, of whether it is to support their business or the ideology, censoring ideas should not be tolerated.
        lazyeye 5y ago
        Interesting article recently on Quillette that talks about this and supports the idea that big tech doesnt really practice true diversity, they hide behind it. https://quillette.com/2021/07/21/silicon-valleys-cynical-treatment-of-asian-engineers/ https://quillette.com/2021/07/21/silicon-valleys-cynical-tre...
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    >"when Republicans come back into power, the left will be targeted as well." As trite as this may be to say, we are in uncharted territory. Perhaps suppressing speech and using algorithms to curate biased content to the general public through social media means one side gets the upper hand for generations to come.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Why is that surprising? If you look at the last 50 years of extremist violence in the US, there is a significant divide between right and left wing extremism. Left wing extremism used to be more common in the US, but it was mostly during the beginning of the 20th century. During that time, it was mostly leftists that were being targeted.
- djanogo 5y ago
  I am not surprised, social media companies got bigger and became de_facto platforms and are mostly located in significantly left leaning cities (~90% voted Democrats in west coast cities). Any expectation of people working in these predominantly left cities/companies, living in their bubble, to take a neutral position when doing anything on their platforms (FB, Twitter, Google and lesser degree Apple) which effects the whole US and other countries is a fantasy.
- gorwell 5y ago
  It will target leftists too; many of whom are highly critical of the current regime. It's just being branded as far-right so they don't get pushback from both sides simultaneously. This is how it gets implemented, then it'll expand to include dissent more broadly.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Oh, don't worry, leftists are targeted too and were for decades. They just don't talk about it.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  Progressives in the US have been demonized since Vietnam. The War on Drugs is on record as an attempt to associate enemies of the Republican party with something that law enforcement could be used as a weapon against. The peaceful skinhead movement was hijacked in an attempt to associate them with neonazis. In the 90s the middle east was radicalized from years of being occupied by western military forces. 9/11 was, in their words, intended to be a wakeup call to the American people. It was terrorism in every sense of the word: intended to strike fear into American citizens in the same way that they already lived in fear of US forces, with the goal of destabilizing their enemy. Two decades of right wing propaganda later and it's clear they've succeeded in radicalizing the US right. Progressives never stopped protesting attempts to violate personal freedoms, but conservatives consistently wield their fear as an excuse to persecute anyone who doesn't fit their definition of being an American. Now fear is at an all time high, which means right wing militias are stronger than ever. Studies show that while both liberals and conservatives are susceptible to misinformation, there is far far more misinformation that appeals to conservatives in circulation, and as a result, the impact of misinformation on conservatives is greater: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234.full https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234.full Jan 6th was a precursor to what's to come. It's only a matter of time before we see another 9/11, but this time it will be carried out by our own citizens. Right wingers, who live in constant fear fed to them by their media and internet bubbles, will want their "enemies" to feel the same fear. Who are their enemies? Basically everyone: https://www.thetrumparchive.com/insights/insults https://www.thetrumparchive.com/insights/insults So either we control the stoking of fear (which is very questionable for a govt to do) or we monitor these militias as probable terrorist cells (also questionable). I don't think there's any way we survive this century without another world war. The internet is too important and influential for it to not spark a huge conflict amongst homo sapiens who haven't yet evolved to know how to wield it.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    > Progressives never stopped protesting attempts to violate personal freedoms, What nonsense. Progressives in this country are currently advocating for people to be banned from doing normal every day activities unless they're carrying proof of taking an experimental drug. There is serious talk amongst 'progressives' in Congress to ban certain people's speech from the internet. Pull your head out of the sand. No faction is perfect. Why are we pretending.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  You could have read about that 10 years ago in the subtext of many articles. Journalists have been groomed to rationalize their misinformation for the greater good and they aren't that good at writing that their own words wouldn't betray them. They are in a precarious situation and access to information comes at a price for most of them. Why was this article flagged btw?
void_mint 5y ago
> It’s crazy enough that half this country is eager to slide down this slippery slope. It's crazy enough that the other half of the country expects fascism to prevail, too, no?
- mc32 5y ago
  It looks like you are okay with silencing of dissent against the government so long as that clamp down only affects the ideas you disagree with. History tells us that this does not stop and will continue its grip and eventually silence all dissent against the government no matter from whom.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    1. You know nothing about my politics or my feelings on dissent. 2. When you lose an election and then attempt to overthrow it, you out yourself as a fascist and the response escalates from the protections of dissent and free speech into addressing a legitimate terror cell. Governments respond appropriately, as do private businesses. This isn't new or interesting. Does ISIS have an official twitter account? No, certainly not.
    - mc32 5y ago
      It's one thing to silence known terrorists (people who engage in terror, or help coordinate terror). It's another to silence dissent because you don't like them. As far as I know, ISIS and ISIS supporters had Twitter handles till 2015 when they began purges. So they actually were okay with known terrorists to use their platform until the Obama admin pressured them enough. As I mentioned above, know terrorists, ban them. Enemies of the state, ban them. Dissenters because they harass the government? No. Politicians because they say politically incorrect things that don't align with an admin? No. The Jan 6 thing was unfortunate, but there is no way in hell that was an attempted coup. Do you think if they had "control" of the Capitol, suddenly all military and government personnel would listen to them, the DoD, FBI, NSA, IRS, DOE, State Govs, etc., etc? That's not how it works.
wilg 5y ago
It's a very difficult situation when your country's right-wing party gets high on their own supply of conspiracy theories, ignorance, and bigotry and starts organizing violent attacks based on it. Seems like companies shouldn't be required to facilitate that behavior. (And legally they are not, because of the First Amendment, which is the same reason these people can find other forums for such discussion, even if it is difficult to do so.) I imagine it must be disturbing if people in your social circles start becoming radicalized to such a degree that much of society shuns and shames their behavior. Would be hard to tell right from wrong, I'd think.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  I think the issue is only targeting one side. There are conspiracy theories held by the left. There is radicalization and violence on the left. Instead of trying to stop this on both sides they are only focusing on one side, which just so happens to be the side the majority in big tech oppose. It makes this whole thing feel political instead of a genuine attempt to improve society.
  - methodin 5y ago
    Any chance you can link to the conspiracy theories on the left? Genuinely curious what they are. Edit: Genuinely not Generally
    - codeecan 5y ago
      you can search blue anon but use Bing as Google censors these results ... which should tell you a lot about their position.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      One example was that Trump was going to never leave the White House if he lost the election and would become a dictator. [0] Another is that Trump supported neo nazis. The most commonly cited quote is the very fine people one. Just a few statements after he said said the very fine people he said: "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned, totally." [1]. We still have people to this day using this as proof of Trump's neonazi ties. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-happens-if-trump-refuses-to-leave-the-white-house/ar-BB1aXc0p https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-happens-if-trum... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donald-trumps-jaw-dropping-press-conference.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donal...
falandafa123 5y ago
It's just as crazy as people legitimately believing he is a Russian agent

iammisc 5y ago

As a former democrat, now republican, I am honesty extremely surprised that it's the right being targeted. In 2002, I would have sworn the citizen databases would have been listing leftists. Reality is stranger than fiction.

jdhn 5y ago
>In 2002, I would have sworn the citizen databases would have been listing leftists I'm sure that when Republicans come back into power, the left will be targeted as well.
- mc32 5y ago
  So you're saying it should be opposed now so it's not abused by anyone in power?
- igravious 5y ago
  > Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manife... not dependent on who is in .gov Wouldn't you say that Big Tech (along with most of Big Media) has shown itself to have a (D) bias?
  - kokanator 5y ago
    It is true statistically. Big Media is generally Left Biased.[0] [0] https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444 https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444
    - igravious 5y ago
      Yo, thanks for this. The same should be ideological placement analysis should be done for Social Media – which is after all a type of Media and where lots of people get their news nowadays even if these places aren't the originators of the news. I feel like this isn't a controversial thing to say.
- iammisc 5y ago
  When the republicans came into power from 2016-2020, they did not use the IRS to harass left-wing groups, which both Obama and Biden did. We can't pretend every party is equal. Things change, and parties obviously violate their principles (just look at the democratic party!), but when one party is disproportionately engaging in distortion and authoritarianism, they deserve the scorn heaped on them. This was true when Bush was enacting the patriot act against the GOP. And it's true today against the dems. Sorry, I'm not going to buy into 'everyone's the same mentality'. This is the same dribble the republicans were telling me during the Bush years -- Oh the democrats will take away your freedoms if they were in power. Well, I'm sure that's true, but actually in 2002, it was the GOP. Not going to pretend.
- kokanator 5y ago
  That is odd, it didn't seem to happen when the Republicans were in power. Actually, quite the opposite. We saw a tremendous amount of censorship of Right content and people.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I was going to say... when scary GOP was in power, the largest websites literally censored and removed the GOP president, to the applause of the left, except for the few reasonable people, like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - lazyeye 5y ago
    Maybe its no longer democrat/republican. Maybe its big tech and whatever directly or indirectly threatens it. For example, big tech likes to source workers globally (bigger labour pool, cheaper wages) so any form of patriotism/nationalism, no matter how reasonable or modest, is an anathema to it.
    - kokanator 5y ago
      You could be very correct on this. I do see that the Big Tech leaders tend support left candidates/positions consistently. Perhaps this is because it is beneficial to their business as a whole and nothing to do with their ideology. Regardless, of whether it is to support their business or the ideology, censoring ideas should not be tolerated.
      - lazyeye 5y ago
        Interesting article recently on Quillette that talks about this and supports the idea that big tech doesnt really practice true diversity, they hide behind it. https://quillette.com/2021/07/21/silicon-valleys-cynical-treatment-of-asian-engineers/ https://quillette.com/2021/07/21/silicon-valleys-cynical-tre...
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  >"when Republicans come back into power, the left will be targeted as well." As trite as this may be to say, we are in uncharted territory. Perhaps suppressing speech and using algorithms to curate biased content to the general public through social media means one side gets the upper hand for generations to come.
kube-system 5y ago
Why is that surprising? If you look at the last 50 years of extremist violence in the US, there is a significant divide between right and left wing extremism. Left wing extremism used to be more common in the US, but it was mostly during the beginning of the 20th century. During that time, it was mostly leftists that were being targeted.
djanogo 5y ago
I am not surprised, social media companies got bigger and became de_facto platforms and are mostly located in significantly left leaning cities (~90% voted Democrats in west coast cities). Any expectation of people working in these predominantly left cities/companies, living in their bubble, to take a neutral position when doing anything on their platforms (FB, Twitter, Google and lesser degree Apple) which effects the whole US and other countries is a fantasy.
gorwell 5y ago
It will target leftists too; many of whom are highly critical of the current regime. It's just being branded as far-right so they don't get pushback from both sides simultaneously. This is how it gets implemented, then it'll expand to include dissent more broadly.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Oh, don't worry, leftists are targeted too and were for decades. They just don't talk about it.
teawrecks 5y ago
Progressives in the US have been demonized since Vietnam. The War on Drugs is on record as an attempt to associate enemies of the Republican party with something that law enforcement could be used as a weapon against. The peaceful skinhead movement was hijacked in an attempt to associate them with neonazis. In the 90s the middle east was radicalized from years of being occupied by western military forces. 9/11 was, in their words, intended to be a wakeup call to the American people. It was terrorism in every sense of the word: intended to strike fear into American citizens in the same way that they already lived in fear of US forces, with the goal of destabilizing their enemy. Two decades of right wing propaganda later and it's clear they've succeeded in radicalizing the US right. Progressives never stopped protesting attempts to violate personal freedoms, but conservatives consistently wield their fear as an excuse to persecute anyone who doesn't fit their definition of being an American. Now fear is at an all time high, which means right wing militias are stronger than ever. Studies show that while both liberals and conservatives are susceptible to misinformation, there is far far more misinformation that appeals to conservatives in circulation, and as a result, the impact of misinformation on conservatives is greater: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234.full https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234.full Jan 6th was a precursor to what's to come. It's only a matter of time before we see another 9/11, but this time it will be carried out by our own citizens. Right wingers, who live in constant fear fed to them by their media and internet bubbles, will want their "enemies" to feel the same fear. Who are their enemies? Basically everyone: https://www.thetrumparchive.com/insights/insults https://www.thetrumparchive.com/insights/insults So either we control the stoking of fear (which is very questionable for a govt to do) or we monitor these militias as probable terrorist cells (also questionable). I don't think there's any way we survive this century without another world war. The internet is too important and influential for it to not spark a huge conflict amongst homo sapiens who haven't yet evolved to know how to wield it.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > Progressives never stopped protesting attempts to violate personal freedoms, What nonsense. Progressives in this country are currently advocating for people to be banned from doing normal every day activities unless they're carrying proof of taking an experimental drug. There is serious talk amongst 'progressives' in Congress to ban certain people's speech from the internet. Pull your head out of the sand. No faction is perfect. Why are we pretending.
raxxorrax 5y ago
You could have read about that 10 years ago in the subtext of many articles. Journalists have been groomed to rationalize their misinformation for the greater good and they aren't that good at writing that their own words wouldn't betray them. They are in a precarious situation and access to information comes at a price for most of them. Why was this article flagged btw?

void_mint 5y ago

> It’s crazy enough that half this country is eager to slide down this slippery slope. It's crazy enough that the other half of the country expects fascism to prevail, too, no?

mc32 5y ago
It looks like you are okay with silencing of dissent against the government so long as that clamp down only affects the ideas you disagree with. History tells us that this does not stop and will continue its grip and eventually silence all dissent against the government no matter from whom.
- void_mint 5y ago
  1. You know nothing about my politics or my feelings on dissent. 2. When you lose an election and then attempt to overthrow it, you out yourself as a fascist and the response escalates from the protections of dissent and free speech into addressing a legitimate terror cell. Governments respond appropriately, as do private businesses. This isn't new or interesting. Does ISIS have an official twitter account? No, certainly not.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It's one thing to silence known terrorists (people who engage in terror, or help coordinate terror). It's another to silence dissent because you don't like them. As far as I know, ISIS and ISIS supporters had Twitter handles till 2015 when they began purges. So they actually were okay with known terrorists to use their platform until the Obama admin pressured them enough. As I mentioned above, know terrorists, ban them. Enemies of the state, ban them. Dissenters because they harass the government? No. Politicians because they say politically incorrect things that don't align with an admin? No. The Jan 6 thing was unfortunate, but there is no way in hell that was an attempted coup. Do you think if they had "control" of the Capitol, suddenly all military and government personnel would listen to them, the DoD, FBI, NSA, IRS, DOE, State Govs, etc., etc? That's not how it works.

wilg 5y ago

It's a very difficult situation when your country's right-wing party gets high on their own supply of conspiracy theories, ignorance, and bigotry and starts organizing violent attacks based on it. Seems like companies shouldn't be required to facilitate that behavior. (And legally they are not, because of the First Amendment, which is the same reason these people can find other forums for such discussion, even if it is difficult to do so.) I imagine it must be disturbing if people in your social circles start becoming radicalized to such a degree that much of society shuns and shames their behavior. Would be hard to tell right from wrong, I'd think.

_-david-_ 5y ago
I think the issue is only targeting one side. There are conspiracy theories held by the left. There is radicalization and violence on the left. Instead of trying to stop this on both sides they are only focusing on one side, which just so happens to be the side the majority in big tech oppose. It makes this whole thing feel political instead of a genuine attempt to improve society.
- methodin 5y ago
  Any chance you can link to the conspiracy theories on the left? Genuinely curious what they are. Edit: Genuinely not Generally
  - codeecan 5y ago
    you can search blue anon but use Bing as Google censors these results ... which should tell you a lot about their position.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    One example was that Trump was going to never leave the White House if he lost the election and would become a dictator. [0] Another is that Trump supported neo nazis. The most commonly cited quote is the very fine people one. Just a few statements after he said said the very fine people he said: "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned, totally." [1]. We still have people to this day using this as proof of Trump's neonazi ties. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-happens-if-trump-refuses-to-leave-the-white-house/ar-BB1aXc0p https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-happens-if-trum... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donald-trumps-jaw-dropping-press-conference.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donal...

falandafa123 5y ago

It's just as crazy as people legitimately believing he is a Russian agent