Glenn is right-wing and always has been. And he doesn’t ignore Fox News now - he’s one of Tucker Carlson’s most frequent guests!

Glenn Greenwald postures as a civil libertarian when he wants to attack liberals. He has basically not said a word about Trump’s drone program (which by design is dramatically more lethal than Obama’s policy), and not a word about Trump lawlessly defending convicted war criminals and encouraging more war crimes. This is because Greenwald is a dishonest hack.

As someone who admired Greenwald for years and personally had discussions with him where he (temporarily) changed my mind about things through badgering and gaslighting, I am still very upset that I didn’t see this sooner.

Glenn is not right wing in the least. He’s a staunch socialist.

And who cares if he went on Tucker. Is there a rule that you can’t talk to the “other side”?

And could you expand on your list of “you must say this to be on my good side”? I hear drones, anything else?

Your commentary actually sounds like an attack on everything but what his actual beliefs are.

You're definitely showing your hand with the hyperbole - “a rampantly dishonest fascist carnival barker who runs the most racist television show in America.” Which is patently untrue but is a great way to virtue signal.

My point was that the issues that Greenwald is famous for suddenly stopped being important around January 20, 2017

Greenwald is famous for his work with Edward Snowden. Are you saying that stopped being important? Are you mad?

And what Glenn is doing is calling out bullshit, no matter where he sees it. On the left or the right. And that's call integrity, something that apparently is a personal failing to you.

The personal attack is unnecessary - if you’re really suggesting that me calling Tucker Carlson’s show “the most racist show in America” is a sign that I lack integrity then I don’t think you’re a person worth engaging with.

I suppose you’ll determine that a Media Matters link is inherently untrustworthy but Tucker Carlson is racist garbage, by far the worst racist on Fox News (!), and the only reason to defend him is if you yourself are racist garbage: https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-...

What personal attack? I said your description was "hyperbole". That was a comment on your post, not you personally.

And come on, Mediamatters.org? "Media Matters for America is a politically left-leaning 501, nonprofit organization which acts as media watchdog for scrutinizing right-leaning media outlets." A politically left-leaning organization doesn't like a right-wing organization? Shocking.

Let's look at an example, Tucker says “I don’t see” that “diversity is the strength of our country.” That's white supremacy? Question that diversity is a strength can be twisted to the idea that white people are better than other races? That's just complete unhinged honestly. You'd have to see the "white supremacy" boogieman around every corner to consider that an example.

Let me ask you this - how many people do you know personally, who voted for Trump? I mean, there are 63M of them, so it's not like they are hard to find. I'm going to guess, zero. But let's say you do know some. Can you articulate why they voted for Trump? I'm not asking you to agree with the reason, just can you articulate it without calling them racist?

This is the personal attack:

> And that's call [sic] integrity, something that apparently is a personal failing to you.

And I spent my entire childhood in Oklahoma. I have friends there, and I’m the only one in the family who left (except my mom, who spent the last 5 years of her life just over the border in Texas). I know plenty of people who voted for Trump.

Otherwise, like I said, your unhinged personal attack indicates you are clearly not worth engaging with.

Ahhh.. ok, then I apologize for the personal attack. I meant it as what you view as a failing, I view as integrity, but that's fine, I could see how you could see it as a personal attack, so I apologize.

Now, onto the 2nd point - I'd love to hear from you, in your own words, why these folks you know from Oklahoma would vote for Trump. And I don't mean the simplistic, "they're bumpkins", "they vote against their own interests", "they're all racists", I mean, in their own words, what do they say?

Isnt Greenwald an outspoken Bernie Sanders supporter?

IMHO he cannot be pigeonholed into a neat "right wing / left wing" scheme like that.

There are a lot of right-wing Bernie Sanders supporters! A huge part of his appeal is general stances against corruption. Also, though Bernie is more anti-capitalist than most Democrats, he is also very squishy on issues of racism and misogyny. There are a lot of voters out there who support left-wing economics and right-wing social policy, and Bernie has appeal for a lot of them. There’s a large contingent on the left who are anti-“identity politics.”

My dad is center-right, despises Republicans, and likes Bernie (votes for him in both primaries) but thinks Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Tlaib are too radical. In terms of economic policy this makes little sense, but that’s not what’s going on here.

Interesting. Now that is not a perspective I could get from across the ocean just by reading the news. Thank you.

Being against identity politics doesn’t make you socially right-wing.

I put “identity politics” in quotes for a reason. I think believing that

a) “identity politics” is a major movement on the left, rather than a pejorative right-wing term for civil rights activism, and

b) somehow deciding you’re “against” this

is in fact right-wing. It is sort of like people who are against “critical race theory” - with a tiny handful of exceptions (mostly left-liberal quibbles), they are not making an academic argument about the actual subject of critical race theory so much as signaling their opposition that they’re opposed to anti-racist ideology. Criticizing the term “critical race theory” without having read a bunch of sociology is basically telling on yourself.

Indeed, I haven't read a lot academic literature about Identity Politics, Critical Race Theory, Flat Earth Theory or Holocaust Denial, nor am I going to. In my rejection of these ideologies, I mainly focus on the badness of their proposed solutions to (often perceived, not actual) problems.

Specifically for Identity Politics and Critical Race Theory, the main ideological issue I see is qualifying people by their belonging to major groups (often based on race, ethnicity, religion or sex) which results in solutions that go against individual rights/liberties (which I take to be the cornerstone of liberalism). Examples are: not opposing police violence against people but only police violence against black people, supporting discrimination for/against some races (for black / against Asian when it comes to schooling), etc. A lot of these policies would be good if they were instead targeting everybody (or at most class-based (rich/poor) discrimination). A lot of the proposed bad solutions could be better if they were thought-out a bit more (e.g. "defund the police" is particularly bad... instead what you should do is, prevent police buying military gear, stop swatting, ban civil forfeiture, fund (and train) them more, legalize drugs, reduce poverty to reduce crime, ...).

Edit: contrary to my words above, I actually went and read a bit about CRT on Wikipedia... One of the first "Major themes" listed is critique of liberalism. Therefore, I understand why proponents of CRT would want to pain liberals like me as bad ("right-wing"). It's also not surprising that liberals would oppose CRT.

> Examples are: not opposing police violence against people but only police violence against black people,

Can you point to a single person with more than, say, 50 Twitter followers, who believes this? Or even said it provocatively? Maybe Farrakhan, but otherwise...? Almost every Black Lives Matter commentator has pointed out that the US police are deeply violent against everyone, even though black people get it the worst. In fact they have used this to build support for the movement, and argue that white Americans' tolerance for police violence against blacks leads to increased police violence overall.

The way you formulated your view is what (actual) critical race theorists would describe as being "high in racial resentment": you're inventing pro-black racists in response to legitimate calls from black people for civil rights reform.

> supporting discrimination for/against some races (for black / against Asian when it comes to schooling), etc

Harvard artificially deflating the number of accepted Asians is a thorny issue, but calling affirmative action "discrimination" is another of these views that are filled with racial resentment. It's not quite as bad as people who suggest that black beneficiaries of affirmative action are somehow unqualified (this is not how affirmative action works and it's disgusting to suggest otherwise), but it's still a pejorative and antagonistic framework of the issue. It also completely ignores why affirmative action exists in the first place: unlike white and Asian children, black children are badly screwed over by racist teachers and racist administrators starting from kindergarten.

> A lot of these policies would be good if they were instead targeting everybody

The reason why critical race theorists criticize this classical-liberal approach is that a wealthy black person still overall has a much more difficult life in America than a lower-middle-class white person. White people have a lot of difficulty understanding this, hence "class not race" movements on the left. But "class not race" in America is a right-wing idea, one that couldn't exist without a racist erasure of black history and black experiences. Bernie Sanders is also a big "class not race" guy and it's a huge reason why there was a such a split in 2016 between socialists and social democrats. And also why a bunch of centrists and center-right folks (like my father) liked Bernie.

> (e.g. "defund the police" is particularly bad... instead what you should do is, prevent police buying military gear, stop swatting, ban civil forfeiture, fund (and train) them more, legalize drugs, reduce poverty to reduce crime, ...)

OK, I also agree that the "abolish the police" framework is poorly phrased. But Black Lives Matter activists have definitely pushed for every single one of these policies, except "more funding" - even if you don't care about police violence, metropolitan police in particular simply have too much damn money. They spend it very badly! But they don't need more money, they need more oversight on how its spent.

> Therefore, I understand why proponents of CRT would want to pain liberals like me as bad ("right-wing")

You are clearly center-right in a lot of ways. Maybe you are more of a social democrat on economics. But suggesting that CRT is anti-white and that Black Lives Matter hasn't actually thought about policy is... just plain racist.

I disagree with parts, but not a bad reply overall.

Greenwald positions himself as a leftist so that the people on the right, who are the ones giving him money and television appearances, can use him as an easy sounding board for their grievances.

"See? Even this guy on the left thinks they're nuts!"