It still weirds me out that there are actual human beings who look at the Glenn Greenwald who’s spent the last four years as a reliable pro-Trump mouthpiece and who is a regular guest on the Tucker Carlson White Power Hour, and still think he counts as any sort of progressive.
Greenwald started out as a civil liberties lawyer who defended free speech, including that of white supremacists. The very simple calculus of civil libertarians is that governments always begin any censorship moves by attacking the least sympathetic people, but that it never ends there. The infantile idea that a civil rights lawyer who defends white supremacists is therefore in any way sympathetic to their ideas betrays a total misunderstanding of how civil liberties battles are fought (and is deeply contemptuous of American’s fundamental right to legal representation as well).
Here’s Greenwald’s recent interview with Ira Glass, Executive Director of the ACLU for 23 years, in which they discuss this very issue, including why Glass was so vehement in his famous defense of the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, IL. https://youtu.be/xB26jj0jrjc
While one can argue that something shouldn’t be a crime, this does not mean that it is not a crime. And certainly if one is engaging in civil disobedience for an unjust law; one is both public about the infraction and accepts responsibility and the consequences.
And of course in Flynn’s case there were underlying crimes. He testified that he was guilty of these crimes under oath. He apparently violated the Logan Act, which is a felony. He lied during his security background check, which is a felony separate from lying to the FBI. He represented Turkey without filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act - oops- another possible five years in jail. I think he did so while working for the US gov? But memory may be faulty.
And he seems to have been involved in supporting a conspiracy to “involuntarily exfiltrate” a person living in the US to another country which wanted him dead.
Also - if he lied under oath about being guilty- that’s perjury. Oops.
Obligatory Baretta reference.
This comment from another topic applies in any discussion of Greenwald:
And to be clear, Greenwald wasn’t defending Hale’s right to free speech but rather his supposed moral character and fitness to practise law. Looking at Hale’s sordid history of direct action prior to passing the bar and his total lack of remorse for his activities, and looking at his on-going disrespect for the ideals of the legal system as it exists one has to wonder why Greenwald thought the case was worth taking. At least, one wonders for the few seconds it takes to remember that Greenwald puts grandstanding and self-promotion above ethics every time.
Not only has Gleen Greenwald been the asterisk to every discussion of fishhook theory versus horseshoe theory (including the literal article outlining fishhook theory), Glenn Greenwald has recently escalated to advocating for horseshoe theory as a political strategy encouraging the populist movements of the left and right combine.
I bet the legislators and prosecutors and judges of the world will start asking Glenn Greenwald first whenever they have to decide what’s a crime and what isn’t, any day now, that’s totally how it works
JPG okay?
I overuse my analogy, but this feels like asking chefs and serial murders to combine forces as knife users.
I think the basic idea behind horseshoe theory is that both the right and the left have principles and beliefs, and that’s alien to liberals. (I mean, I assume it’s actually because if you end up in a murderous dictatorship then the fact of being in a murderous dictatorship tends to overwhelm political ideology)
IIRC Greenwald’s goal is to unite the “anti-imperialist” left with the isolationist right, because they agree that the US should not intervene in the affairs of other countries.
Allying with the American isolationist right is never a good idea for progressives, what with the predilection of “America Firsters” past and present toward supporting fascist regimes.
It’s also important to remember that the isolationist right is only isolationist for about as long as it takes to gain total control domestically. At which point they turn the powers of the state to external targets.
He’s nuts if he thinks that’s how this shit works. You do not align with people hostile to your existence. Empowering assholes like Rand Paul and Steve Bannon does nothing to further any sort of progressive agenda, because the end goal is not the same. They will use the power of the state saves from overseas adventures to brutalize people in this country. They will pour money not spent on killing people in the global south to kill the people here they deem unworthy of being here. Greenwald no doubt knows that, but thinks that we can stop them before they do that much harm. If he believes that, he’s really fucking naive or just lying to us about where his allegiances really are.
It would be nuts for a progressive, but it seems that Greenwald never was a progressive.
It’s insane for anyone with any working knowledge of how the right wing operates to think they have some intentions of treating the rest of humanity like human beings. What does he believe they want to happen to gay men? Or transpeople? Or immigrants, legal or illegal, who are not white and wealthy? Greenwald is not stupid, whatever he is. There is nothing in history to show us that working with the far right improves ANYTHING ever, because they will take the whole god damn country if you give them an inch - I mean, they have just tried to over turn the fucking election!!! He SHOULD know that, and should not assume that working with them will bring anything but unmitigated disaster to everyone else.
If Greenwald has always been, as alleged, a libertarian with far-right sympathies, he might feel safe because he is an insider or fellow traveller and, as previously noted, arrogant enough to think of himself as untouchable. In any case, he lives in Brazil (at least until things get too bad for LGBT people there) and can admire the glorious new nationalism from a safe distance.
Good moral character requirements have been used to disqualify communists from the bar. They have probably been used to disqualify persons accused of “material support for terrorism”, and it probably will be used against persons with “antifa” connections. If those politicized disqualification attempts are suspect, that Hale’s disqualification is also suspect. A politically neutral standard of moral character would, presumably be limited to questions of honesty: would a prospective client (of any race or ethnicity) be able to trust this person?
