Authorizing sending arms/aid to Ukraine is not the same as voting for war in Ukraine. No one wanted Russia to invade Ukraine either time but it did. Russia chose to start a war Ukraine decided to defend itself.
It's hard to believe so many peoples heads can fit up Putin's asshole while simultaneously sucking him off.
The thing is, Greenwald must know that. He's not an idiot. He can follow an order of events. So this is all just a big game to him.
My favorite part of the Dominion lawsuit was all of the internal messages showing Fox News hosts willfully lying to their viewers. Nearly all of the conservative ragebait is people being facetious with reality for political purposes.
That was my "favorite" part as well, it shows that it's all propaganda and they're knowingly lying to people. They're misleading the American public, fomenting dissonance and fueling conspiracies for a paycheck.
The J6 insurrection wouldn't have happened if not for these people. A million dead from a respiratory virus thanks in-part to their anti-mask, anti-science rhetoric wouldn't have happened if not for these people. They're propagandists, grifters and confidence artists, nothing more; they're bad people who are a net-negative to society. Frankly they're dangerous and there should be consequences for knowingly lying and pretending to be a news source.
Also the messages that have come out from Trump staffers showing they knew the 'stolen election' thing was total BS... but many went on to publicly support the idea.
He vehemently claimed Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine when US intelligence came out and said it in advance. And then when Russia invaded, he shifted to all new bullshit, instead of having any self reflection.
In fairness almost everyone though the US intelligence service was pulling another Iraq when they said Russia was going to invade. Everyone but Putin saw how bad of a move it would be for Russia and assumed it was posturing.
Exactly. These confidently incorrect statements people make in hindsight are like they weren't around before the invasion, or at least weren't paying attention.
All of it is a joke to all of them until there's repercussions for any of them
What actually happened to Greenwald? I mean, he's obviously lost his mind, and he's been going down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole for years, but how did he get there? What bizarre side-tunnel on the left took him to the right?
Kompramat.
It's very simple. Catering to the right wing nut jobs brings a lot of attention, which for someone like Greenwald, means money. Especially for a former "lefty". It's a naked grift.
It's an easy, successful grift. Look at someone similar like Dave "why I left the left" Rubin. He's not half as smart nor is he half as talented as Greenwald, and yet even he can pull it off. It does have pitfalls, though. Rubin has been struggling since he and his husband had those two children via surrogacy.
I mostly just feel sad watching Dave Rubin talk to people who clearly afford him 0 actual respect.
The look on his face when he just has to casually pretend that it's just a "difference of opinion" when people treat him like garbage to his face is hard to stomach.
He's getting paid and serving their purposes. He's actively harming his own community, so I know I shouldn't afford him much sympathy. Still feels bad to watch though.
I get why it's hard not to empathize with him, but you shouldn't. He's making serious bank doing awful things. If you haven't, you should take a look at his house sometime.
Many reasons, including deciding that Trans folks are delusional and fake and taking up more than their fair share of attention. But at the core of it I suspect that it's a desire to stay relevant and make money in the media world, and the easiest way to do that is to buddy up to the far right assholes of the world. Just a guess though.
It's kinda straight forward. Want to know why someone has made a big change to what you thought were their core values? the answer is probably going to be money.
I remember reading True Believer by Eric Hoffer ages ago and for some reason that book comes to mind when I think of people that were seemingly on the left, but somewhere, they took a dark turn and/or they become unwitting (or witting?) agents of outfits like Russia. Let's see:
Wow, I just realized that each of those people give me the same impression: They all remind me of the various types of Russian trolls one might meet online.
You've got the "Fox News favorites," the Democrats who constantly appear on right-wing media to denigrate other Democrats and reassure their viewers that everything Fox says is true.
Then there's the "Pac-Man right-wingers," the ones who present themselves as so far to the left that they've done the Pac-Man thing and looped from the left side of the screen to the right.
And finally there's the "Look at me, I'm crazy" types, the ones who pretend to be absurd caricatures of the left, expressing exaggerated, straw-man versions Democratic positions as if they're the real thing.
Most Russian trolls online are designed to convince conservatives in America of various insane "facts" about Democrats, and they use various tactics to do it. The majority of the troll accounts pretend to be American conservatives and spread intentional disinformation and misinformation, but some try to play the role of people on the left, to convince conservatives that the left is insane.
And every name on your list reminds me of those trolls.
The Naomi Wolf thing is just so strange - when someone first mentioned it, I was not even quite willing to believe it. I do wonder if something legit happens to someone's brain as they get older and complete nonsense sets in. It also might be that a certain type of woman is prone to feeling alienated as they age - meaning: women that were exceptionally attractive when they were younger (like Naomi Wolf) may have a lot to deal with as they age, and find that people may not cater to them as much as they had before and this is a rude awakening, I'm sure...some men may deal with this too, I dunno - thinking Charles in Charge and Kirk Cameron.
And looking in on this again, it looks like Naomi Klein was getting confused with her "doppelganger" so much that she ended up writing a book about it that only recently came out?
David Rubin and Candace Owens used to be on the left until they realized how lucrative it was being on the right too.
I have no idea but Matt Taibbi seems to be on a similar path.
Yup. Though Taibbi is even far more tragic, IMHO, as I found his insights and writing style far more interesting than Greenwald ever was.
Maybe someone got their hooks into Taibbi during all that time he spent in Russia. He always gets salty when anyone suggests this, but....
Once again, Glenn Greenwald is rimming his Russian handlers in print form.
What a tragic fall from grace Glenn Greenwald has had.
I mean, even if they did, would anyone blame them?
Russia is literally committing genocide, and I personally defend the right of any country to defend itself.
(obviously that will attract the whataboutism of US in the middle east, but those people were wrong and our country paid dearly for it)
What a douchenozzle Glenn has turned into...
I used to like this guy, but he’s crazy. Where does he stand politically? He’s so far left he’s a right winger as far as I can tell.
Like some leftists on Lemmy, he doesn’t hold typical conservative views but criticizes and hates American liberals and the Democratic Party more than he does US conservatives.
He is certainly friendly with conservative beliefs...
From his Wikipedia page:
In his 2006 book How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald wrote that he was politically apathetic at the time of the Iraq War and accepted the Bush administration's judgement that "American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country."
Greenwald said that Bolsonaro could be a "good partner" for President Trump "If you think that the U.S. should go back to kind of the Monroe Doctrine as [National Security Adviser] John Bolton talked openly about, and ruling Latin America, and U.S. interests"
In an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Greenwald expressed support for the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy theory.
And some quotes:
"If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4chan, & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit."
"The cultural left (meaning the part of the left focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism) ... has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating."
“The cultural left right (meaning the part of the left right focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism or fascism) … has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating.”
It always amuses me when right wing grifters describe the right, but attribute it to the left
Its always a confession, not an accusation
Its always a confession, not an accusation
We're going to get nowhere if we can't call out the "my side" for their shit in a way that's consistent with how we call out "their side" on theirs...it's OK, I'm ready for the downvotes.
Show me all those examples of the Democrats banning books. I'll wait.
People experiencing social repercussions for their public speech that society deems inappropriate absolutely is not the same thing as passing laws restricting freedoms the way the a Republicans currently are doing en masse.
Oh we're 100% on the same page about books, there is no equivalent to that with the dems. But I was talking about the larger idea of censorship, not books specifically. I don't think that you can say with honesty though that specific institutions are specifically attending to drive narratives in ways that Democrats want them to. Cable media is an easy one, tech companies are another. Shadowbanning and suppression of specific topics have and are happening, and are censorship. They algorithmically and explicitely tamped down legitimate persuits like discussing lab leak, until it actually became the most feaseable beginning of COVID. They suppressed the hunter Biden bullshit (I'm not taking that on its merits, just saying it happened, and near an election).
On another note, I'm not your enemy here. I responded to something that I thought I could add something to. You obviously did the same. We can make Lemmy a more healthy place to talk than Reddit was.
What lab leak?
"our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic"
Public censorship of ideas is not evil. Never has been, never will be. Should you be able to find out about bad ideas in a library? Absolutely. Should we allow social media to amplify and legitimize those ideas? No. I want Mein Kampf freely available for people to read. I don't want Neo-nazis to be able to use online platforms to recruit vulnerable teenagers.
Preventing the non-consensual sharing of nude pictures of a man on a social media platform in no way "suppressed" information about Hunter Biden. I was very well aware of the entire argument without ever being on Twitter or having those photographs shared. Twitter is not a news organization and they were right to restrict sharing of those pictures.
I'm sorry, but you come in here parroting an awful lot of bad talking points commonly shared by people who most certainly are my enemies, however you choose to think about yourself that allows you to sleep at night. It doesn't matter how kindly you speak about it, some ideas deserve to be refuted.
All ideas deserve to be refuted, which is why suppression isn't the answer.
As far as the specifics of your claims, I don't think anything has been definitively show to be true regarding the origin of COVID. The paper you linked said that the first hotspot they found were in the wet markets, assuming that's the case, it still doesn't say if it was naturally produced or as part of a "gain of function" research program that was in place at the time.
Check this out for a deeper dive into the intercepts work on corona virus origins. There is no smoking gun, no gotcha moment, in fact it may be a natural origin. My point wasn't that it did happen in a lab leak, but that lab leak turned out to be a viable theory of origin, in spite of how it was portrayed by officials, the media and social media.
The above article is quite a different point of view from what was being said by officials earlier in the pandemic. Again my point isn't to argue lab leak, but to say that if the establishment had it's way, this question would have been wiped away and never investigated. The complexity of the issue would have been lost to the public. That seems like censorship to me. Not book burning, but still censorship.
I 100% agree with your point about amplification though. That's a complication in the issue here because they are incentivised to push divisive, exreme views in order to drive engagement. There is a lot of discussion to be had there.
Regarding my mention of Hunter Biden, I wasn't lamenting that images of him were removed from social media. That's just basic cleaning up of feeds that needs to happen. I mean the fact that despite being verified by the FBI it was treated as bearing all of the hallmarks of Russian mis-information at the behest of other law enforcement agencies. It was then suppressed.
I don't know. You can assume that I'm parroting in bad faith if you want, but I hope you don't.
All ideas deserve to be refuted
This kind of uncritical placing of all ideas on the same footing, deserving of the same treatment is not enlightenment.
Isn't the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I'm just saying someone shouldn't decide for us which ones we can engage with.
No individual human being has infinite time to dedicate to sifting through every insane conspiracy theory and terrible political theory that has ever been thunk. We, as a species, need to decide what we should and should not spend our limited time engaging with. Sometimes, that means listening to experts who have taken the time to study the subject in more detail than we will ever have time in our lives, and trusting their word on the matter.
For example, no one feels like they have to waste public time refuting the existence of aether (yet, anyway, though I'm sure the flat earthers will get around to it.) For another example, smart people who study history for a living identify several of key characteristics common to fascist political parties that look suuuuuper familiar to anyone looking at the modern day Republican party in the US.
We do not have infinite resources. Infinite time, infinite brain power, infinite public discourse. Just as it is widely recognized that it's fine to limit discussions of pro-anorexia groups for the public good, so too is it fine to limit the reach of harmful ideas like vaccine conspiracy theories, Neo-nazi recruitment of young people, whether or not people with this characteristic or that characteristic have equal rights and deserve life and freedom, climate change "debate"...
And some "ideas" that might not seem that harmful on their face should be suppressed when it is clear they are being deliberately used to lead people down paths toward much more harmful ideas for the profit of grifters. (Like Qanon and the Alt-Right YouTube pipeline)
It is ok for us to moderate what is said in public. We have always done this because it is necessary to a functioning, healthy society.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn't great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there's no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it's mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don't think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it's absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn't count as much, etc...
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I've never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won't change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don't get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I'd assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don't care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn't either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don't have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I'm pretty far on the left and I'd debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn't trying to say that they're the same, I just think it's important to be weilding the same analysis for "allies" as for "enemies". Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.
That’s essentially in line with what I’m saying. He considers Liberal ID politics and government agencies to be more of a problem than right-wing fascism.
You know…. I’m usually all for legalization of drugs…
…. And I don’t know what greenwald is smoking here… but I think maybe I’d be okay with banning that one. It seems to have made him stupid. And not like temporarily.
Right wing media: not even once
obvious lying without any repercussions.
I still listen to Matt Taibbi's old podcast (that he's no longer on) but IIRC, they still carry a torch for Greenwald, maybe even had him on in recent years. I definitely heard him on some podcast that seemed overly friendly to him.
What's amusing to me is when Taibbi, Greenwald, etc., pretend to be somehow so very principled and above the fray and so on...it is rather amusing to watch.
I would lump BJG in that group. It seems like these guys are too smart to not understand how clearly this comes across as either stupidity or grift.
BJG?
Briahna Joy Gray, imagine if Ben Shapiro body swapped with Candace Owens and tried to copy Jimmy Dore. She was Bernie's press secretary in 2020 but he distanced himself from her and she is currently a Cornel West evangelist.
Big Juice Glenn... His early stuff was great. He would break down the different kinds of juices and drinks from all around the world. Talk about the taste, where they originated from (you'd be surprised at the history of some of these drinks), who they are marketed to, and so on. Sound dull but can be quite fascinating.
But lately BJG has started going down the crazy rabbit hole. His last few podcasts have been talking about how the chemicals in the modern day drinks and juices can effect your thinking and how some people have the technology (Bill Gates and company) to then manipulate your thought patterns because of these "chemicals". I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he got hit on the head or something? But it's not the same any more. Kinda sad.
I claim that Greenwald licks Vlad's taint and thanks him for the privilege.
I hate both of them with the burning passion of a thousand suns, FOX NEWS and that Nazi Laura Ingram cunt can get fucked too, it's a quadrangle of useless garbage
It's so weird to see how far we've fallen in this country. Whether good or bad, we used to proudly stand with nations fighting for their right to independence and democracy. We used to be proud fighters of freedom. Now the party that's all about freedoms and war, want to hide like the cowards they really are. I guess it just hits different when it's your Nazi buddies trying to invade a country....
Authorizing sending arms/aid to Ukraine is not the same as voting for war in Ukraine. No one wanted Russia to invade Ukraine either time but it did. Russia chose to start a war Ukraine decided to defend itself.
It's hard to believe so many peoples heads can fit up Putin's asshole while simultaneously sucking him off.
The thing is, Greenwald must know that. He's not an idiot. He can follow an order of events. So this is all just a big game to him.
My favorite part of the Dominion lawsuit was all of the internal messages showing Fox News hosts willfully lying to their viewers. Nearly all of the conservative ragebait is people being facetious with reality for political purposes.
That was my "favorite" part as well, it shows that it's all propaganda and they're knowingly lying to people. They're misleading the American public, fomenting dissonance and fueling conspiracies for a paycheck.
The J6 insurrection wouldn't have happened if not for these people. A million dead from a respiratory virus thanks in-part to their anti-mask, anti-science rhetoric wouldn't have happened if not for these people. They're propagandists, grifters and confidence artists, nothing more; they're bad people who are a net-negative to society. Frankly they're dangerous and there should be consequences for knowingly lying and pretending to be a news source.
Also the messages that have come out from Trump staffers showing they knew the 'stolen election' thing was total BS... but many went on to publicly support the idea.
He vehemently claimed Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine when US intelligence came out and said it in advance. And then when Russia invaded, he shifted to all new bullshit, instead of having any self reflection.
In fairness almost everyone though the US intelligence service was pulling another Iraq when they said Russia was going to invade. Everyone but Putin saw how bad of a move it would be for Russia and assumed it was posturing.
Exactly. These confidently incorrect statements people make in hindsight are like they weren't around before the invasion, or at least weren't paying attention.
All of it is a joke to all of them until there's repercussions for any of them
Just like any boomer.
Is Greenwald a boomer?
What actually happened to Greenwald? I mean, he's obviously lost his mind, and he's been going down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole for years, but how did he get there? What bizarre side-tunnel on the left took him to the right?
Kompramat.
It's very simple. Catering to the right wing nut jobs brings a lot of attention, which for someone like Greenwald, means money. Especially for a former "lefty". It's a naked grift.
It's an easy, successful grift. Look at someone similar like Dave "why I left the left" Rubin. He's not half as smart nor is he half as talented as Greenwald, and yet even he can pull it off. It does have pitfalls, though. Rubin has been struggling since he and his husband had those two children via surrogacy.
I mostly just feel sad watching Dave Rubin talk to people who clearly afford him 0 actual respect.
The look on his face when he just has to casually pretend that it's just a "difference of opinion" when people treat him like garbage to his face is hard to stomach.
He's getting paid and serving their purposes. He's actively harming his own community, so I know I shouldn't afford him much sympathy. Still feels bad to watch though.
I get why it's hard not to empathize with him, but you shouldn't. He's making serious bank doing awful things. If you haven't, you should take a look at his house sometime.
https://media.zenfs.com/en/variety.com/00ca8607c51fc1917e84c77d01dd6c38
Many reasons, including deciding that Trans folks are delusional and fake and taking up more than their fair share of attention. But at the core of it I suspect that it's a desire to stay relevant and make money in the media world, and the easiest way to do that is to buddy up to the far right assholes of the world. Just a guess though.
Good article on it here:
https://www.salon.com/2022/08/08/what-happened-to-glenn-greenwald-the-former-trans-ally-now-sides-with-right-wing-transphobia/
Anger, fear and rage == $$$
It's kinda straight forward. Want to know why someone has made a big change to what you thought were their core values? the answer is probably going to be money.
I remember reading True Believer by Eric Hoffer ages ago and for some reason that book comes to mind when I think of people that were seemingly on the left, but somewhere, they took a dark turn and/or they become unwitting (or witting?) agents of outfits like Russia. Let's see:
Greenwald, Sinema, Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, Taibbi, RFK jr, Marianne Williamson, Naomi Wolf....
Wow, I just realized that each of those people give me the same impression: They all remind me of the various types of Russian trolls one might meet online.
Most Russian trolls online are designed to convince conservatives in America of various insane "facts" about Democrats, and they use various tactics to do it. The majority of the troll accounts pretend to be American conservatives and spread intentional disinformation and misinformation, but some try to play the role of people on the left, to convince conservatives that the left is insane.
And every name on your list reminds me of those trolls.
The Naomi Wolf thing is just so strange - when someone first mentioned it, I was not even quite willing to believe it. I do wonder if something legit happens to someone's brain as they get older and complete nonsense sets in. It also might be that a certain type of woman is prone to feeling alienated as they age - meaning: women that were exceptionally attractive when they were younger (like Naomi Wolf) may have a lot to deal with as they age, and find that people may not cater to them as much as they had before and this is a rude awakening, I'm sure...some men may deal with this too, I dunno - thinking Charles in Charge and Kirk Cameron.
And looking in on this again, it looks like Naomi Klein was getting confused with her "doppelganger" so much that she ended up writing a book about it that only recently came out?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/09/doppelganger-a-trip-into-the-mirror-world-by-naomi-klein-review-a-case-of-mistaken-identity
David Rubin and Candace Owens used to be on the left until they realized how lucrative it was being on the right too.
I have no idea but Matt Taibbi seems to be on a similar path.
Yup. Though Taibbi is even far more tragic, IMHO, as I found his insights and writing style far more interesting than Greenwald ever was.
Maybe someone got their hooks into Taibbi during all that time he spent in Russia. He always gets salty when anyone suggests this, but....
Once again, Glenn Greenwald is rimming his Russian handlers in print form.
What a tragic fall from grace Glenn Greenwald has had.
I mean, even if they did, would anyone blame them?
Russia is literally committing genocide, and I personally defend the right of any country to defend itself.
(obviously that will attract the whataboutism of US in the middle east, but those people were wrong and our country paid dearly for it)
What a douchenozzle Glenn has turned into...
I used to like this guy, but he’s crazy. Where does he stand politically? He’s so far left he’s a right winger as far as I can tell.
Like some leftists on Lemmy, he doesn’t hold typical conservative views but criticizes and hates American liberals and the Democratic Party more than he does US conservatives.
He is certainly friendly with conservative beliefs...
From his Wikipedia page:
And some quotes:
It always amuses me when right wing grifters describe the right, but attribute it to the left
Its always a confession, not an accusation
Its always a confession, not an accusation
We're going to get nowhere if we can't call out the "my side" for their shit in a way that's consistent with how we call out "their side" on theirs...it's OK, I'm ready for the downvotes.
Show me all those examples of the Democrats banning books. I'll wait.
People experiencing social repercussions for their public speech that society deems inappropriate absolutely is not the same thing as passing laws restricting freedoms the way the a Republicans currently are doing en masse.
Oh we're 100% on the same page about books, there is no equivalent to that with the dems. But I was talking about the larger idea of censorship, not books specifically. I don't think that you can say with honesty though that specific institutions are specifically attending to drive narratives in ways that Democrats want them to. Cable media is an easy one, tech companies are another. Shadowbanning and suppression of specific topics have and are happening, and are censorship. They algorithmically and explicitely tamped down legitimate persuits like discussing lab leak, until it actually became the most feaseable beginning of COVID. They suppressed the hunter Biden bullshit (I'm not taking that on its merits, just saying it happened, and near an election).
On another note, I'm not your enemy here. I responded to something that I thought I could add something to. You obviously did the same. We can make Lemmy a more healthy place to talk than Reddit was.
What lab leak?
"our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
Public censorship of ideas is not evil. Never has been, never will be. Should you be able to find out about bad ideas in a library? Absolutely. Should we allow social media to amplify and legitimize those ideas? No. I want Mein Kampf freely available for people to read. I don't want Neo-nazis to be able to use online platforms to recruit vulnerable teenagers.
https://gizmodo.com/why-censorship-is-part-of-everyday-life-section-230-1850095976
Preventing the non-consensual sharing of nude pictures of a man on a social media platform in no way "suppressed" information about Hunter Biden. I was very well aware of the entire argument without ever being on Twitter or having those photographs shared. Twitter is not a news organization and they were right to restrict sharing of those pictures.
I'm sorry, but you come in here parroting an awful lot of bad talking points commonly shared by people who most certainly are my enemies, however you choose to think about yourself that allows you to sleep at night. It doesn't matter how kindly you speak about it, some ideas deserve to be refuted.
All ideas deserve to be refuted, which is why suppression isn't the answer.
As far as the specifics of your claims, I don't think anything has been definitively show to be true regarding the origin of COVID. The paper you linked said that the first hotspot they found were in the wet markets, assuming that's the case, it still doesn't say if it was naturally produced or as part of a "gain of function" research program that was in place at the time.
https://theintercept.com/collections/origins-of-covid/
Check this out for a deeper dive into the intercepts work on corona virus origins. There is no smoking gun, no gotcha moment, in fact it may be a natural origin. My point wasn't that it did happen in a lab leak, but that lab leak turned out to be a viable theory of origin, in spite of how it was portrayed by officials, the media and social media.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html
The above article is quite a different point of view from what was being said by officials earlier in the pandemic. Again my point isn't to argue lab leak, but to say that if the establishment had it's way, this question would have been wiped away and never investigated. The complexity of the issue would have been lost to the public. That seems like censorship to me. Not book burning, but still censorship.
I 100% agree with your point about amplification though. That's a complication in the issue here because they are incentivised to push divisive, exreme views in order to drive engagement. There is a lot of discussion to be had there.
Regarding my mention of Hunter Biden, I wasn't lamenting that images of him were removed from social media. That's just basic cleaning up of feeds that needs to happen. I mean the fact that despite being verified by the FBI it was treated as bearing all of the hallmarks of Russian mis-information at the behest of other law enforcement agencies. It was then suppressed.
I don't know. You can assume that I'm parroting in bad faith if you want, but I hope you don't.
This kind of uncritical placing of all ideas on the same footing, deserving of the same treatment is not enlightenment.
Isn't the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I'm just saying someone shouldn't decide for us which ones we can engage with.
No individual human being has infinite time to dedicate to sifting through every insane conspiracy theory and terrible political theory that has ever been thunk. We, as a species, need to decide what we should and should not spend our limited time engaging with. Sometimes, that means listening to experts who have taken the time to study the subject in more detail than we will ever have time in our lives, and trusting their word on the matter.
For example, no one feels like they have to waste public time refuting the existence of aether (yet, anyway, though I'm sure the flat earthers will get around to it.) For another example, smart people who study history for a living identify several of key characteristics common to fascist political parties that look suuuuuper familiar to anyone looking at the modern day Republican party in the US.
We do not have infinite resources. Infinite time, infinite brain power, infinite public discourse. Just as it is widely recognized that it's fine to limit discussions of pro-anorexia groups for the public good, so too is it fine to limit the reach of harmful ideas like vaccine conspiracy theories, Neo-nazi recruitment of young people, whether or not people with this characteristic or that characteristic have equal rights and deserve life and freedom, climate change "debate"...
And some "ideas" that might not seem that harmful on their face should be suppressed when it is clear they are being deliberately used to lead people down paths toward much more harmful ideas for the profit of grifters. (Like Qanon and the Alt-Right YouTube pipeline)
It is ok for us to moderate what is said in public. We have always done this because it is necessary to a functioning, healthy society.
The irony of linking to The Intercept in a post talking about what an idiot Greenwald is...
He left in 2020 because they wouldn't allow him enough " editorial freedom". The end of that conflict should put you at ease with the intercept.
It does. Thank you.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn't great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there's no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it's mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don't think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it's absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn't count as much, etc...
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I've never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won't change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don't get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I'd assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don't care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn't either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don't have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I'm pretty far on the left and I'd debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn't trying to say that they're the same, I just think it's important to be weilding the same analysis for "allies" as for "enemies". Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.
That’s essentially in line with what I’m saying. He considers Liberal ID politics and government agencies to be more of a problem than right-wing fascism.
You know…. I’m usually all for legalization of drugs…
…. And I don’t know what greenwald is smoking here… but I think maybe I’d be okay with banning that one. It seems to have made him stupid. And not like temporarily.
Right wing media: not even once
obvious lying without any repercussions.
I still listen to Matt Taibbi's old podcast (that he's no longer on) but IIRC, they still carry a torch for Greenwald, maybe even had him on in recent years. I definitely heard him on some podcast that seemed overly friendly to him.
What's amusing to me is when Taibbi, Greenwald, etc., pretend to be somehow so very principled and above the fray and so on...it is rather amusing to watch.
I would lump BJG in that group. It seems like these guys are too smart to not understand how clearly this comes across as either stupidity or grift.
BJG?
Briahna Joy Gray, imagine if Ben Shapiro body swapped with Candace Owens and tried to copy Jimmy Dore. She was Bernie's press secretary in 2020 but he distanced himself from her and she is currently a Cornel West evangelist.
Big Juice Glenn... His early stuff was great. He would break down the different kinds of juices and drinks from all around the world. Talk about the taste, where they originated from (you'd be surprised at the history of some of these drinks), who they are marketed to, and so on. Sound dull but can be quite fascinating.
But lately BJG has started going down the crazy rabbit hole. His last few podcasts have been talking about how the chemicals in the modern day drinks and juices can effect your thinking and how some people have the technology (Bill Gates and company) to then manipulate your thought patterns because of these "chemicals". I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he got hit on the head or something? But it's not the same any more. Kinda sad.
I claim that Greenwald licks Vlad's taint and thanks him for the privilege.
I hate both of them with the burning passion of a thousand suns, FOX NEWS and that Nazi Laura Ingram cunt can get fucked too, it's a quadrangle of useless garbage
Remember that time Laura "accidentally" threw a heil at the RNC?
It's so weird to see how far we've fallen in this country. Whether good or bad, we used to proudly stand with nations fighting for their right to independence and democracy. We used to be proud fighters of freedom. Now the party that's all about freedoms and war, want to hide like the cowards they really are. I guess it just hits different when it's your Nazi buddies trying to invade a country....
Good.
Through policy, kinda, yeah.