Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Writing • Culture
The Right's Identity Politics: Exploiting Anti-Semitism to Suppress Debate & Defame Political Opponents
Video Transcript: System Update #25
January 21, 2023
post photo preview

Note From Glenn Greenwald: The following is the full show transcript, for subscribers only, of a recent episode of our System Update program, broadcast live on Rumble on Wednesday, January 18, 2023. Going forward, every new transcript will be sent out by email and posted to our Locals page, where you'll find the transcripts for previous shows. 


Watch System Update Episode #25 Here on Rumble.

In this episode, we examine the question of some of the dreariest and most amoral tactics of defenders of woke ideology – particularly their penchant for casually accusing their opponents of bigotry, even when no animus toward any group is expressed by their critics, both as a means of destroying people's reputations who dissent from their orthodoxies and, more importantly, to suppress the ability to debate vital questions by ensuring that everyone knows that any questioning of the prevailing orthodoxies can be subjected to these reputation-destroying tactics.

We will use that framework to examine whether a similar dynamic is occurring among some factions on the Right – not by accusing critics of police policy of being racists, or skeptics of the excesses of MeToo of being misogynists, by instead by branding anyone who criticizes the government of Israel or U.S. support for that foreign country of being an "anti-Semite." Just today, the Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School admitted he "erred" when he rejected the fellowship that had been offered to the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, due to his concerns about Roth's criticisms of the actions of the Israeli Government.

We understand that this is a sensitive topic for many people, to put that mildly, so we will ask you to keep an open mind about the arguments we present while providing our commitment to treat this topic in the same responsible manner we believe we treat all topics – by comprehensively examining the relevant questions not through assertions or tendentious interpretations but through the evidence, facts, and pertinent legal and Constitutional issues. 


MONOLOGUE 

Starting in the 1920s, The Supreme Court struggled to distinguish between pornography – which they had ruled was protected "free speech" under the First Amendment --, from "obscenity," which the court had ruled could be constitutionally criminalized because it fell outside of the scope of the First Amendment. After decades of attempting with great futility to offer coherent definitions of the two terms, an otherwise obscure Supreme Court justice named Potter Stewart uttered one of the court's most famous phrases. 

In a 1964 ruling in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal prosecution of a film producer after the Ohio Supreme Court had ruled that his film – entitled The Lovers – crossed the line from legal pornography into illegal obscenity, Justice Stewart agreed with the court decision that he had done nothing illegal but wrote separately to admit what the court had refused to acknowledge for decades: namely, that it is impossible to offer a clear and consistent definition of "obscenity". In his concurring opinion, the judge wrote:

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
18
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
Watch Tonight's Monologue

Due to a connection issue, our stream was cut short tonight.
You can find the entire episode below.

We apologize for this technical difficulty - thank you so much for your continued support.

00:43:24
Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.

Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted
WEEKLY WEIGH-IN: Another Week Another News Cycle

What’s happening in politics that you want to talk about? Are there any burning topics you think Glenn needs to cover? Any thoughts you’d like to share?

This post will be pinned to our profile for the remainder of this week, so comment below anytime with your questions, insights, future topic ideas/guest recommendations, etc. Let’s get a conversation going!

Glenn will respond to a few comments here—and may even address some on our next supporters-only After Show.

Thank you so much for your continued support through another week of SYSTEM UPDATE with Glenn Greenwald!

🏆Dog-of-the-Week:

Dog-of-the-Week goes to… Zeus! Our adorable puppy friend has returned (and grown)! Also happy to see him is Zuma as they share some brotherly love while Glenn gets to some aftershow questions.

Fallout From Terrorist Attack on Moscow

On Friday, March 22 at the Moscow Concert Hall, one of the deadliest attacks on Russia in decades took place: several gunmen killed 137 and wounded more than 100 people.

U.S. officials claim the group is ISIS-K, while Russia suspects it was Western-backed Ukrainians.

What are your thoughts?

post photo preview
Looking for YOUR Feedback: Posting Time

The SYSTEM UPDATE team is looking for your feedback! We want to make sure you have the best chance to SEE and COMMENT on all of our posts.

What is the best time to post? Let us know.

post photo preview
post photo preview
Assange Wins Very Partial Victory in UK Court, w/ Stella Assange. New Film Shows Mass Israeli Extremism, w/ Journalist Jeremy Loffredo
Video Transcript

Watch the full episode here: 

placeholder
 

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google


Good evening. It's Tuesday, March 26. 

Tonight, the latest in the ongoing effort of the U.S. government—now in its fifth full year—to extradite Julian Assange from the high-security British prison where he's being held to the United States to stand trial on espionage charges. 

Earlier today, the British High Court issued a ruling that is actually a partial victory for Assange, his first in the British judiciary since 2021. The High Court, which was the last court possible to hear his appeal, overturned the U.S. government's victory in the lower court. That court had rejected all of Assange’s arguments for resisting extradition to the United States and accepted all of the government's arguments for why Assange should be extradited immediately. But the court today accepted three of Assange's objections for why extradition might be illegal under both British law and various human rights conventions to which the United Kingdom is bound. 

The ruling tonight does not mean that the U.S. is barred from extraditing Assange, nor, unfortunately, does it mean that the charges will be dropped or that Assange will be released from prison. Instead, the court simply identified several problems with the American extradition request that, perhaps, according to the court and even plausibly according to the court, make it illegal to accept under British and European law, and it gave the United States government until April 16 to try to resolve these problems through all sorts of legal maneuvers. 

It is very possible that the Justice Department will be able to resolve all these problems through a combination of promises and other assurances, though it's not actually entirely clear that they will be able to. Meanwhile, reports of negotiations between the U.S. government, on the one hand, and Assange's lawyers on the other continue to circulate. According to these reports, it would call for Assange to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count in exchange for his release from prison, which would get him out of prison, but might actually set a bad precedent and would prevent his exoneration. We will review today's ruling and all of its implications, and we'll also speak with Julian Assange’s wife, the human rights lawyer Stella Assange. We actually sat down with her just a few minutes ago, shortly before the show began, about her reaction to today's ruling, how Julian himself is doing in his fifth year in prison, what his reaction was to the ruling and what this ruling means for their family and all of us.

Then: that Gaza is now on the brink of mass famine, with many Palestinian children and adults already dying of hunger, the worst way a human being can die beyond dispute, is well documented by multiple aid organizations. What Israel supporters in the West attempt to dispute is not that there's a famine, but that the reason for the famine is that Israel is blocking food and water from entering that territory, exactly what Israel's defense minister at the start of the war vowed that Israel would do, namely blockade Gaza and prevent food and water from entering. 

Jeremy Alfredo is an independent journalist who went to the West Bank and met with and then traveled to the Gaza border with numerous Israeli activists and settlers in the West Bank. He interviewed them about why it is that they have spent weeks organizing physical blockades of trucks bringing food and water into Gaza. 

Here in the West, we constantly hear that Palestinians are full of hatred and violence toward Israelis and that they are taught to think this way from birth, that they're indoctrinated with an ideology of violence and hatred. And yet, if one looks at the Israeli government, it is very clear that this same mentality dominates many of their policies. And we will hear directly from Alfredo and hear directly from the Israelis, with whom he spent a great deal of time. And they will explain in their own words why they are trying hard to cause mass famine and mass starvation, not just for Hamas, but for all Gazans. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
A Trifecta of Media Corruption: Ronna McDaniel/NBC, Kara Swisher/Big Tech, & Andrew Huberman/New York Mag
Video Transcript

Watch the full episode here: 

placeholder
 

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google


Good evening. It's Monday, March 25. 

Tonight: there's quite an uproar taking place at both NBC News and MSNBC. Apparently, they are convinced that they are some sort of real news network and, as a result, many of their on-screen personalities are expressing serious rage in offense over the hiring by NBC of former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who is better known as the niece of Mitt Romney. According to these giants of journalism people such as Chuck Todd and Joe Scarborough, the mere presence of someone on their airwaves who was even linked to Donald Trump, who happens to be the person leading all polls to be elected as president of the United States in 2024, would sully this network's reputation for objective and high-minded news. Worse, they say, it would infuriate their liberal viewers who are very unaccustomed to hearing any dissent from the Democratic Party and would feel deeply uncomfortable if they were exposed to any views that made them feel like they weren't being agreed with. 

This is the same august news outlet that is the one that currently employs former Bush-Cheney spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace, former CIA Director John Brennan, Joy Reid— Reid – who has a 7 pm show every night on MSNBC, even though got caught fabricating an elaborate lie about a time-traveling hacker who authored the bigoted blog posts under her name – and as many former agents and operatives of the U.S. Security State as one might found at a Proud Boy rally or a civil war somewhere. 

This reaction to hiring a quite banal RNC chair, somebody who actually is so kind of conventional that she's hated by the MAGA world, reveals a great deal about how employees of the largest media outlets see their actual function. For that reason, we think it's worth taking a look at. 

Then: Ben Carter Swisher has become a very wealthy woman, posturing as the mean and no-nonsense watchdog over Silicon Valley. She has a new book, topping the New York Times bestseller list that purports to expose the secret abuses and corruption of the leaders of this tech culture. And yet, at the very same time that she brands herself as the scores of Silicon Valley powerbrokers, the leading cheerleaders for Kara Swisher generally, and for her new book, in particular, are and always have been the very leaders of the industry she claims to subject to such harsh and unrelenting and critical journalistic scrutiny. If you're a journalist who purports to adversarially report on a leading power center, whether it be Silicon Valley, the military-industrial complex, Congress, or Wall Street, and the leading power brokers of those sectors love and support and praise and help market you, that is a very good sign that what you're doing is subservient propaganda that advances their interests, not independent journalism that undermines it. That is certainly the case for Kara Swisher, who provides a very vivid window into the role that celebrity journalists like her play as they are promoted by the very people they claim to expose. 

And then, finally, the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has become a major force in independent media, someone who has managed to find a very large and devoted audience without relying on large media corporations at all. He has a podcast that is listened to by millions of people and an audience that he built by himself over time. There is nothing—and I mean nothing—that corporate media hates more than that. Somebody who succeeds without having to rely on their rotted structure. And so this week, they set out to destroy him, as they do to everyone who finds success without relying on their corporate structure. As one of the countless failing liberal digital outlets, New York Magazine has a cover story this week with his face on it that purports to expose dirty and shameful secrets about Huberman's dating life. Yet having read it, there is not a single fact that was even worth reporting or that was even of journalistic value, let alone that one's brings shame or disrepute to him. So often these people demand that the public cry and express sympathy as their journalistic industry dies around them, and they are laid off by the dozens. And yet so often they engage in behavior that makes their failures so well deserved, and feelings of sympathy as we watch them lose their jobs almost impossible as their industry deservedly sinks, and they drown along with it. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
post photo preview
Candace Owens & the Daily Wire’s Dramatic Break-Up: Free Speech & the Pro-Israel Right. Horrific Terrorist Attack Unfolding in Moscow. ACLU’s Internal Implosion
Video Transcript

Watch the full episode here: 

placeholder
 

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google


Good evening, everybody. It's Friday, March 21. 

We do have a lot to talk about tonight, including and beginning with the fact that Candace Owens, the extremely popular conservative pundit, activist, and broadcaster who has worked for the last several years at the very popular right-wing outlet The Daily Wire, founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, is out of a job at the Daily Wire. By all accounts, including a lot of reporting that I've been able to do, including speaking to people very close to the situation, the reason is extremely clear there's nothing doubtful or ambiguous about it. The reason is just that the Daily Wire was founded by two people, Ben Shapiro in particular, who are among the most radical, extremist, vocal, and unyielding supporters of the state of Israel that the world has seen, about as extremist as they get. And at the same time, Candace Owens, ever since, October 7, has been increasingly critical of the state of Israel – and not so much the state of Israel as much as the policy that the United States has adopted for many decades, including now, of financing Israel's wars and financing Israel's military. Candace comes from the part of the Republican Party that has defined itself as being an America First party in terms of foreign policy and the like. She has argued vehemently against funding the war in Ukraine on the grounds that we should not be encouraging and fueling foreign countries' wars. Instead of making a sudden exception for Israel, she has applied those arguments consistently to Israel and said the United States should also not be financing Israel's wars or making Israel's wars our wars. She's also been critical of the humanitarian crisis caused in Gaza by the Israeli military. 

This has caused a lot of tension at the Daily Wire as her criticism became more vocal, there has been more and more of an effort to demand her firing by prominent rabbis, by the Anti-Defamation League, and you could see it coming. It was only a question of time before the Daily Wire—a media outlet that was founded on values of free speech and free inquiry and opposing cancel culture, things like firing journalists because of disagreement with the views that they expressed—it was only a matter of time before they got rid of Candace Owens because of her dissent on Israel. And that's exactly what has happened. And as a result, she is now out of the Daily Wire. We will examine what happened there, as well as the implications for things like the American right and claims of free speech and free discourse and opposition to cancel culture, and whether or not people can exist in the conservative movement in any meaningful way, and at the same time, question this foreign country or criticize this foreign country or the United States policy toward it. 

Then, we will also look at an unfolding news event, which is a major terrorist attack that took place just a couple of hours ago in Moscow at a very popular concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, at a concert for a well-known Russian rock band called Picnic. There are at least 40 Russian citizens, or 40 people in Russia who are dead, and there are at least 180 or so who are wounded. These numbers are almost certainly to increase. There are a lot of horrific images of that scene that have been circulating. It was clearly a terrorist attack, with people just going with automatic weapons and gunning down anybody they could find, deliberately killing them even as they were cowering. It was clearly a classic terrorist attack. There were many claims early on, including from prominent media outlets, that the culprit here was Vladimir Putin, in other words, that he ordered an attack on his own country, that this is a false flag designed to falsely claim that it was Ukraine that did it for him to go then and attack Ukraine in all sorts of unprecedented ways. There is zero evidence for that. And yet already there are all kinds of claims circulating on the internet, including from people who work within mainstream corporate media, who just decided to spread that conspiracy theory. The United States government now says that ISIS is to blame, and we'll look at that as well. 

And finally, the ACLU, which had once been a civil liberties organization, an organization devoted to free speech, has become just the latest in a long line of left liberal outlets and activist groups and organizations that have succumbed to almost complete internal implosion because they are filled with people who, rather than focus on the work of the organization, instead opt to run around accusing each other of being racist and harassing each other, and being abusive and toxic and problematic in the workplace, and they end up riven by internal conflict instead of by the mission that they claim they are created to do. In the case of the ACLU, dedicated to protecting constitutional rights, instead, all of their internal resources end up devoted to trying to arbitrate between wars, between various left-liberal employees who are accusing one another of being racist and sexist and all sorts of other bigotries and it causes the organization to become completely paralyzed. The latest case of the ACLU, which was reported today in the New York Times in detail, is almost a caricature that's hilarious if you just look at it on its own in terms of how extreme it is, but it's also such a caricature of what most left-liberal organizations are being paralyzed, what they really are a victim of their creation, just their own Frankensteins that are consuming them and eating it up. We’ll look at this ACLU case as well because, in the case of the ACLU, it actually implicates their core mission, which is the question of free speech. To justify the firing of one of their employees by claiming that this woman, who's an Asian woman, was guilty of anti-Black racism, they need to argue for an expanded definition of the term hate speech, obviously inconsistent with the ACLU's core values. So, we're going to take a look at those three stories. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.

Only for Supporters
To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter
Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals