Glenn Greenwald Warns of the Domestic War on Terrorism

Here are the opening paragraphs of Glenn Greenwald's latest article, "The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming":

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU . . .

An entire book could — and probably should — be written on why all of this is so concerning. For the moment, two points are vital to emphasize.

First, much of the alarmism and fear-mongering is being driven by a deliberate distortion of what it means for speech to “incite violence.” . . .

To illustrate this point, I have often cited the crucial and brilliantly reasoned Supreme Court free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. In the 1960s and 1970s, the State of Mississippi tried to hold local NAACP leaders liable on the ground that their fiery speeches urging a boycott of white-owned stores “incited” their followers to burn down stores and violently attack patrons who did not honor the protest. The state’s argument was that the NAACP leaders knew that they were metaphorically pouring gasoline on a fire with their inflammatory rhetoric to rile up and angry crowds.

But the Supreme Court rejected that argument, explaining that free speech will die if people are held responsible not for their own violent acts but for those committed by others who heard them speak and were motivated to commit crimes in the name of that cause (emphasis added)

. . .

And that is directly relevant to the second point. Continuing to process Washington debates of this sort primarily through the prism of “Democrat v. Republican” or even “left v. right” is a sure ticket to the destruction of core rights. There are times when powers of repression and censorship are aimed more at the left and times when they are aimed more at the right, but it is neither inherently a left-wing nor a right-wing tactic. It is a ruling class tactic, and it will be deployed against anyone perceived to be a dissident to ruling class interests and orthodoxies no matter where on the ideological spectrum they reside.

The last several months of politician-and-journalist-demanded Silicon Valley censorship has targeted the right, but prior to that and simultaneously it has often targeted those perceived as on the left. The government has frequently declared right-wing domestic groups “terrorists,” while in the 1960s and 1970s it was left-wing groups devoted to anti-war activism which bore that designation. In 2011, British police designated the London version of Occupy Wall Street a “terrorist” group. In the 1980s, the African National Congress was so designated. “Terrorism” is an amorphous term that was created, and will always be used, to outlaw formidable dissent no matter its source or ideology.

If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order.

Unlike so many ordinary citizens addicted to trivial partisan warfare, these ruling class elites know who their real enemies are: anyone who steps outside the limits and rules of the game they have crafted and who seeks to disrupt the system that preserves their prerogatives and status. The one who put this best was probably Barack Obama when he was president, when he observed — correctly — that the perceived warfare between establishment Democratic and Republican elites was mostly theater, and on the question of what they actually believe, they’re both “fighting inside the 40 yard line” together

Greenwald then links to this video of Barack Obama.

This point can't be over-emphasized, but I fear that this point is invisible to the tens of millions of Americans who are convinced that U.S. politics can best be understood as a tribal pursuit between the "Left" and the "Right."  They are deeply trapped in an illusory matrix that has the viscosity of fundamentalist religion. Greenwald's articles are mostly only for subscribers, but this one is open to the public.

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Impeaching Trump

President Gerald Ford once famously said, “An impeachable offense is whatever the House of Representatives says it is.” If I recall correctly, there have been twenty impeachment actions brought by the House of Representatives, most against judges. Results at trial have been mixed, especially regarding Presidents, in part because it requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict. Four of the accused had charges dismissed, in all but one case because the accused had already left office. Eight were convicted, all judges. There has never been a President convicted at an impeachment trial.

Impeachment is meant to remove an official from office to prevent doing further harm. It is not intended to punish, except for removing the official from the Federal payroll. Its use should be rare and judiciously applied; in my opinion, that means with a view to the future so as to prevent further harm and discourage similar acts. All three of the presidential impeachment efforts have resulted in acquittal. The basis in each case seems to be a jockeying for political position or advantage, not prevention of harm.

The first case, Andrew Jackson, was accused of violating the law by dismissing his Secretary of War from office without congressional approval. The constitution appears clear to me about separation of powers, and the law itself violated that principle. Of course, I am not an attorney; neither were most of the men who crafted the constitution.

The second case was Bill Clinton, accused of perjury and abuse of power. At trial, he was acquitted by the Senate, as the partisans in the House who brought the charges knew he would be. Robert Byrd, former member of the Ku Klux Klan a Democratic Senator from West Virginia, gave the speech of his career in announcing his vote to acquit. We would do well to ponder it. Here are some quotes by Senator Robert Byrd:

Mr. Clinton's offenses do, in my judgment, constitute an 'abuse or violation of some public trust.' Reasonable men and women can, of course, differ with my viewpoint.

Should Mr. Clinton be removed from office for these impeachable offenses? This question gives me great pause. The answer is, as it was intended to be by the framers, a difficult calculus. This is without question the most difficult, wrenching and soul-searching vote that I have ever, ever cast in my 46 years in Congress. A vote to convict carries with it an automatic removal of the President from office. It is not a two-step process. Senators can't vote maybe. The only vote that the Senator can cast, under the rules, as written, is a vote either to convict and remove or a vote to acquit.

The American people deeply believe in fairness, and they have come to view the President as having 'been put upon' for politically partisan reasons. They think that the House proceedings were unfair. History, too, will see it that way. The people believe that the Independent Counsel, Mr. Starr, had motivations which went beyond the duties strictly assigned to him.

In the end, the people's perception of this entire matter as being driven by political agendas all around, and the resulting lack of support for the President's removal, tip the scales for allowing this President to serve out the remaining 22 months of his term, as he was elected to do. When the people believe that we who have been entrusted with their proxies, have been motivated mostly or solely by political partisanship on a matter of such momentous import as the removal from office of a twice-elected President, wisdom dictates that we turn away from that dramatic step. To drop the sword of Damocles now, given the bitter political partisanship surrounding this entire matter, would only serve to further undermine a public trust that is too much damaged already. Therefore, I will reluctantly vote to acquit.

The full text of the speech is available here.

The current support by Speaker Pelosi for impeachment of Trump will make the Clinton debacle look like a Sunday church picnic. She is clearly seeking short-term political partisan advantage, by forcing Republicans to vote publicly on whether or not to impeach. That will drive further division in the country. I don’t approve of Trump’s remarks, but do they rise to the level of an impeachable offense? I don’t approve of mob violence as occurred in Congress, but is the best solution to tell half the country you’re now censored, deplatformed, not allowed in public, cancelled, and we’re here to shit on your grave?

The first thing I want to hear from President-elect Biden on Monday morning is that he urges Democrats to cool their jets. If the purpose is to remove Trump from office, that was done in November. If the purpose is anything else, it has no place in America

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Progressive News Media Abandons Julian Assange

It's amazing to watch the "progressive" media slip away and abandon one of the biggest First Amendment threats of our time. Not too long ago, progressive media outlets gave full-throated support for Assange. Are there any progressive voices still speaking out for a pardon for Julian Assange? There would be, except that thinking has clearly become a team sport these days.

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Helen Pluckrose Discusses the Need to Push Back Against Critical Social Justice Activism (Woke-ness)

Earlier this year, British author Helen Pluckrose, also the Editor-in-Chief of Areo Magazine, co-authored a new book, Cynical Threories, with James Lindsay, who is the creator of the anti-woke website New Discourses.  The long title to their book is also their compact thesis: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.  

Pluckrose was recently interviewed by Jason Hill of Quillette. The topic was the brand of postmodernism embraced by modern Critical Social Justice activists. In recent years CSJ's version of postmodernism has been increasingly employed as a political strategy by the Woke Left.  What is "postmodernism"?  Pluckrose offers these four characteristics:

  1. Objective knowledge is inaccessible and what we consider knowledge is actually just a cultural construct that operates in the service of power.
  2. Dominant groups in society—wealthy, white, heterosexual, western men—get to decide what is and isn’t legitimate knowledge and this becomes dominant discourses which are then accepted by the general population who perpetuate oppressive power dynamics like white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, ableism, and fatphobia.
  3. The critical theorists exist to deconstruct these discourses and make their oppressive nature visible. This results in the breakdown of boundaries and categories through which we understand things like emotion and reason, fact and fiction, male and female.
  4. [Critical theorists] also produce a profound cultural relativism and a neurotic focus on language and language policing as well as a rejection of individuality and humanism in favor of identity politics. This is a problem because of the resulting threats to freedom of belief and speech, the divisive tribalism and the rejection of science, reason and liberalism.

Hill asked Pluckrose why it was necessary for Lindsay and Pluckrose to write Cynical Theories at this time? Pluckrose offered this response:

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What I Want for Christmas: Skeptical Coverage of Joe Biden by Legacy News Media

It's not a good sign that NBC's Kasie Hunt is fawning over Joe Biden, despite Biden's long and well-established history of being dishonest, which can be easily confirmed through Google by anyone with an open mind. What does it take to remind the legacy news media that it is their job to cover the news by refusing to ever trust politicians and by always following facts wherever they might lead. It is not their job to be cheerleaders for either political party, but here we are in an all-too-familiar place, though the script is now flipped. Do I need to say that I am writing this article as a person who voted for Biden primarily because I saw Trump as a much bigger threat?

For Christmas, Santa, make sure that news reporters take their jobs seriously. They need to blow the whistle on Biden whenever they see anything that doesn't add up and there will be plenty of it, just as there are in all administrations.  I am also asking Santa to  make sure that Biden keeps his promise to look out for the interests of ordinary Americans. Bernie Sanders he is not. Santa, don't be fooled by Biden's diverse-looking cabinet choices--he is loading up his cabinet with a neoliberal Who's Who of war hawks and players from big financial firms.  Based on Biden's top ten contributors, Biden's favorite "clients" will likely be these big financial services corporations and you can bet they will be calling in their chips starting in January.  Again, I am asking Santa to keep President Biden on a short leash for the next four years.

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