152 Useful Idiots: Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald has taken great exception to the use of the term useful idiots. He claims that it’s McCarthyite. But to call someone a useful idiot is to give them the benefit of the doubt-that they are NOT a foreign agent.

A useful idiot is simply someone serving other interests than that which they intend to serve. In this vein there is no doubt that Greenwald along with Snowden and Assange have been very useful to Russia indeed.

To cal them useful idiots gives them the benefit of the doubt. And it’s highly debatable whether at least Assange if not Snowden deserves this benefit of the doubt.

1. Glenn Greenwald. Of the three he is the one most likely simply a useful idiot-rather than a genuine Russian agent. But it’s hard not to notice how useful his very selective critique of government secrecy is.

He has been part of this narrative that inveighs against American perfidy leaving Russia the space to affect to be defending journalists and outraged over government eavesdropping(!).

There was that amazing series of interviews that Oliver Stone did with Putin where-find chapter I wrote about Stone’s interviews with Putin which served as pure Russian propaganda.

As for partisanship it’s very curious. Greenwald’s preoocupation with wiretapping makes him come across as a lefitst-sometimes he sounds quite like Noam Chomsky. But on the other hand he is quite buddy buddy with ‘libertarians’ of the right.

The New Republic:

Greenwald had the background of a conventional liberal. Raised in modest circumstances in South Florida, his first role model was his paternal grandfather, a local city councilman with a socialist bent. At New York University Law School, he was an outspoken advocate for gay rights. Yet in his online travels, he gravitated to right-wing sites such as Townhall, where he could engage in cyber-brawls with social conservatives. Over time, he met some of his antagonists in the flesh and, to his surprise, liked them.”

“In several cases over a five-year span, Greenwald represented Matthew Hale, the head of the Illinois-based white-supremacist World Church of the Creator, which attracted a small core of violently inclined adherents. In one case, Greenwald defended Hale against charges that he had solicited the murder of a federal judge. Hale was eventually convicted when the federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, produced the FBI informant with whom Hale had arranged the killing. Greenwald’s other clients included the neo-Nazi National Alliance, who were implicated in an especially horrible crime. Two white supremacists on Long Island had picked up a pair of unsuspecting Mexican day laborers, lured them into an abandoned warehouse, and then clubbed them with a crowbar and stabbed them repeatedly. The day laborers managed to escape, and when they recovered from their injuries, they sued the National Alliance and other hate groups, alleging that they had inspired the attackers. Greenwald described the suit as a dangerous attempt to suppress free speech by making holders of “unconventional” views liable for the actions of others. His use of a euphemism like “unconventional” to describe white nationalists was troubling, but on First Amendment grounds, he had a strong case and he made it successfully.”

In 2005, Greenwald wound down his legal practice and launched his own blog, Unclaimed Territory, producing the sort of impassioned political writing that had fascinated him for a decade. His early postings included detailed accounts of the unfolding Valerie Plame affair and unsparing criticism of Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The blog’s chief interests—intelligence policy, civil liberties, media criticism, and national security—were largely the same as Greenwald’s today. So was its style: several lengthy, deeply informed postings a day, pitting the forces of light against the forces of darkness; mixing lawyerly analysis with bellicose hyperbole. Greenwald seemed to take pride in attacking Republicans and Democrats alike; hence, presumably, the title of his blog.

It wasn’t long before Greenwald had acquired a dedicated following. In 2007, he became a regular columnist for Salon, where his slashing attacks on the Bush White House made him very popular on the left. Over the coming years, he would win enthusiastic praise from, among others, Christopher Hayes, Michael Moore, and Rachel Maddow, who dubbed him “the American left’s most fearless political commentator.”

On certain issues, though, his prose was suffused with right-wing conceits and catchphrases. One example was immigration, on which Greenwald then held surprisingly hard-line views. “The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known,” Greenwald wrote in 2005. The facts, to him, were indisputable: “illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” Defending the nativist congressman Tom Tancredo from charges of racism, Greenwald wrote of “unmanageably endless hordes of people [who] pour over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate, and who consequently have no need, motivation or ability to assimilate.” Those hordes, Greenwald wrote, posed a threat to “middle-class suburban voters.”

Greenwald has since reversed his position and renounced the post about the “parade of evils.” (In his characteristically combative way, though, he blamed the recent rediscovery of his immigration writing on “Obama cultists” out to discredit him.) He ascribes that particular outburst to callow ignorance—a rather inadequate defense of remarks made by a seasoned 38-year-old New York lawyer.

By this point, Greenwald had come to reside in a peculiar corner of the political forest, where the far left meets the far right, often but not always under the rubric of libertarianism. He held positions that appealed to either end of the political spectrum, attacking, for example, U.S. foreign policy as a bipartisan projection of empire. Like most of his writings, his critique of America abroad was congenial both to the isolationist paleo-Right and to post–New Left anti-imperialists. His social liberalism struck an individualist chord pleasing to right-wing libertarians as well as left-wing activists. Greenwald began to envisage bringing these groups together—to dissolve the usual lines of political loyalty and unite the anti-imperialists and civil-liberties activists on the left with the paleoconservatives and free-market libertarians on the right—in a popular front against the establishment alliance of mainstream center-left liberals and neoconservatives.

Along those lines, Greenwald found common ground with the upper echelons of right-wing free-market libertarianism. In August 2007, he appeared at the Cato Institute’s headquarters in Washington. “I’m a real admirer of Cato,” Greenwald declared, “and of the work that Cato does and has done for the last six years under the Bush presidency.” He was not only referring to Cato’s criticism of the war on terror. Under Bush, Greenwald explained, “a political realignment” had occurred, one that rendered “traditional ideological disputes” irrelevant. Politics now turned on a fundamental question: “Are you a believer in the constitutional principles on which the country was founded and a believer in the fact that no political leader can exercise vast and unchecked powers?” To this question, Greenwald had a ready answer: “I find myself on the side of the Cato Institute and other defenders of what in the 1990s was viewed as a more right-wing view of limited government power.”

A real admirer of Cato. So whom did Greenwald select as a prototypical defender of limited government? Would you believe-Ron Paul?

Greenwald had identified a vehicle for a political realignment: the presidential candidacy of the old libertarian warhorse Ron Paul. In November 2007, Greenwald called Paul “as vigilant a defender of America’s constitutional freedoms … as any national figure in some time.” He acknowledged that “there is at least something in Paul’s worldview for most people to strongly dislike, even hate,” and he described Paul as “an anti-abortion extremist” and “near the far end” of the right’s stance on immigration policy. Still, he believed Paul to be a rare truth-teller, prepared to buck a corrupt bipartisan consensus.”

Then there is Paul’s son, Rand Paul who believes that limited government means you can’t integrate lunch counters in the South. Over time Greenwald has been much more critical of liberals and Democrats than conservatives and GOPers.

“In 2010, Greenwald began attacking the Obama administration from the left on a variety of domestic issues, attacking Wall Street corruption, opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and decrying inequality. Yet even as he insisted on his left liberalism, he remained a steadfast promoter of Ron Paul—“far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party.” (After Paul’s son, then senatorial candidate Rand Paul, questioned the Civil Rights Act, Greenwald agreed with criticism that the remark was “wacky,” but insisted that the real “crazies” in American politics were mainstream Democrats and Republicans.) In a debate with The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt, Greenwald justified how progressives could back Ron Paul over Obama. How his vaunted allies would govern over issues that he professes to hold dear—Social Security, Medicare, economic inequality, gay rights—is a subject he has not addressed.

In 2016 it was very interesting. During the general election he had 16 separate articles that criticized Hillary Clinton and/or the Democrats. How many did he have criticizing Trump and/or the GOP? That’s right-0.

So clearly this was very useful to Trump. His priorities in going solely after Democrats were shared by Assange.

FN: When I pointed this out to him on Twitter Greenwald blocked me.

But speaking of useful idiots, Carter Page-of all people-name dropped him in a late 2016 speech in Russia.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2017/03/21/carter-page-now-rush-limbaugh-quoting-greenwald-approvingly/

So whatever Greenwald’s subjective intention he’s been highly useful to the shared objective of Trump and Russia. And remember that Greenwald is the reporter who met with Edward Snowden-a VERY USEFUL idiot; if not more-for Russia.

2. Edward Snowden. One thing that Snowden has in common both with Greenwald and Julian Assange-we will get to more about Assange below-is he is lionized in many leftist circles though his personal politics actually hews to the Right.

Indeed they share many admirers in common. Like Oliver Stone-who himself proved Putin’s useful idiot-also produced and directed the movie, Snowden. 

Leftists often seem to think they can make common cause with ‘libertarians’ of the right. This is mostly self delusion however. Certainly Rand Paul’s silence on the many abuses of power of Trump and Jeff Sessions has been quite deafening.

Back to the New Republic:

“Snowden has traced his political conversion to the Bush years. And by the end of Bush’s second term, Snowden certainly held the president in low esteem. But not, apparently, his intelligence policies. Nor, it seems, was he drawn to insiders who exposed details of these programs. Quite the opposite: Snowden vilified leakers and defended covert intelligence ops. In January 2009, Snowden lambasted The New York Times and its anonymous sources for exposing a secret Bush administration operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Such infuriating breaches had occurred “over and over and over again,” Snowden complained. The Times, he railed, was “like wikileaks” and deserved to go bankrupt; sources who leaked “classified shit” to the Times ought to “be shot in the balls.” When an online interlocutor suggested that it might be “ethical” to report “on the government’s intrigue,” Snowden replied emphatically: “VIOLATING NATIONAL SECURITY? No.” He explained, “that shit is classified for a reason.”

The Ars Technica posts also complicate Snowden’s narrative about Obama. It seems as if he never invested great faith in him. It is true that, during the 2008 election, TheTrueHOOHA compared him favorably to Hillary Clinton, whom he called a “pox.” But in the end, he voted for an unspecified third-party candidate.

And nearly as soon as Obama took office, Snowden developed a deep aversion to the new president. TheTrueHOOHA reacted furiously when Obama named Leon Panetta as his new director of central intelligence. But it was Panetta’s credentials he objected to, not his stance on surveillance matters. “Obama just named a fucking politician to run the CIA,” Snowden erupted. And he became furious about Obama’s domestic policies on a variety of fronts. For example, he was offended by the possibility that the new president would revive a ban on assault weapons. “See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment,” Snowden wrote, in another chat. “Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.”

At the time the stimulus bill was being debated, Snowden also condemned Obama’s economic policies as part of a deliberate scheme “to devalue the currency absolutely as fast as theoretically possible.” (He favored Ron Paul’s call for the United States to return to the gold standard.) The social dislocations of the financial collapse bothered him not at all. “Almost everyone was self-employed prior to 1900,” he asserted. “Why is 12% employment [sic] so terrifying?”

Why is 12% employment so terrifying? 

Later in the same session, Snowden wrote that the elderly “wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day.”

Snowden’s disgruntlement with Obama, in other words, was fueled by a deep disdain for progressive policies. The available postings by TheTrueHOOHA do show concerns about society’s “unquestioning obedience to spooky types,” but those date to 2010. Contrary to his claims, he seems to have become an anti-secrecy activist only after the White House was won by a liberal Democrat who, in most ways, represented everything that a right-wing Ron Paul admirer would have detested.

So while many on the left came to lionize Snowden as a hero, he’s clearly no leftist.

This chapter links Greenwald-Snowden-Assange together in a kind of useful idiot Holy Trinity. And indeed, it’s very notable that all of them played a key role in both Snowden’s huge leak of NSA documents-the biggest in history-AND in his successfully seeking asylum-in Russia of all places.

Greenwald met with him in Hong Kong and he and Laura Poitras published many of these documents. But what’s really notable is where he went next: Russia. How did he end up there seeing as he himself had previously expressed interest in going to a South American country like Ecuador?

Enter Julian Assange-who it’s certainly reasonable to suspect is more than a mere ‘useful idiot.’

On June 21, according to a report in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Snowden took up residence at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong. Two days later, he and Harrison boarded an Aeroflot flight for Moscow. Reports vary about who exactly steered Snowden to the Russians. But WikiLeaks has claimed the credit, tweeting that it had helped to arrange for Snowden to gain “political asylum in a democratic country.” Izvestia divulged that the Kremlin and its intelligence services, in collaboration with WikiLeaks, had completed Snowden’s escape.

Russia-now there’s a democratic country.

Regarding Assange, it’s notable that after he was accused of rape in 2010 it was the Russians who were among his most vocal defenders.

Then, something strange happened: A few days after Assange was arrested on sexual assault charges, Kremlin officials emerged as some of his most vocal defenders. The Moscow Times reported that Vladimir Putin himself had condemned Assange’s arrest: “If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr. Assange in prison? That’s what, democracy?” Putin’s indignation was echoed by other top Russian politicians, including State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov, who observed, “The real reason for his arrest is to find out by any means who leaked the confidential diplomatic information to him and how.”

Putin is a big fan of ‘full democracy’ and would certainly never crack down on leaks in any way-other than maybe pushing a few leakers through a window or something…

Snowden’s defenders insist that he leaked nothing that put our national security in danger. With such a huge trove how could he possibly know that? And why would Putin hole him up in Russia, evidently seeing that his material needs are met-if Snowden HASN’T provided them any intelligence? Doesn’t this defy credulity?

There’s a thin line between a whistleblower and a spy. And let’s face it-even a genuine whistleblower would be highly useful in the hands of someone as ruthless as Putin and his intelligence agencies. What would you call someone who in motivation is whistleblower but who’s information empowers Putin? Yes-a useful idiot.

Edward Jay Epstein wrote a very interesting and important book about the entire Snowden affair.

He includes this interesting quote by Snowden in 2014: