Comment by alejohausner
11 days ago
Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.
Laura Poitras' documentary Citizenfour is an excellent introduction to the amazing work that Glenn does and has done, and how he's been personally targeted - although I don't recall whether the doc includes Glenn's partner being harassed by US authorities.
He became well known for exposing surveillance but that instinct to portray himself as exposing government hypocrisy lead him to parrot Russian intelligence/Trump campaign attacks on Clinton and Biden long after he should have realized that the right posed a much greater threat to civil liberties and were feeding him information in service of their own campaigns, not transparency. It’s really undercut his earlier work.
Examining Glenn's work through an ideological lens leads to this kind of rhetoric. It's why he's so good at what he does. He's crossed ideological boundaries constantly in pursuit of the truth of a matter, and in defense of the public.
"pursuit of the truth" is an ideology. What are you trying to say here?
Glenn is, essentially, hypocritcal because he ignores things that go against his predetermined narrative.
Does he post true things sometimes? Sure, but is it really worth filtering through the rest?
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His ideology is “America bad”, which leads to some alignment with foreign influence and arguably leads to him spreading propaganda
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To anyone on Twitter in like 2016-2019, this is a rather funny sentiment to have about him. I can remember my respect for him dissolve day by day. I didn't even remember until now if he was pro- or anti- Trump, probably neither still. But I simply remember that he slowly turned into the worst caricature of a smug Twitter media guy. Just turned into "hot take" haver and seemed to lose his own plot.
If you know you know I guess, but even then, broken clocks and all that. There was a point where he was such a cool guy to me, and I grew up a little in a good way seeing him turn into whatever he did.
It may just be Twitter's fault at the end of the day too!
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Uh, that’s how he likes to style himself but that’s more of an ideological stance than you’re complaining about. A true focus on truth and defense of the public would have included questions like “are the Russians totally unbiased in feeding me this information?” or “am I serving the public by refusing to admit I made a mistake and repeated untrue claims which were highly beneficial to the political party who amplified my claims?”
This is the same "useful idiot" trap that Julian Assange fell into. It's a challenge to incorporate the lessons of people like these without falling into the opposite trap, that of cynical apathy.
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He's great for privacy, surveillance and a centrist liberal critique of both parties, but his obsession with Israel is annoying and distracting from the other non- partisan contrarian attitude that I like him for.
Heh, “obsession”, as if Israel has been doing absolutely nothing of interest for the past two years. Not to mention its blatant involvement in the domestic US political scene via AIPAC and friends.
Is he taking a break from being a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda?
Those guys find it useful when there's some kind of legitimate gripe to use. He needn't take a break, it's very much Western companies doing this. He doesn't even need to put in an ad for whatever doubtless sanctioned Russian services would like to replace these Western tech giants.
Sometimes actual problems can be readily exploited for sinister purposes. Doesn't mean the original problems aren't also sinister, just be damn careful where you intend to flee to :)
Can you make an example?
He has frequently laundered the notion that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the West's fault for expanding NATO. He also told Tucker Carlson he believed the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hosted American bioweapons labs. He has spent his entire career being a grandstanding contrarian who is occasionally correct.
Right if you’re not a mouthpiece for the US State Depts horrific foreign policy you’re a Russian propagandist. My family fought in every war going back to the Revolution and I think our policy on Russia is complete shit. AFAIC we started the whole conflict.
> AFAIC we started the whole conflict.
Is this talking point still being paid for? I haven't seen it in a while, but I guess I don't keep track that closely.
What are the other russian provided talking points these days?
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He literally reposts russian lies.
"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...
Rumble is indeed a free for all, with lots of angry kooks. But it’s also a place where reasonable dissenting voices have found a way to get their ideas heard. It’s a mixed bag.
As it should be. If it's not a mixed bag, you're in an echo-chamber. That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.
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> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters
If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?
It's always fun reminding people that the internet was invented by the US military
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Yes.
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They couldn't possibly make all that money from just Nazis: I'm given to understand they're doing really well these days. I had the impression that Substack became heavily co-opted by anti-Nazis and have done nothing to defend the feelings of the Nazis they're also happy to host. Not sure what the balance is currently, but again: they couldn't possibly be making all that money from just Nazis, and I think that's instructive.
His focus has also involved generous amounts of simping for Russian fascists, excusing their colonialist wars, etc. Not an anti-imperialist, just anti-US.
link?
https://voxukraine.org/en/messing-with-the-truth-disinformat...
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You mean Snowden had to force his material on him, he reluctantly published it, got hooked on the fame and promptly jumped the shark
I personally miss Snowden's revelations so much. Such a brave soul! He should keep doing what he does best and never stop. It's sad that we have not heard any new revelations from him for a long time, though. Any ideas why he stopped?
I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or something, but Snowden essentially lives in exile from his home as the US government would like to punish him for exposing the secrets of the US government spying on everyone. Not sure what new revelations could come from him.
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