Glenn Greenwald: Fascism’s Fellow Traveller [View all]
When Glenn Greenwald castigates the dead Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for racism, the writer Sam Harris observed recently, hes not only proving that hes a moral imbecile; hes participating in a global war of ideas over free speech and hes on the wrong side of it.
Back in April, the short story writer Deborah Eisenberg took a rather different view. In her letter to PENs executive director Suzanne Nossel, Eisenberg included Greenwald on a shortlist of people she considered worthier of PENs annual Freedom of Expression Award for Courage than the dead and surviving Charlie Hebdo staff. Unlike the slain cartoonists, she wrote of her recommendations, their courage has been fastidiously exercised for the good of humanity.
All things considered, this was an extravagant claim to make on behalf of Greenwalds valour and integrity, particularly at Charlie Hebdos expense. Greenwald formerly of Salon and the Guardian and now co-founding editor at Pierre Omidyars campaigning blog, the Intercept is most famous as the journalist to whom rogue NSA employee Edward Snowden leaked a vast cache of national security information before finding sanctuary in Putins Russia. Eisenberg stated that it was for his work on this story that she was recommending him as an honouree.
But Greenwalds reputation as an unbending defender of free expression stretches back a good deal further than this. Before becoming a writer, he had worked as a litigator defending clients in a number of controversial First Amendment suits, and has since written several trenchant polemics defending the right to unconditional free speech. In January 2013, for example, Greenwald wrote the following for the Guardian as part of a response to a French government proposal to censor online hate speech...
http://quillette.com/2015/12/19/glenn-greenwald-fascisms-fellow-traveller/
Naturally, Glenn's acolytes have been in a tizzy on twitter... Very entertaining to watch.