Greenwald never as far as I know claimed to be on the left, at least not enough to be a “leftist”, he started out as a Republican and abandoned the party when - to his mind - it abandoned his *constitutionalist* i.e. rule of law principles. His support for left wing causes has always first been conditional primarily on his opposition to corruption (especially in foreign policy), his support for a civil libertarian legislative model, and his general personal sense of something like “decency” in social policy. These are the wellsprings of his anti-Imperialism, and support for human rights and social care, rather than a broader support for left social justice or antagonism toward the ruling class insofar as they are the ruling class.
Taibbi is different in that he does consistently align himself with the left not just on shared grievances but in principle, at least in name and much of his writing, but his (in the final analysis: increasingly becoming very dumb) positions of the last few years on Trump and cancel culture” through vaccines and civil disobedience to Ukraine were and are shared by many people on the left anyway, however dumb. If anything those positions show him up mostly as the kind of news cycle poisoned Vox Populi figure he was before - taking sides and calling names - just not as acerbic or anymore aligned with the right anti-authoritarian zeitgeist: framing himself too much as speaking truth to liberal Clinton/Biden-Democrat (or MSNBC) power, he goes off the deep end and ends up defending Putin *as so many of them have*. He’s still shallowly in principle the anti-authoritarian leftie, he’s just a shithead about it - *which is the main thing we liked about him before anyway*.
> He’s still shallowly in principle the anti-authoritarian leftie, he’s just a shithead about it - which is the main thing we liked about him before anyway.
I liked him for his materialist-leaning critiques of identity politics in leftist (really more centrist, but anyway) spaces. But I've lost the ability to take him seriously. Even before the Ukraine thing -- I think it was Krystal Ball actually, but the experience soured me on that whole lot, who was getting pushback for deferring to the whole "Russia Witchhunt!" Trump line, with whoever was pushing back pointing out the insanity of the "perfect call", the people in the Trump orbit in jail, etc., and what she fell back on as justifying building her brand as a "leftist" who would repeat these Trump lines was that *well, there were people on Twitter saying Trump was a sleeper agent for the Kremlin, and nothing like THAT ever came out!* It's hard to take seriously a critique of identity politics from people who've totally sold out to their sense of their own brand.
Right, what disappoints me is that this sort of flip is exactly what the materialist-inclined critique was - for a lot of people - supposed to be an antidote for: “we’re poisoned by ‘discourse’ too, but we’re trying to use it backwards”
It’s less the sad inevitability of watching somebody become their own target, or just slide into bullshittery, than it is that it’s almost the fact of having gone for such a target and done it with some pull that starts the process
taibbi actually has some skin in the russia game as he made his bones writing for the exile
I dont know if the exile was ever explicitly pro-putin but back when they were pushing out content putin hadn't quite ascended to evil supervillian level yet and there was still some chance that he would actually follow through with the progressive reformer rhetoric he used in the late 90s and early 2000s. mark ames surely has fallen down the putin apologist rabbit hole since then.
I think in hindsight they were very nihilist and very cynical and putin played well with that kind of worldview. russia is fucked and everything is fucked so who cares who is in charge or what they do to keep order in the streets
everything on mark ames' twitter these days is about those horrible ukranian nazis, its pretty hard to read and the comments are almost exclusively tankies
Sorry, sorry, hold up a second because I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying but your tone is weirdly non-committal about the blindingly obvious
Are you calling the eXiLe cynical and nihilist *in hindsight?*
insane how Greenwald has ended up being one of the main propagator of this “us has bio weapons research labs in ukraine” shit https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1502046015548903429
I honestly think anyone who ever thought Greenwald wasn’t an insane, reactionary, “conspiratorial mindset” shill wasn’t really paying attention or reading him in any way critically. The mistake was alway to trust him because he was saying some things you happened to agree with.
Iirc greenwald esp sucked for the whistleblowers who trusted him. (E: for an example see [reality winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner))
I can forgive him being a little conspiratorial, considering some of the stuff that got whistleblown to him. Maybe not the other stuff, but conspiracies, sure.
“Human bio-diversity, the claim that distinct populations of humans
exist and have substantial genetical variance which accounts for some
difference in average intelligence from population to population”
I mean I’m sure racists love the idea, but it doesn’t exactly strike
me as obviously 100% untrue.
I dunno, I have no dog in this fight, I just think 19th century
colonialist race science is plausible. Now I’m just a neutral observer
but there’s nothing immediately offputting about polygenism and white
supremacy
The head moderator of hacker news, dang, scolded me for insulting
racists and adjacent groups. He told me to avoid sneering at groups of
people, when I mentioned how curious it was that HN consistently upvoted
racist crankery.
dang loves to point out how “diverse” HN opinions are but it’s really
not. Here’s HN raging against AA:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523203
The few people in that thread brave enough to mention that maybe
America has a problem with racism (current and historical) and downvoted
and flagged away. Curious that dang didn’t rescue those comments.
I’ve just realised that I’ve also never read a Substack article that
wasn’t fringe opinion content, conspiracy theories, or anti-vaxx/COVID
denial. I wonder if it’s accidental that it turned out like this.
meaning “whose bias matches mine most closely”
lol
I think it’s reasonable that he’s recommended alongside the ex-leftists Taibbi and Greenwald and the antivaxxer Robert Malone.
I dunno, I have no dog in this fight, I just think 19th century colonialist race science is plausible. Now I’m just a neutral observer but there’s nothing immediately offputting about polygenism and white supremacy
Emil saying ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ just goes to show how little use that whole sunlight thing is.
The head moderator of hacker news, dang, scolded me for insulting racists and adjacent groups. He told me to avoid sneering at groups of people, when I mentioned how curious it was that HN consistently upvoted racist crankery.
dang loves to point out how “diverse” HN opinions are but it’s really not. Here’s HN raging against AA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523203
The few people in that thread brave enough to mention that maybe America has a problem with racism (current and historical) and downvoted and flagged away. Curious that dang didn’t rescue those comments.
Scott can have a little bias, as a treat.
I’ve just realised that I’ve also never read a Substack article that wasn’t fringe opinion content, conspiracy theories, or anti-vaxx/COVID denial. I wonder if it’s accidental that it turned out like this.