My Resignation From The Intercept
The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.https://t.co/dZrlYGfEBf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2020
Sad but not atypical libertarian story: Glenn Greenwald has been censored by The Intercept, the media outlet he co-founded, after Russiagate neolibs and SJWs took it over and essentially turned it into a Mother Jones clone.
He has now departed for Substack.
My only surprise at this point is that it hasn’t happened sooner. Although Greenwald’s campaign against “Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro synced OK with their editorial line, the consistent opposition to US imperialism, the cronyism and cowardice of the journalistic class, and woke SJWism as a substitute for real criticism of the elites did not.
Really do feel quite sorry for Greenwald, he has also been no-platformed by the neoliberal gang who signed the Harper’s magazine “free speech” letter because of their autistic hysteria over getting attacked over muttering some completely irrelevant platitude such as men being stronger than women or something like that. Traditional neocons and rightoids hate him for obvious reasons, namely, his outspoken opposition to US imperialism. Meanwhile, while he has had appearances with more anti-interventionist conservatives like Tucker Carlson, these can at best only be temporary allies of convenience, who would not hesitate to throw him overboard were he to loudly recapsulate, say, his pro-Palestinian opinions.
Then again, attracting the enmity of such a wide variety of NPCs is to Greenwald’s credit, even if it does mean that he is returning to his original roots as a blogspot blogger.
Here is the relevant reading list on this affair:
- Original post: My Resignation From The Intercept
- Intercept’s content-less response
- Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept
- Emails With Intercept Editors Showing Censorship of My Joe Biden Article
- Taibbi: Glenn Greenwald On His Resignation From The Intercept
Anyhow, even if it was to be expected, it is still a highly significant development, as it perfectly demonstrates the ideological hegemony of the neolib/neocon/SJW consensus over the media, from which all “oddballs” on both Right and Left are excluded. Greenwald wasn’t just a brilliant and highly prolific opinion blogger, he was one of the defining voices of the Wikileaks/Snowden era, who accomplished more real journalism than all the newer “hip” pro-Establishment rags from Buzzfeed to Teen Vogue combined. Even at his old Guardian blog during the early 2010s he was never censored so, despite its intensive campaign against Assange. But even lines that the Old Guardianistas of the early 2010s had the decency to not cross are no longer respected by the younger, angrier Wokespawn that have infiltrated the media ecosystem since then.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
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It’s slowly dawning on the liberal-left that cancel culture, which many of them cheered as long as the targets were “right”, would inevitably hit them too.
To his credit, Glenn was consistent from day one in defending freedom of speech. But most people on his side were not. The only US journalists I take seriously are him, Taibbi and the gang around The Grayzone. The Intercept is not the only undermined publication. Jacobin, a supposedly radical left publication, was pissing on Bolivia last year and refused to condemn a de facto US coup. I repeat: this is the “radical left” in the US.
On the most important topics, there is no ideological diversity in US media. Functionally speaking, there’s no qualitative difference between the US and Chinese system at its core. The US system is just less transparent about its tyranny and more adept in its propaganda.
The Trump era has been very revealing. It has thrown off the mask of the “journalistic” class, who turned out to be nothing more than stenographers for the Deep State. They are also the most fanatical in pushing censorship and forcing tech firms to comply. I never had much hope for rightoids, who are authoritarian by nature and will fall in line when the order from above comes. But the absolute capitulation of the supposed left is stunning to me. It’s amazing how few leftists or liberals are willing to question their own government beyond the usual superficial Orange Man Bad claptrap.
Last word goes out to Assange, who is being illegally and outrageously detained in the UK and is facing deportation to the US where he’d rot away for life in prison for merely exposing war crimes. For this, he is hated, not just by the US government but also by bootlicking “journalists” who will defend his imprisonment. Snowden cannot return to the US either and is now apparently settling in Russia for life. Who can even call the US a real democracy anymore? Was it ever?
A Biden final victory is now the only thing that counts. Everything else is low priority. Any attempt at sowing doubt in the populace will be ruthlessly suppressed.
Life in another round of Trump’s America would not be worth living.
My Zyankali capsule is ready.
I don’t know where you’ve been the last fifty years, but this is just slightly more brazen conformism, coercion and intolerance that has always characterized the left for as long as I can remember.
Still, I guess it’s better to wake up to it late than never.
Maybe next you can wake up to the fact that “if there is hope, it must lie in the (rightoid) proles.”
I’ve read that first as “My Resignation From The Internet”. LOL.
Anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish, but since Greenwald was the only identifiable name in that rag, and the only writer there that had any prestige or vestige of talent, I doubt that the publication will continue for much longer, especially if under the control of humourless harpies with zero talent or ability.
Women ruin everything, part XLXIIII. Now you know why childhood clubs were “Boys Only”.
Just look, they are almost all women or gay-looking men. (And they don’t even mention Greenwald as founder, LOL).
https://theintercept.com/about/
“if there is hope, it must lie in the (rightoid) proles.” – The rightoid proles are as easily distracted as the leftoid intelligentsia. Think of Islamic terrorism. Actually, when you think about it you may wonder where did the large scale terrorists attacks go. Is it possible that once ISIS was ‘defeated’ and the project of turning Syria into Libya was abandoned the terrorist attacks in Europe and the US were stopped. Can we credit Trump and Putin for it? Was the 2017 Las Vegas shooting the last false flag event in the US that was folded on the post-event narrative stage? Then the Me-Too project was rolled out for the leftoids while the Islamo-fascist terrorism was folded to prevent the rightoids from feeding frenzy.
I wish Snowden would not be allowed to live in Russia longer than needed. He did a service to the Western world, and his fellow countrymen will repay him. As is, it seems like he did a service to Russia, which is not true. Save for a few aspies, Westerners just pretend there is no global listening and reading of your messages, so there was no propaganda coup.
His luck is that, despite the appearances, a protracted Snowden lawsuit and execution would be as ineffective. Westerners would just carry on, knowing they are Free™.
What is the average political affiliation of news editors? Slightly to the left of Trotsky?
Interestingly enough, I’m not particularly fond of Glenn Greenwald due to him being a Cuck on the Islamophobia question. Sam Harris openly criticized him for this–challenging Greenwald to hold a cartoon contest for Islam while Harris himself would hold a cartoon contest for any other religion in the world. Greenwald wisely but also a bit hypocritically refrained from accepting Harris’s challenge–knowing full well that Muslims are much more pissed off at Muhammad cartoons than, say, Hindus are at Vishnu cartoons or Ganesha cartoon or cow cartoons.
Wouldn’t collectively bash all women like that. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some women who pretty much share my views.
In contrast, Naomi Klein, who is among other things involved with The Intercept and Rutgers University, tweeted crock saying he wasn’t censored.
https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/status/1321891416092504069
Then again, which two people agree on exactly everything? Aaron Mate and Ray McGoevern have done great work on the McCarthyite Russia bashing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfmiCfg3uX0
Along with Noam Chomsky, Mate and McGovern believe that Trump is bad enough to vote for Biden. Does McGovern really expect Biden to suddenly drop the foreign policy sources that the latter has favored, on top of the possibility of Harris taking over for Biden?
The likes of Susan Rice, Michael Carpenter, Evelyn Farkas, Samantha Power and Michel McFaul aren’t better foreign policy options. On domestic issues, the overall Biden-Harris record isn’t good.
On the foreign policy front, neocon to neolib, along the lines of Carla Robbins:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/18/us-foreign-policy-establishments-obsession-with-russia/
The realist National Interest exhibits limits in challenging non-realist thinking:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/24/what-evelyn-fakas-trey-gowdy-and-some-others-dubiously-have-in-common/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/21/getting-real-with-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-realists/
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/
https://www.eurasiareview.com/07112016-realists-on-russia-analysis/
A more recent example is Michael Lind’s misguided comment on neo-McCarthyism:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/have-america%E2%80%99s-russia-watchers-been-getting-it-wrong-171500
I recall reading that there was a reporter who was trying to infiltrate one of Jim Jones’ churches in San Francisco. It was not easy because they were a suspicious lot. When she got in, she recognized two of her editors, sitting in the pews. They were part of the cult.
IMO, McCarthy has been given a bad name by the establishment. His criticisms were largely correct – there was high-level penetration by the Soviets within the government, as declassified FBI documents have revealed. And his efforts were directed internally. He was criticizing the establishment. (he wasn’t a cold warrior) That is what they hated about him and why his name was destroyed. He may have been wrong about communism being the biggest danger, but he was hitting close to the truth.
There was a threat for sure. The issue has the way he went about it.
Ha, ha, ha…
Isn’t that Sam Harris fellow some (anti-religious) Jewish guy? Isn’t he intensely hostile to Islam (and Christianity) for pretty obvious reasons?
Anyway, since the official religion of the West these days is clearly Holocaustianity, why not just challenge Harris to draw some cartoons in France or various other countries ridiculing that foolish religion. After he finally gets out of prison perhaps his personal religious faith will have become somewhat tempered…
I never read the Intercept myself, but given the current controversy got curious and checked their Alexa Traffic Rank, which absolutely shocked me.
They’re a very heavily funded operation, with a large full-time staff of Big Name journalists with Greenwald being merely the most famous, and they’ve been around since 2014, launched in the wake of the blazing Edward Snowden story. They’ve won numerous MSM prizes.
Yet apparently their traffic is only about 50% larger than that of our own small website, run on a shoestring. I had assumed they would be at least 10x or 20x larger.
Indeed, since we’ve taken a substantial hit after being banned by both Facebook and Google a few months ago, if not for those unfair measures, we might even have passed them by now in readership.
Simply unbelievable…
Many Trump supporters are alleging that there could be massive voting fraud in the 2020 election. Some believe that if Trump is ahead on election night, Democratic machines will manufacture ballots to give a victory to Biden. Do you think this is possible or do you see this as improbable?
That’s certainly true.
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1322289829904863232
Well, I suppose it’s possible…
Frankly, both sides are so totally agitated and extreme, the Trumpists would be saying and believing it, even if it were entirely false and impossible. It’s hard to figure out what’s happening when everyone involved is so dishonest and corrupt. Trump has always seemed like an ignorant buffoon to me, but I think the Democrats and liberals have almost gone insane in their opposition to him.
As I’ve been telling people for weeks, the whole political situation certainly seems very bizarre and I’ve seen some pretty plausible arguments that we might end up with a “disputed” election if the numbers are fairly close in key states. Apparently, the Republicans are overwhelmingly going to be voting in person, while the Democrats will be voting by mail, meaning their ballots will be much slower to come in and be counted.
So Trump could be ahead by wide margins on Election Night and declare victory to the cheers of his partisans. And then as the mail ballots come in, the numbers turn against him, but he and his die-hard supporters cry “Fraud!” and refuse to recognize the result. Hard to say what would happen, but I’m glad I live in California which is generally quiet and peaceful these days.
Obviously, Bush/Gore was “disputed” in 2000, but only party loyalists much cared at the time, while today the country is filled with Trumpists and Trump-haters, both very suspicious and angry.
Unz should publish Greenwald. Some of the writers on Unz are pretty lame compared to Greenwald.
I’m ambivalent towards Greenwald. I felt he sold out Snowden by never publishing all the docs he had in his possession. He also rode the Snowden wave to become what he is today. Snowden’s documents are what allowed him to cozy up with that snake Pierre Omidyar to found the Intercept.
Greenwald does do some excellent reporting, but I don’t trust him. He’s too much of an opportunist.
While the media is focusing on the paper votes, the real action is going to be on how to manufacture the electronic votes or to change them. Both parties have the money and tech expertise to crank out votes in their favor. The limiting factor is not creating more votes per area than the area supports via registered voters.
The hackers are in control. May the best team win.
Yes, there are a few, but there are way too many shitlibs.
Many decent, courageous, and otherwise insightful people still buy tickets to the Red v Blue puppet show, sitting still as each two-year act leads to the next Most Important Election Ever.
The Establishment doesn’t care which color you pick, or why. All that’s needed is enough participatory assent to channel and harmlessly blow off the dissent.
As a follow-up, a very quick Google search confirmed what I’d remembered reading a couple of years ago about funding for The Intercept:
Apparently, Omidyar had already put $90(!!!) million into the webzine over just the first five years, paying salaries that “dwarf” those at other center-left publications.
https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/layoffs-the-intercept.php
It’s really pretty astonishing that our own traffic now isn’t that far below, and we might have almost caught up if not for the unfair Google/Facebook banning.
Yes, one could accuse the West of having double-standards in regards to Holocaust denial versus Muhammad cartoons. The US is superior by allowing both of these things.
I do find it interesting, though, that, as a Jew yourself, you nevertheless dabble in Holocaust denial.