On Friday, January 29, the Dartmouth Political Union hosted a Zoom discussion with Glenn Greenwald, the renowned investigative journalist. Mr. Greenwald’s 2013 reporting on the NSA’s massive and invasive global surveillance apparatus—working with his source, the infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden—won him a Pulitzer Prize and myriad other awards and accolades.
Greenwald entered Friday’s talk mere days after a fiery appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” during which he accused Democratic Party leaders of believing themselves to possess “a monopoly on objective truth.”
Long held in high regard by civil libertarians, Greenwald’s much-publicized work with Snowden served only to further endear him to the faction. Indeed, Greenwald has been a staunch defender of Americans’ civil liberties since his early days as a constitutional lawyer. He made his initial foray into journalism in the later years of the Bush ’43 administration, becoming one of the foremost critics of that administration’s stringent surveillance-oriented actions and policies. Perhaps most prominent among Greenwald’s targets in this period was the Patriot Act, which, among other provisions, granted to law enforcement a variety of expanded surveilling capabilities, including that of widespread phone tapping.
Friday’s event was well hosted and moderated by Vlado Vojdanovski ’22, Vice President of the Dartmouth Political Union. It began with a short introduction, proceeded to Greenwald’s stimulating central lecture, and concluded with an array of questions asked of Greenwald. These questions were divided into pre-written and audience-submitted groupings.
Greenwald entered Friday’s talk mere days after a fiery appearance on the already raucous Fox program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” during which he accused leaders in the modern Democratic Party of believing themselves to possess “a monopoly on objective truth.”
“They believe they are the party of science and rationality, and the only way to disagree with them is [if] you are either a deranged conspiracy theorist or exhibitionist—someone who is engaged in criminal conduct or terrorism,” Greenwald said on the program. It is from such an outlook, he posited, that the party has “destroyed an entire social media platform … instruct[ing] Silicon Valley monopolies that it was their obligation to remove it.”
Greenwald began by stressing the broad applicability of a certain general, historically demonstrable principle: authoritarianism is most easily implemented when people are convinced that there is ever-present danger.
Friday’s Zoom discussion progressed from much the same vein as these contentions, with Greenwald warning of strides toward authoritarianism in the United States on the part of both government actors and giants in the fields of social media and technology.
Greenwald began by stressing the broad applicability of a certain general, historically demonstrable principle; namely, that authoritarianism is most easily implemented when people are convinced that there is an ever-present danger, and that they thus have something to fear. He suggested that it is not especially difficult, particularly when fears are grounded in at least some minute element of initial truth, for institutions of power or authority to artificially exploit and intensify those fears. Subsequent to doing so, these institutions can more easily convince the people to relinquish their personal autonomy or freedom in exchange for security or safety. This framework, Greenwald indicated, aligns precisely with the very definition of authoritarianism. Greenwald proceeded to situate contemporary actors and occurrences directly within this framework.
He lamented having recently watched many typically “smart, rational, sober people” referencing the attacks on 9/11 and at Pearl Harbor and inappropriately suggesting that the Capitol riot of January 6th was “similar … in terms of its severity [and] the danger … that it revealed.” Such people, he observed, have begun calling for something akin to a second war on terror, which is to be directed inwardly at domestic terrorist organizations. Indeed, proposed legislation related to this objective would simply amend existing war-on-terror law, which focuses on foreign terrorist organizations, so that it also applies to domestic terrorist organizations. This modification, he ruefully explained, would “implant … right onto U.S. soil” the extraordinary power currently afforded to the executive branch in dealing with terrorists, including the ability to take immediate action against any entity it unilaterally decrees, without due process, to be a terrorist organization.
Greenwald contended that actors representing the institution of government…have begun offering people safety and security in exchange for relinquishing their civil liberties to governmental authorities.
Greenwald related the totality of the aforementioned to his framework of authoritarianism. He contended that actors representing the institution of government have caused people to become infinitely more fearful than they reasonably should be regarding domestic extremists. Accordingly, these actors have begun offering people safety and security in exchange for relinquishing their civil liberties to governmental authorities, such as the FBI and the Justice Department, by way of modified war-on-terror legislation.
Greenwald next turned to the trend of increasingly restrictive censorship pursued by various social media and technology giants, while acknowledging that such censorship is often implemented at the prompting of government officials. He maintained that when the internet was in its early years, it was characterized by “complete anonymity and complete freedom.” There were no moderators or speech codes; neither were “commercial or corporate constraints” imposed on users. Over time, however, restrictions and constraints have been strengthened significantly, and supposed violations of these measures—as determined by the platforms, themselves—have enabled censoring or removal. Greenwald asserted that the primary pretext under which individuals today are, in fact, censored or completely removed from online platforms is the “amorphous concept” that they have engaged in “hate speech.”
Indeed, Greenwald contended that censoring due to “hate speech” is merely a tactic employed to scare people into surrendering a “free and open internet,” which remains one of the last surviving instruments with which one can challenge the power of the ruling class. He highlighted the decisions of Apple, Amazon, and Google—all classic monopolies—to remove the app, Parler, as well as the decisions of Twitter and Instagram to permanently suspend President Trump from their apps, as examples of such a tactic.
The pretext of “hate speech,” Greenwald concluded, was a tactic employed in this instance to prevent individuals from being “empower[ed] to engage in collective action to eliminate radical power disparities”—a motivation at the very heart of excitement surrounding the internet.
Greenwald also made reference to Reddit’s decision to ban the subreddit from which, in the preceding week, some users had engaged in shrewdly lucrative stock market maneuvers at the expense of hedge fund billionaires. Greenwald dismissed Reddit’s justification that “hate speech” had been found on that particular subreddit, and he instead asserted that pressure had undoubtedly been imposed on Reddit by the expansively influential billionaires who had been losing money. The pretext of “hate speech,” Greenwald concluded, was a tactic employed in this instance to prevent individuals from being “empower[ed] to engage in collective action to eliminate radical power disparities”—a motivation at the very heart of excitement surrounding the internet.
In accordance with his framework of authoritarianism, Greenwald referenced the aforementioned and took the position that fear of “hate speech” is being manipulated and rendered irrational by technology and social media corporations. People are accordingly becoming convinced that they should surrender the freedom of the internet in order to ensure their own safety and security.
During the concluding section of the event, the question-and-answer period, Greenwald imparted a variety of well-observed insights to the attendees. One such insight was the necessity for college students to pursue a wide range of news and not be inundated with reporting solely from one side of the aisle. He stressed that students ought not believe all that they read from one source, and that they should instead seek out contrary opinions written by intelligent and well-informed journalists in sources of all viewpoints.
A second insight he shared was the need to be aware of the way in which one’s own country treats dissidents, as this stands as the determinative quality of a nation’s true freedom. For a man who worked as closely as he did with Edward Snowden, who is presently exiled in Russia, this sentiment undoubtedly resonates particularly harshly for Greenwald.
Glen Greenwald is a true patriot. He is not a partisan hack, like so many other journalists.