he's a bit galaxy-brained sometimes but critical support for him on this one.
https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283
There's a statement by someone at the intercept. Which sounds plausible just because the statement basically reads as "even IRL he never. logs. off."
One positive effect for the Left under Biden is that the tide will be recede and you're going to start to see who was grifting and who wasn't.
Yep, everyone already knows that the right wing news is totally full of garbage and lies to protect Trump's image to his base. Now we'll start to see the "left wing" news do the exact same thing for Biden.
With the Democrats stealing the position of party of the Haute Bourgeoisie and the Republicans becoming the party of the lumpen and Petit Bourgeoisie, you can count on it. At this point, liberalism is nothing more than a brand.
True, but we already could tell by just remembering what people did pre-trump
There's no way this is what's happening. They were publishing stories about Tara Reade constantly for months, even after Bernie had long dropped out.
Yes, but it could be editors didn't want to publish those pieces. The Hunter Biden corruption story is interesting because it's not an indictment on just Hunter but the entire political class and many journalists who run in the same circles.
Pay for access is common in capitalism. Journalists write fawningly to maintain access to sources.
We've known for years that Biden and his family are corrupt, but it's run of the mill corruption. I see this as an attempt by the Intercept to narrow debate on criticism of Dems more narrowly to try and attract more investors/a more lib audience. My lib siblings went from liking Feinstein to hating her. There's a shift in libs willingness to be adversarial to elected Dems, but it only goes so far. The Intercept wants to cash in on this moment.
Yeah this argument makes sense, that the moment has shifted away from we need to burn this party down because the base will never be with us (for succdems) vs liberals are sick of the democrats being useless.
But I still struggle to fully believe that there is meaningful censorship there to protect Biden, many of their staff was talking about the story on social media, if this was purely about censorship you'd be seeing other staff publicly leaving today too and we haven't. Greenwald likely had an exit strategy in the making for some time and he blew up the whole thing in order to regain lost credibility with the whistle blower community after he lost a ton of it from the reality winner story.
The intercept is never going to truly be accepted in the mainstream of the democratic party, so they gain absolutely nothing by protecting Biden.
the dems are very short sighted and there is huge taboo around calling the liberal establishemt out in the journalist space
Yeah but the intercept has already done that lol. Ryan Grimm is already totally unacceptable to the DNC establishment let alone Greenwald, and Grimm is like a totally mainline working families party type dem.
its not like i read articles it seems like im missing something. but i still think that theres something about ideology going on other than just personal beef with some lib editors and journalissts
Also i have ahuge soft spot for glenn even if he has had some lib takes in the past hes a openly gay and i think an influental journalist in brazil
I'm not disagreeing with this, there's definitely something ideological related. But I think that goes much deeper than just this single article, from the basis of this single article alone you can't establish an ideological pattern.
My guess is that Glenn just wants to see the democratic party burn to the ground, his connection to politics is much more viceral and life or death than it is for the rest of these folks. The other folks don't have this pressing desire to make that happen and so they'll dance around issues of journalistic integrity to slow his role and he doesn't like that.
The Obama administration treated him and Snowden like shit, he obviously hates Biden for some of that. Countless DNC operatives were posting about how they hoped he'd rot in a Brazilian prison. His strong defense of Russia likely has some relation to Snowden rather than just being pure anti jingoism as he doesn't speak nearly as strongly about American intervention towards China, ect.
I also have a huge soft spot for him, the Snowden stuff was a big part of my political awakening, and I love how he's a catty bitch online haha. It's also worth pointing out he still says intercept brazil is good.
its too long for me to read drunk but it seems like he got really shafted by the other editors that had their own ideology shaping the platform and hes fucking pissed off about it
I think it's more that he has his own ideology and his editors don't really care, they care about maintaining the journalistic integrity of the paper. There's nothing in their emails that comes across as blatently ideological, but his response certainly was.
fuck the intercept, can't even post anything critic al of biden on there??
tho, to be honest, i do think lee fang is a racist. seen a few tweets of his that are just blatantly anti black.
They aren't trumpers in waiting lol
It's tough politically to link those two together in any way. GG is basically a civil libertarian. Taibbi is a left lib/new deal democrat.
The only real link is that they are white guys who don't like "cancel culture"
Greenwald and Taibbi are the gen x trumpers in waiting.
Nah, doubtful. Listen to Greenwald on A Time of Monsters podcast for some insight on his views on Trump and why bringing down the Democrats is a more worthwhile cause for him.
Until I see the article, I’ll reserve judgment on whether that was the main reason they pulled it.
i also find it kinda funny that like 4 of us all made posts about this within 2 minutes of each other. :chavez-salute: to my extremely online comrades.
So I actually like Greenwald and have been reading him since he started at Salon. The article itself was fine, I don't think there was anything crazy in it. However his response to his editor goes form 0 to 100 really quickly. He's a good journalist, but he can be such a messy bitch.
Yeah. Several of his pieces I've read I thought were pretty good. I think he's also a pretty brave guy. I just see him losing his mind on Twitter, engaging in totally unnecessary battles with dipshits who come at him in the worst possible faith, and I can't help but be like wtf are you doing dude?
I thought Glenn was a messy bitch until I read the editor's response. Jesus, it was way messier and bitchier. (I like Glen too. People are willing to throw under the bus the guy who helped free Lula because of his lukewarm takes oncancel culture. Priorities)
When I first started paying attention to Greenwald, I told myself to trust individual journalists rather than the site they write for (since he did the Snowden stuff under The Guardian). Looks like I was absolutely right, and while Greenwald might be hit or miss nowadays, I still trust him more than The Intercept.
The intercept is basically Vice but sub the punk aesthetic for a hacker aesthetic
Intercept used to have much better politics. Vice was always a grift.
The Intercept was a huge part of what radicalized me. Scahill's commentary on intercepted was so clear and concise in its criticism of liberalism and imperialism that I couldn't turn around and go back to pretending that Obama was good actually. He helped expand my worldview outside of domestic politics and his takes on Palestine and BDS have been excellent. I've had some friends who have asked me where to start to become more informed when it comes to politics and the first place I point them is the podcast.
As for the publication itself, I kinda see it as the best alternative to mainstream reporting that has credibility with the general public. They are the ones that published the Tara Reade story after all. They're flawed, but they're also an important part of the media landscape.
I remember when I'd get downvoted for saying that the intercept sucked and that the best source for US covert ops was the grayzone
those were the days
The grayzone isnt especially different from the intercept. It's not like Max Blumenthal and co are Marxists.
I'm pretty sure they're members of PSL. Make of that what you will
That might be true now, but that definitely wasn't true in 2018 when I was hearing a bunch of criticism towards them from PSL members.
Nah. They've been in PSL for a while. Not all Marxists agree with each other it turns out...
The criticism was that they weren't Marxist, and in turn had some very weird views as it related to Syria because of that. But yeah, it is true that people on the left love to throw shit at each other.
Ah that's why they went so hard calling things Trotskyite suddenly lol.
I mean idk if they're Marxists but they're anti-imperialists which makes them 100x better than the Intercept. I honestly can't see how you'd think they're the same thing. The only weird thing I've seen from them is anti-cancel culture stuff and some mild Tulsi defending. I can understand them fearing cancel culture though, since it would likely be institutionalist libs canceling them for antisemitism over criticisms of Zionism or something.
Idk, my opinions on them are based on some fairly old stuff, they have changed a bit over the years and it's probably unfair I'm not giving credit to them for that. They absolutely have a history that involved them toeing the imperialist line on Syria though.
I didn't know who they were until Syria was out of the news cycle. What was their cringe Syria take?
Basically just repeating a fuck ton of CIA type shit about Assad, everything from stuff about chemical weapons to the rape of children.
Norton and Blumenthal used to do CIA takes on Assad, then suddenly changed when Greyzone was founded. I like their stuff but I do think that was very strange.
I mean maybe they've grown politically? Or maybe they really are paid by Russia like the libs say. If that were the case I wouldn't really care lol. I just can't see it being a US op. They seem to counter US interests constantly and are viewed positively by our enemies. I'd say the accusation of opportunism holds more weight, but tbh I don't think it really matters if it doesn't manifest in an Imperialist or reactionary way.
Yeah, Greyzone puts out fantastic and thought provoking stuff, but Blumenthal and Norton seemed to suddenly switch Syria positions when Greyzone was created. I think they genuinely could have changed views, but that was really weird.
The way they act so online sometimes and directly scrutinize other media outlets makes me incredibly skeptical given their own path of not always getting things exactly right. It's not right that they go around calling the intercept an op.
I used to think they adopted these positions because it appealed to a specific niche of the left, but I have seen them be given real respect from like actual world leaders so my opinion is changing slowly.
Lol seriously Grayzone is literally the best journalism in the US that has any kind of reach.
Literally they're the only fucking publication in the US that's consistently against the Amerikkkan imperialism
Go directly to the source. For Latin American news telesur English is the best.
damn dude shouldn't have co-founded an online magazine with a CIA asset/billionaire. maybe should've quit when they leaked a whistleblower's identity to the NSA, but I guess a mild editorial dispute is as good a reason as any other
I celebrated when Mehdi Hasan left the intercept, but I guess it was a rat fleeing a sinking ship
We're going to see a lot of 'leftist' journalists angling for CNN/MSNBC gigs.
___He didn't leave? He still is listed as a columnist and hosts Intercepted?
She was already caught at the time they released the documents, they caught her because she printed out the documents at work and she has already been arrested when the story broke. But it was moronic that the intercept fully confirmed it.
Also they lure whistleblowers to them and then get them imprisoned. They are so far responsible for the imprisonment of 3 whistleblowers, and they don’t even publish the information that the whistleblower exposed.
wait, really?
I don't know if you trust Greenwald personally or not, but among other places where he spoke about this, he went on democracy now to say that these folks got caught because they messed up themselves when leaking documents.
There are definitely intercept type outlets that are ops in the way you describe (bellingcat comes to mind as just being a front for MI5), but the government is good at catching people unless they're prepped first and Reality Winner wasn't prepped, she just printed out documents attached to her job ID and mailed them. Greenwald lost a ton of credibility because of this one, but idk if he really deserves it and there's no chance he gains it back while still working at the intercept.
This. There's speculation that Reality Winner was set up to begin with.
Yeah this is bullshit, you just sound like the greyzone guys who are just trying to attract donors away towards them. The intercept isn't an op lol.
This comment doesn't preclude that there isn't real criticism of the intercept, but they're a very serious outlet.
Youre the one throwing out accusations without facts. The intercept published a shit ton about Tara Reade aiming to destroy Bidens credibility even after Bernie had dropped out, this just seems like Greenwald trying to go independent because you make more money on substack.
You misread me, I'm saying that the intercept covering this story in extreme depth when everyone else ignored it is evidence that they don't give a shit about protecting Bidens credibility.
Not anymore, obviously. This is shilling for Biden AND removing GG at the same time in a kind of internal power struggle. I stopped my Intercept donations today.
Yeah I think he's lying, he's been losing credibility because of his ties to the intercepts handling of the Reality Winner story. An angry sounding exit from the outlet would likely make whistleblowers more interested in working with him again.
Also he's going to make 2x as much money on substack, so being independent is a smart move regardless.
losing credibility
Did you miss his investigation of operation car wash and its ties to Jair Bolsonaro? And how it helped free Lula?
Even the most cynical of neolibs have to admit he did exemplary journalism on that, all while while being under attack by the Brazilian right wing and its current government.
Yeah and that wasn't in America, the intercept has been getting considerably less leaks than before reality winner. I don't think it's deserved, but it's the reality.
Its not credibility as a journalist, it's credibility as someone to trust with classified american documents.
Actually, I think it is deserved that the intercept doesn't get more leaks in America. In case it wasn't obvious, Glenn hasn't been part of the US operation for a while now. Anyway since you brought up reality winner, he addresses this in his resignation letter:
"The most egregious, but by no means only, example of exploiting my name to evade responsibility was the Reality Winner debacle. As The New York Times recently reported, that was a story in which I had no involvement whatsoever. While based in Brazil, I was never asked to work on the documents which Winner sent to our New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. I did not even learn of the existence of that document until very shortly prior to its publication. The person who oversaw, edited and controlled that story was Betsy Reed, which was how it should be given the magnitude and complexity of that reporting and her position as editor-in-chief."
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept
Also shits on the "editorial" direction of the US office, as it turned into just another pro imperialist rag:
"I have been extremely disenchanted and saddened by the editorial direction of The Intercept under its New York leadership for quite some time. The publication we founded without those editors back in 2014 now bears absolutely no resemblance to what we set out to build -- not in content, structure, editorial mission or purpose. I have grown embarrassed to have my name used as a fund-raising tool to support what it is doing and for editors to use me as shield to hide behind to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes (including, but not only, with the Reality Winner debacle, which I was publicly blamed despite having no role in it, while the editors who actually were responsible for those mistakes stood by silently, allowing me to be blamed for their errors and then covering-up any public accounting of what happened, knowing that such transparency would expose their own culpability)."
Yeah I absolutely agree that there are problems with the intercept. The big basis of my criticism in this thread is that this particular story being shut down by the editor is just an excuse he was using. He's been planning an exit for a while.
He needed to leave in raging fire to regain his personal credibility with intellegence agency leakers.
this particular story being shut down by the editor is just an excuse he was using.
The editor who tells him to go fuck himself is also the editor that screwed up the reality winner docs, and then dragged his name through the mud to protect their own reputation. I think you are too quick to shit on Glenn. You don't know whats been happening in that office, and my guess it's some seedy shit.
He needed to leave in raging fire to regain his personal credibility with intelligence agency leakers.
Meh, he handled the leaked docs in brazil fine. But yes leaving like this will help him.
Great job, gum shoe. He literally says the story not the "sole or even primary reason he is leaving". You're painting him as a careerist grifter while he assembling an investigation that led to Lula being freed from jail. It just doesn't jive to me
Biden benefits from silence, it's literally his winning strategy, keep him away from people and out of the media.
Yeah agreed, but the intercept still shouldn't be claiming a quid pro quo without evidence. That only hurts their legitimacy given how often people try to play them off as a joke when they actually do find fully verifiable quid pro quos like what happened between the students at UMass and the MA dem party fucking over Alex Morse.
No one hires Hunter Biden from reading his resume, you only get a 80k+ a month no show job because daddy is the VP, requiring "evidence" for these kinds of obvious corrupt deals is a ludicrous argument on its face.
Except he was allowed to report on that, it was the implication of quid pro quo with Barisma that was questionable. There's obviously more context here than he revealed though.
Greenwald isn't saying a quid pro quo took place though. He's presenting a case that rings true with reality and stating what evidence there is and isn't. GG is clear that there is no evidence that Biden knew about Hunter's business dealings or that Hunter was profiting off his dad's power, and that there is no proof that "the big guy" that Hunter references is his dad. But c'mon, if you start from the assumption that Hunter has been rewarded with a job because of who his dad is, all of these other bits of evidence raise huge red flags that need to be investigated. If Biden didn't know his pressuring to replace a prosecutor in Ukraine would work in favor of his son's business dealings, it's a HELLUVA coincidence. Imagine Thanksgiving: "How are things, my boy?" "Gee dad you'll never believe it, but I made out like gangbusters on my Ukraine contract because they fired that guy you told them to fire for a completely unrelated matter." "Cum on Jack, I love you Beaunter."
Which is why this is so sad.
Going out on "how dare you block my Hunter cringe pics two days before the election!" knowing how the country is still in psychic shock over email?
It's such a fucking waste.
When he does reporting and actually thinks about stuff he is incredibly good. When he does his rage-contrarian tweets or articles, he can be a bit of a hit and miss and accept claims that lack evidence and/or are just asserted by some people.
You can clearly see that his worst content is written when responding to shitlibs who call him a traitor or Russian spy. I get it, it sucks. Especially when the government in Brazil wants to put him in jail as well.
He's kind of a left-libertarian, with an emphasis on the libertarian. Somewhat good, but prone to galaxy-brain, and still not a socialist.
I don't know if he's a socialist and don't really care to be frank. He does at least move in socialist circles. He's uncompromisingly anti-imperialist from a left direction and apparently fearless of authority in his reporting. Since these are vanishingly rare qualities in mainstream media, I'm happy to forgive his occasional shit take.
Also, anybody who hates the Democrats as much as he does is OK by me.
He's an extremely mixed bag, who will wind up following a Taibbi path to right wing relevance.
If Biden wins, Greenwald is gonna have like a weekly segment on Tucker Carlson.
He keeps burrowing further into the "cancel culture" track. There's a right wing podcast I monitor because a buddy of mine loves it, and I'm real nervous about him going full chud (called "the fifth column", it's basically two "80s guys" finance/media types who LOVE their own farts), and Taibbi is scheduled to be their guest.
To give you an example of the problems with their podcast, EVERY episode (of the 6 I've checked in on) contain anywhere between 5-20 minutes of complaining about the 1619 Project.
Russiagate really broke Taibbi's brain and made him into a quasi-conservative.
He was also good on Chapo, people just lost their minds because he had the extremely accurate that police abolition is a terrible, unpopular idea.
You didn't say the episode was bad (it was). You said Taibbi's appearance was bad.
hey I want to tell you guys my aunt made cookies for me and they tasted okay but I didn't want to tell her that they weren't all that great so I just silently munched on them in front of her while she expected acknowledgment
he had the extremely accurate that police abolition is a terrible, unpopular idea.
fuck off lmaooooo
I'm with you on everything except Taibbi being quasi-conservative.
When Bernie got torpedoed and the George Floyd/BLM protests started, tons of "anti-woke left" folks brains melted. Taibbi, Chapo, Greenwald, even Brooks to an extent, nobody could shut the fuck up about White Fragility and Cancel Culture like a bunch of old men yelling at clouds. Not to say Robin Deangelo isn't a grifter or the performatively ultrawoke PC lib-left isn't grating as fuck, but it's fascinating to see the mask slowly get pulled back on the anti-woke-left-to-fash pipeline. As utterly fucking idiotic my center left lib friends are, there really is something to that bullshit horseshoe theory, if one of the tips of the shoe is the antiwoke left. It's a honeypot for budding leftists who still can't unravel and unpack their white supremacy/ableist/transphobia shit.
The whole content-o-sphere for dirtbag leftists started really narrowing into an echo chamber - shit started feeling like a fucking op after Bernie lost and they were supposed to turn their attention to black people.
anti-woke-left-to-fash pipeline
There's an absolutely fucking long way between bitching about cancel culture and embracing fascism. Those are not the same thing. I'm not saying it's impossible for somebody already inhabited by brainworms or whose ideology is non-existent to go that way, but for most that's a stretch.
An actual real-life example of left-to-fash is somebody like Christopher Hitchens. A hero of the liberal left, turned far-right warmonger. I see a lot of similarities between early Hitchens an Greenwald, but I'm not buying that being "anti-woke" or being critical of looting is evidence of a similar turn to the right.
I probably shouldn't call it a pipeline. I don't mean going from a card carrying leftist to putting on a Nazi uniform. I should say it's a beartrap. A honeypot. An apathy death ray. A swarm of cackling, terminally online, irony-poisoned leftists who want healthcare but don't actually do shit and end up being as fash-enabling as the libs, enthralled to inaction and complaining as sport. And then you throw in the perjoratives and slurs they use and the fake-tankie talk just to feel edgy. The anti woke part.
There are chuds that hang out in those spaces.
I agree, I also wonder if people like Hitchens and Greenwald are outliers (in the sense that for Greenwald at least, he more or less seems to march to the beat of his own drum). Though I suppose that Greenwald has consistently held weird politics while Hitchens showed that left-to-fash progression over time.
Libertarian iirc, sometimes overly contrarian, but does some good reporting/pushback on imperialism, offers decent critiques of the Dems. Not a socialist though, but in the grand scheme of things his work is good
is somehow more online than all of us
combined. I'm in absolute awe at how Online he is.
He did the Snowden revelations thing and is now single handedly trying to drown the NSA in data.
He is a contrarian so sometimes he’ll defend some seriously dumb shit.
greenwald is a fearless journalist and a hero for the things he's done in speaking truth to power to the US global hedgemony but also he's a huge whiny baby
but make no mistake: him being a huge whiny baby is partially the reason why he was such an effective journalist
Personally, I like Glenn. He just reminds me of like the best player on your little league team who consistently goes 4 for 4 and then one game he strikes out and blames everyone else in the ball park because he missed a pitch, cries, and goes home because he wasn't allowed to hit a double. I still want the dude on my team, we all do. Although I think Naomi Klein is a better player, I would never say it to Glenn. Growing up a jock has fucked up my metaphor game.
Gotta hand it to Greenwald. He may be a messy bitch that loves drama but sometimes it makes for great entertainment
