Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/20/edward-snowden-licks-elon-musks-boots.html
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Not remotely confident that we can assess Snowden’s ‘true feelings’ on any matter considering where his tragic butt is located.
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It must be nice to live in a country where censorship doesn’t exist, right comrade?
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Yeah, anything Snowden says should be taken with massive dose of salt, or ignored entirely. He’s firmly under Kremlin’s thumb, and unlikely to get out again, at least until Putin croaks.
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About 10% of what Snowden said was right. Lemon could have been a better interviewer and gotten Musk to talk about a number of different topics. The degree to which he came up short in being a good interviewer was not extreme, and Lemon was not exactly being malicious. (One could say he failed to match the horrible tone Musk has long established.) I never really had an opinion of Snowden before. This doesn’t help it.
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I suspect this is part of the deal that allows him to stay in Russia. Every so often he’s required to support a prominent agent of chaos or Russian ally in the U.S. in a relatively low-stakes situation.
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Assuming, of course, that he has anything to do with that twitter account any more, and it’s not just the FSB Social Media Officer on Duty who posts in his name.
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It’s possible Snowden is being coerced, but it’s also entirely possible that Snowden really is a right-leaning, Musk-loving techbro. Just because he took a stand for civil liberties when it comes to government surveillance of American citizens doesn’t mean he’s inherently progressive. Lots of right-wingers have expressed concern about government surveillance of American citizens, especially when it comes to surveillance of the radical right.
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It’s also possible that he was coerced at first, but at some point began believing all of that stuff. Why go to the trouble of coercing him now that you can just get Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson to stroke his ego?
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I don’t know what Snowden’s deal is. I still don’t know if he is a hero or villain or both?
I am not even sure if he has a point that he could have gone for deeper questioning, because they only segment really news worthy to repeat was his push back on the hate speech on Twitter. If he had more news worthy questions, I imagine more segments would be making the rounds.
BTW, Elon’s take on hate speech being, “It doesn’t matter how much hate speech is on Twitter, because we down grade it an no one sees it.” is bullshit.
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I’ve seen it, so yeah, people see it.
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If you got a roommate yelling the n-word all day and threatening people, do you say it’s ok because he only does it in his room where you can’t really hear him, or is it a bit of a fucking issue?
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Snowden is a depressingly bog standard Libertarian and now owes his continued existence to the whims of Putin.
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If you got a roommate yelling the n-word all day and threatening people, do you say it’s ok because he only does it in his room where you can’t really hear him, or is it a bit of a fucking issue?
I see you too have lived with the terminally online FPS gamer type…
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i don’t remember seeing many right wingers concerned about surveillance.
There was a famous intelligence report issued in the first months of the Obama administration warning (accurately) about the growing threat of domestic right-wing extremist groups. When Republican legislators got wind of it they totally lost their shit, demanding cuts to progams designed to monitor those threats because they were “targeting conservatives.” The Department of Homeland Security caved, and we’ve all seen the results.
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Thx for that!
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Just checking, is BB now against Snowden? It’s hard to keep up. My take on it was he did something pretty heroic a few years ago, which effectively destroyed his life. And he knew that would happen. I probably disagree with him on a number of topics, but I have great respect for his decision to expose the misbehaviour of his government.
At the same time, Musk has proven himself to be an arsehole. I don’t know Snowden’s affinity for Musk or anything else, but disagreeing with a specific aspect of the ongoing dislike of Musk is nowhere close to enough to cause me to reject Snowden outright.
I’ve decided my new definition of a free speech absolutist is someone who drinks too much Absolut and then makes up their own definition of free speech.
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“This person did something principled and heroic” and “this person is currently acting like a jackass” are not mutually exclusive traits.
Why categorically pin yourself down as being “for” or “against” an individual person when that person may not share your values on every issue? I admire some things Teddy Roosevelt and Walt Disney and Margaret Sanger did and despise other things they did, that doesn’t make me a hypocrite.
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I’ve always thought of him as a libertarian. I think i remember reading something about him donating to Ron Paul.
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The “libertarian” ones are. Case in point:
Citation:
Edward Snowden, who appears to have donated to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2012, has gotten some support from the former Texas congressman.
“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk," said Paul in a statement on the Web site of Campaign for Liberty, his nonprofit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/06/10/ron-paul-praises-edward-snowden/
Right wingers and libertarians always embrace conspiracy theories that the liberal controlled deep state is spying on them, and only on them.
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