Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
THE WEEKLY UPDATE: JAN 15-19
Weekly Newsletter
January 21, 2024
post photo preview

We are pleased to send you a summary of the key stories we covered last week. These are written versions of the reporting and analysis we did on last week's episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE.

—Glenn Greenwald


MONDAY, JANUARY 15 - SYSTEM UPDATE 211

Iowa Caucus Kicks Off Primary Season—w/ Michael Tracey LIVE from Iowa

As the Iowa Caucuses get underway, officially kicking off the 2024 electoral season, our intrepid correspondent Michael Tracey braves the freezing temperatures to tell us the mood on the ground, directly from a caucus precinct. 

The first actual votes in the 2024 presidential race have been counted, as Iowa held Republican caucuses around the state on Monday night. That means that the all-out establishment war to prevent Donald Trump from being re-elected president officially begins tonight. For now, the principal establishment weapon against him is the campaign of Nikki Haley, who more and more Democrats are now openly and enthusiastically supporting – not on the ground that she would be the weakest opponent for Joe Biden, but rather on the ground that she's so clearly the superior Republican candidate that, for the good of the country – as liberals and their neocon allies see it – Americans are duty-bound to vote for her.

The war to destroy Trump extends far beyond Nikki Haley, needless to say. It includes four separate criminal proceedings to try to render him a felon and imprison him, and more than a dozen legal processes to ban him from appearing on the ballot and thus dispensing altogether with the need to persuade Americans not to vote for him. But for tonight, the establishment hope is that it has breathed enough life – and cash – into Nikki Haley's campaign that she will leave Iowa and head to New Hampshire as the clear and sole Republican alternative to the Orange Hitler. (Spoiler Alert: She didn’t.)

One of the best decisions we ever made as a program was reading weather reports last week that warned one of the most severe blizzards and cold spells in Iowa’s history would be happening throughout this week, and thereafter, calling up the intrepid independent journalist Michael Tracey to cover the Iowa caucuses for us. Michael joined us on Friday night last week from Des Moines and is still suffering intensely under an ongoing cold spell – beyond that entertaining spectacle – he'll join us tonight to tell us the latest on what he's seen and heard over the last few days and what it presages for tonight.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: Part 1 & Part 2

WATCH THE EPISODE


TUESDAY, JANUARY 16 - SYSTEM UPDATE 212

Trump’s Iowa Victory Exposes Major Establishment Weakness. 

 

Zelensky Brings Pathetic Peace Plan to Davos. 

 

The Revealing Case of Rep. Paul Findley (R-IL)

Despite what the establishment could throw at him, Trump scores a historic win in Iowa; Zelenksy presents a pathetic peace plan in Davos; The story of Rep. Paul Findley – and what it tells us about American politics.

Donald Trump won the Iowa Caucus by 30 points over Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, in what is the largest-ever victory in a contested Republican Iowa race since the causes began. I believe it is insufficiently recognized how remarkable this victory is, and how singularly revealing. It is not just that the entire political, media, and financial establishment is united to stop Trump, though that is largely true. It is far more than that: establishment forces unleashed on Trump a weapon that had never previously been used on a major candidate for the presidency: they formally charged him with felonies, and are trying to imprison him – four separate times, in four separate criminal proceedings.

And yet very large swaths of the public simply do not care – obviously. And it is not just Republicans but independents as well, who continue to give Trump a meaningful lead in the key swing states that will determine the election. Put another way, this means that many millions of Americans – arguably most – simply no longer trust the core institutions of power and authority in this country. That is not a healthy state of affairs, but it is a very well-deserved one. 

PLUS: European, American, and Persian Gulf elites are meeting this week in their annual glamor fest at Davos. Among the attendees is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who traveled there and appeared in what the New York Times described as a stylish, smart, war-general-chic "olive green pants and a black crew-neck sweater." 

He did not only appear in his war General costume. He brought with him what he is calling a "peace plan": a proposal that is supposedly going to induce Moscow to stop the war that is so delusional, out-of-touch, and detached from reality that you have to see it to believe it, so we will show it to you. This war is one of the most horrific wastes of money and human life, and the fact that the West is still entertaining the possibility of funding this futile bloodbath shows how decayed and rotted the Davos elite has become.

ALSO: We take a look back at the fascinating career of a Republican Congressman. First elected in 1960 to represent a moderate district in Illinois, he became one of the earliest opponents of US intervention in Vietnam. As a result, he authored the War Powers Resolution – the bill that curbs the ability of the president to deploy the US military to fight wars without Congressional approval: a law that was much discussed last week after Biden ordered the bombing of Yemen without so much as a Congressional notification, let alone a debate or a vote.

What makes this Congressman – Paul Findley – particularly notable is not just how he spent his career but also how it ended. He not only opposed US intervention in general but was a specific and increasingly vehement opponent of US funding of Israel and its various wars. For that crime, he was accused by AIPAC, the ADL, and other vehement defenders of Israel as being anti-Semitic, and was targeted by the pro-Israel lobby with defeat. 

In 1982 – after he had served for 22 years – AIPAC funded a young Democrat who was highly supportive of Israel. His name is Dick Durbin, and he went on to become one of the Democratic Party's most senior and most powerful US Senators and one of the most reliable supporters of US funding of Israel. The case of Paul Findley was one of the first – but by no means the last – that sent a clear signal to American lawmakers: either unquestioningly support Israel and vote for US funding of it, or face likely career destruction

 

READ THE FULL STORY: Part 1 & Part 2

WATCH THE EPISODE


WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17 - SYSTEM UPDATE 213

Speaker Johnson & Biden Open War Over Ukraine/Border

 

Corrupt Congress Outperforms S&P 500

 

As Gaza Is Destroyed, Concern Trolling over LGBT Issues

 

Hunter Biden Laptop Confirmed (Again)

 

Britain to Investigate Palestinian Activist

President Biden and Speaker Johnson battle over House demand for border funding; Genius traders in Congress outperform the market (again); Israel defenders abuse “LGBT rights” to coerce support for Israel's total destruction of Gaza; Biden DOJ adds to piles of proof of Hunter laptop authenticity; London Police investigate Palestinian activist.

The Biden White House, for months now, has been desperately seeking to wrangle another $60 billion out of the U.S. Congress to send to their friends and allies in Ukraine. But for the first time since this branch of that war began two years ago, large sectors of the American public – along with many European nations – have decisively turned against further funding of this bloody yet futile war. House Republicans, led by their new Speaker Mike Johnson, have been adamant that no new funding for Ukraine will be authorized – let alone another $60 billion, which would be the largest authorization yet – without several conditions being met, chief among them real steps to first secure the American border before the Ukrainian border is secured, as well as meaningful oversight measures to monitor and control how those billions of dollars sent to Kiev are being used.

This week, Speaker Johnson went to the White House with other top House Republicans to meet with President Biden. By all accounts – including that provided by the Speaker immediately after he left – the two sides remain far apart, evidently unable to reach an agreement that would keep the war in Ukraine funded. We will report on the latest, and show you the Speaker’s comments, as Biden’s quest to keep this war funded with American resources is – at least for the moment – still being impeded. 

PLUS: The Israeli destruction of Gaza continues, though there is no problem there when it comes to the flow of US dollars to Tel Aviv – largely because Biden has been willing to resort to clearly illegal means to keep the flow of American weapons to Israel without any congressional approval. We will show you the latest independent data that demonstrates the unparalleled nature of the destruction of civilian life there, including the very real risk – one might say the probability – that tens of thousands of Gazans will imminently die not from bombs alone but – due to the full-scale and ongoing Israeli blockade – also from a combination of hunger and treatable infections. 

Our view since the start of the war has been the same: regardless of your views of this war, the fact that the US Government is financing and arming Israel, at great cost to both the country and its citizens, requires that everyone know what is actually being done there. 

And we'll also examine one of the most common, and most cynical, rhetorical tactics for justifying the war in the eyes of Westerners: namely, arguing that because Hamas is vehemently anti-LGBT, people in the West – especially gay people – should consider this war against Hamas particularly just. That is an argument as corrosive and as disingenuous – given how commonly wielded it is. We'll briefly examine the reasons why. 

ALSO: We will take a look at a new report that documents the amazing streak of luck members of Congress have had in trading stocks – with profits that significantly exceed the market – has continued for 2023. Produced by an anonymous but highly reliable independent data journalist, the report details how many members of Congress are now following in the footsteps of Nancy Pelosi and exhibiting remarkable skill and luck with buying and selling at exactly the right time to maximize their profits

THEN: New proof – this time from the US Government – that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic all along. I continue to regard this as one of the worst media scandals in recent times: that most of the corporate media spread a CIA lie right before the 2020 election – that the materials on that laptop were not real but rather "Russian disinformation" – and every time there's new proof that it's real, and every time the media refugees to retract their story – like now – it's evidence that hatred for the corporate media is not only justified and well-earned but vital.

AND: The Metropolitan Police of London issued a chilling statement – one that could only be found, by definition, in an authoritarian country. It announced the commencement of a criminal investigation due to a speech that someone gave at a peaceful anti-war protest in London on Saturday. The speech, like the protest, was aimed at denouncing the now 100-day-old Israeli destruction of Gaza. Many claimed that the speech was intended to express support for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. The speech plainly did not do that – as we'll show you – but even if it had, free speech clearly entails the right to defend violence. That's why people can urge that Iran be bombed off the map, or that Yemen be attacked by US aircraft, or that Gaza be flattened and turned into a parking lot by Israel. 

Yet because the target of the criticism here was Israel – not Iran or Yemen or Gaza – many demanded that the police arrest the speaker. Yet again, we see a severe and rapid erosion of core free speech rights in the West, all in order to protect this foreign country.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2

WATCH THE EPISODE


THURSDAY, JANUARY 18 - SYSTEM UPDATE 214

Saifedean Ammous on Trump’s Vow to “Never Allow” Central Bank Digital Currencies – Why Should You Care?

 

Biden’s Illegal Bombing in Yemen Escalates

 

The 2nd Gentleman, in Davos, Speaks on American Jews’ Hardships

After Trump pledged to block the creation of CBDCs; Expert Saifedean Ammous examines and explains the importance of this statement; Biden expands the illegal bombing of Yemen, threatening a broader war; In Davos, Second Gentleman Doug Ermhoff laments the plight of American Jews.

After Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the presidential race, one of the first things he did was endorse Donald Trump. Ramaswamy appeared at an event with Trump to announce his endorsement, and he then went on Fox News, where Jesse Water asked him: what did you discuss with Trump? Ramaswamy said he focused on policy discussions, and named two policies he urged Trump to adopt: one was a day-1 pardon of Julian Assange, and the other was opposition to a central bank digital currency.

After Vivek spoke at the event, Trump appeared, and one of the things he said – for the first time – was this: "As your president, I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.” Given that this issue has now been elevated to a presidential vow, we thought it was important to dig into its implications and why it matters. We will speak to Saifedean Ammous, who was a long-time professor of Economics at the Lebanese American University and is the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking.

PLUS: Joe Biden last week ordered that various targets in Yemen be bombed, as retaliation for the attacks on various ships in the Red Sea by the Houthis, the militia that runs Yemen. Those attacks, in turn, were motivated by the Houthis' desire to punish the countries responsible for the destruction of Gaza, particularly the U.S. and Israel. While the Yemeni attacks did not kill anyone, they have caused commercial disruption. That meant that many Americans, including many conservatives, supported Biden's decision to bomb.

One of the primary problems with that decision – as we documented last week – is that it was undertaken without congressional authorization. As we illustrated, presidents – absent some emergency clearly not present here – do not have the power to start new wars without first obtaining the authorization of Congress, and there are good reasons for it, including the fact that such wars are often implemented with no clear plan, no defined mission, no metric for success, and thus often lead to the kind of meandering, endless wars that the U.S. has found itself in so many times over the past several decades.

Since that initial bombing of Yemen, the U.S. has bombed Yemen at least three additional times, including yesterday. The Biden administration has still not bothered to explain its rationale or objectives to Congress, let alone to seek or obtain its approval. When asked today about all of this, Joe Biden gave an answer that could not have more perfectly illustrated why these kinds of bombing campaigns with no public debate or authorization are so dangerous, and we will show all of this to you.

THEN: The husband of Vice President Kamala Harris is Doug Emhoff. He made an appearance yesterday at the ongoing conference of global elites in Davos. While there, he used his time to speak on the grave plight of American Jews, a group – he said – that faces extreme hardship and deprivations in the United States. He also lamented the fact that at the time when American Jews felt most alone and vulnerable – namely after October 7 – far too many Americans proved that they were no friends of the Jews: meaning that too many Americans failed to stand and support Israel in its war against Gaza. 

It has been fascinating to watch over the last four months as the same minority-group victimhood narrative that so often provoked cynicism and scorn when invoked by other groups, has now been repeatedly marshaled in favor of this one group. We'll examine the comments of the Second Gentleman in Davos and what they mean.

 

READ THE FULL STORY: PART 1 & PART 2

WATCH THE EPISODE

community logo
Join the Glenn Greenwald Community
To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today
2
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
SPECIAL AFTERSHOW - SYSTEM UPDATE 500
01:07:46
Answering Your Questions About Tariffs

Many of you have been asking about the impact of Trump's tariffs, and Glenn addressed how we are covering the issue during our mail bag segment yesterday. As always, we are grateful for your thought-provoking questions! Thank you, and keep the questions coming!

00:11:10
In Case You Missed It: Glenn Breaks Down Trump's DOJ Speech on Fox News
00:04:52
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

I share your views on the sanctity of human life. I go a step further And believe In the sanctity of all life. The problem that America has is one of constructed distraction. The whole left/right conflict is the Distraction. The powerful are very good at keeping the public sight off of them. When the sites do get turned on them as it did when Luigi Mangione shot a CEO whose company caused endless suffering, (allegedly) they absolutely lose their minds. Keep the sights on them. We are fighting ourselves otherwise, distracted, as these powerful sociopaths pillage the last scraps of wealth from America before it completely collapses and then retreat to their luxury bunkers in Hawaii or Brazil (😬) or their summer Estate in New Zealand.

Also, I think the term “sanctity of life“ is too closely linked to the church. This term needs a rebranding in my opinion.

I also believe that Charlie Kirk was wearing body armour and the bullet hit centre mass and deflected into his neck. I think the ...

RE: Charlie Kirk ... I appreciated Glenn's comments tonight. It reminded me of the Clint Eastwood quote from Unforgiven: "Its a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away everything he's got and everything he's ever gonna have."
That thing "he's gonna have" might be a change of mind about something you disagreed with him about. I just thought it was important that Glenn emphasized the point that we are all much more than our opinion about any one particular issue and even our opinion on that issue will often change over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aPs9HFX0Cs

It appears that someone in the crowd knew, in the least, that there was a shooter - he saw him - that was about to commit the premediated murder of Charlie Kirk. And after the person in the crowd turned around and saw that Charlie Kirk wasn’t there he cheered as if it were a sporting event.

I came across this from sweetmojo at the duran locals page. An important find in bringing the murderer to justice.

post photo preview
Trump and Rubio Apply Panama Regime Change Playbook to Venezuela; Michael Tracey is Kicked-Out of Epstein Press Conference
System Update #508

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

 The Trump administration proudly announced yesterday that it blew up a small speedboat out of the water near Venezuela. It claimed that – without presenting even a shred of evidence – that the boat carried 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and that the boat was filled with drugs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio – whose lifelong dream has been engineering coups and regime changes in Latin American countries like Venezuela and Cuba – claimed at first that the boat was headed toward the nearby island nation of Trinidad. But after President Trump claimed that the boat was actually headed to the United States, where it intended to drop all sorts of drugs into the country, Secretary of State Rubio changed his story to align with Trump's and claimed that the boat was, in fact, headed to the United States. 

There are numerous vital issues and questions here. First, have Trump supporters not learned the lesson yet that when the U.S. Government makes assertions and claims to justify its violence, that evidence ought to be required before simply assuming that political leaders are telling the truth. Second, what is the basis, the legal or Constitutional basis, that permits Donald Trump to simply order boats in international waters to be bombed with U.S. helicopters or drones instead of, for example, interdicting the boat, if you believe there are drugs on it, to actually prove that the people are guilty before just evaporating them off the planet? And then third, and perhaps most important: is all of this – as it seems – merely a prelude to yet another U.S. regime change war, this time, one aimed at the government of oil-rich Venezuela? We'll examine all of these events and implications, including the very glaring parallels between what is being done now to what the Bush 41 administration did in 1989 when invading Panama in order to oppose its one-time ally, President Manuel Noriega, based on exactly the same claims the Trump administration is now making about Venezuela. For a political movement that claims to hate Bush/neocon foreign policy, many Trump supporters and Trump officials sure do find ways to support the wars that constitute the essence of this ideology they claim to hate. 

Then, the independent journalist and friend of the show, Michael Tracey, was physically removed from a press conference in Washington D.C. yesterday, one to which he was invited, that was convened by the so-called survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their lawyer. Michael's apparent crime was that he did what a journalist should be doing. He asked a question that undercut the narrative of the press event and documented the lies of one of the key Epstein accusers, lies that the Epstein accuser herself admits to having told. All of this is part of Michael's now months-long journalistic crusade to debunk large parts of the Epstein melodrama – efforts that include claims he's made, with which I have sometimes disagreed, but it's undeniable that the work he's doing is journalistically valuable in every instance: we always need questioning and critical scrutiny of mob justice or emoting-driven consensus to ask whether there's really evidence to support all of the claims. And that's what Michael has been doing, and he's basically been standing alone while doing it, and he'll be here to discuss yesterday’s expulsion from this press conference as well as the broader implications of the work he's been trying to do. 

 

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
Minnesota Shooting Exploited to Impose AI Mass Surveillance; Taylor Lorenz on Dark Money Group Paying Dem Influencers, and the Online Safety Act
System Update #507

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

The ramifications of yesterday's Minneapolis school shooting – and the exploitations of it – continue to grow. On last night's program, we reviewed the transparently opportunistic efforts by people across the political spectrum to immediately proclaim that they knew exactly what caused this murderer to shoot people. As it turned out, the murderer was motivated by whatever party or ideology, religion, or social belief that they hate most. Always a huge coincidence and a great gift for those who claim that. 

There's an even more common and actually far more sinister manner of exploiting such shootings: namely, by immediately playing on people's anger and fear to tell them that they must submit to greater and greater forms of mass surveillance and other authoritarian powers to avoid such events in the future. As they did after the 9/11 attack, which ushered in the full-scale online surveillance system under which we all live, Fox News is back to push a comprehensive Israel-developed AI mass surveillance program in the name of stopping violent events in the future. We'll tell you all about it. 

 Then, we have a very special surprise guest for tonight. She is Taylor Lorenz, who reported for years for The New York Times and The Washington Post on internet culture, trends in online discourse, and social media platforms. She's here in part to talk about her new story that appeared in WIRED Magazine today that details a dark money program that secretly shovels money to pro-Democratic Party podcasters and content creators, including ones with large audiences, and yet they are prohibited from disclosing even to their viewership that they're being paid in this way. We'll talk about this program and its implications. And while she's here, we'll also discuss her reporting on, and warnings about new online censorship schemes that masquerade as child protection laws, namely, by requiring users to submit proof of their identity to access various sites, all in the name of protecting children, but in the process destroying the key value of online anonymity. We'll talk to her about several other related issues as well. 


 

There've been a lot of revelations over the last 25 years, since the 9/11 attack, of all sorts of secretive programs that were implemented in the dark that many people I think correctly view as un-American in the sense that they run a foul and constitute a direct assault on the rights, protections and guarantees that we all think define what it means to be an American. And a lot of that happened. In fact, much of it, one could say most of it, happened because of the fears and emotions that were generated quite predictably by the 9/11 attack in 2001 and also the anthrax attack, which followed along just about a month later, six weeks later. We've done an entire show on it because of its importance in escalating the fear level in the United States in the wake of 9/11, even though it's extremely mysterious – the whole thing, how it happened, how it was resolved. But the point is that the fear levels increased, the anger increased, the sadness over the victims increased and into that breach, into that highly emotional state, stepped both the government and their partners in the media, which essentially included all major media outlets at the time, to tell people they essentially have to give up their rights if they want to be safe from future terrorist attacks. 

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
Glenn Takes Your Questions on the Minneapolis School Shooting, MTG & Thomas Massie VS AIPAC, and More
System Update #506

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

 

We are going to devote the show tonight to more questions that have come from our Locals members over the week. It continues to be some really interesting ones, raising all sorts of topics. 

We do have a question that we want to begin with that deals with what I think is the at least most discussed and talked about story of the day, if not the most important one, which is the school shooting that took place in a Catholic church in Minneapolis earlier today when a former student who attended that school went to the church, opened fire and shot 19 people, two of whom, young students between eight and ten, were killed. The other 17 were wounded, and amazingly, it’s expected that all of them are to survive. The carnage could have been much worse; the tragedy is manifest, however, and there is a lot of, as always, political commentary surrounding the mass shooting attempts to identify the ideology of the shooter in a way that is designed to promote a lot of people's political agenda. So, let's get to the first question.

 It is from @ZellFive, who's a member of our Locals community. He offers this question, but also a viewpoint that I think really ought to be considered by a lot more people. They write:

 

So, I'm really glad that this is one of the questions that we got today because this is a point I've been arguing for so long. So, let me just try to give you as many facts as I possibly can, facts that seem to be confirmed by law rather than just circulating on the internet. 

So, the suspected killer is somebody named Robin Westman, who is 23 years old. After they shot 19 people inside this church, killing two young children, they then committed suicide with a weapon. The person's birth name is Robert Westman, and around 16 or 17 years old, he decided that he identified as a woman, went to court, changed the legal name from Robert to Robin, and began identifying as a trans woman, so that obviously is going to provoke a lot of commentary, and there's been a lot of commentary provoked around that. We will definitely get to that. 

 

The suspected killer also left a very lengthy manifesto, a written manifesto which they filmed and uploaded on a video to YouTube, along with showing a huge arsenal of guns, including rifles and pistols and some automatic weapons. I believe various automatic rifles as well. I don't think they used any of those weapons at school. I believe they just used a rifle and a pistol, if I'm not mistaken. But we'll see about that. 

It was essentially a manifesto both in written terms, but then they also wrote various slogans on each of these weapons and various parts of the weapons. And we're going to go over a lot of what they put there because there's an obvious and instantaneous attempt, as there always is, to instantly exploit any of these shootings before the corpses are even removed from the ground. And I mean that literally. The effort already begins to inject partisan agenda, partisan ideology, ideological agendas to immediately try to depict the shooter as being representative of whatever faction the person offering this theory most hates or to claim that they're motivated by or an adherent of whatever ideology the person offering the theory most hates. And it happens in every single case. 

Oftentimes, there's an immediate attempt to squeeze some unrelated or perhaps even related agenda in and out of it instantly. Liberals almost always insist that whenever there's a mass shooting, it proves the need for a greater gun control without bothering to demonstrate whether the gun control they favor would have actually stopped the person from acquiring these weapons in the first place, whether they were legally acquired, whether they could have been legally acquired, even with gun control measures, it doesn't matter, instantaneously exploiting the emotions surrounding a shooting like this to try to increase support for gun control. Whereas people on the right often do the opposite. 

On the right, they typically will argue that more guns would have enabled somebody to neutralize the shooter more rapidly, that perhaps churches and schools need greater security. We need more police. So, there's that kind of an almost automatic and reflexive exploitation again, almost before anything is known, but there is an even more pernicious attempt to instantly declare that everyone knows the motives of the shooter, that they know the political outlook and perspective of the shooter. They know their partisan ideology and their ideological beliefs in an attempt to demonize whatever group a person hates most. 

This is unbelievably ignorant, deceitful and ill-advised for so many reasons. The first of which is that every single political action, every single ideological movement, produces evil mass shooters. For every far-leftist mass shooter that you want to show or white supremacist mass shooters that you want to show, you can show people who have murdered in defense of all kinds of causes. And so even if you can pinpoint the ideology of the shooter on the same day the shooting happened, I mean, you can develop a clear, reliable, concise and specific understanding of the shooter that you never even heard of until four hours ago, but you're so insightful, your investigative skills are so profound, that you're able to discern exactly what the motive of this person was in doing something so intrinsically insane and evil as shooting up a church filled with young school children. 

The idea that anyone can do that is preposterous on its face. I mean, the police always say, because they're actual investigators, actual law enforcement officers who want to collect evidence that stands up for public scrutiny and also in court, “We don't know yet what the motive is; we're collecting clues.” But almost nobody on Twitter or social media or in the commentariat is willing to say that. Everybody insists immediately, no, the killer was motivated by the other party, the opposite party of the one I'm a member of, or this ideology that's not mine, or in this religion that is the one I like the most to demonize. It's just so transparent and so blatant what is being done here. And yet it's so prevalent. 

I mean, you could go on to social media and principally the social media platform where the most journalists and political pundits, influencers and the like congregate, which is X, and I could show you probably 40 different theories offered definitively with an authoritative voice. Not like, hey, this might be possibly the case, but saying clearly, we know that the killer was motivated by this particular ideology, this particular set of beliefs. And I'm not talking about random X users, I'm talking about people with significant platforms, people who are well-known. 

I could probably show you 40 different theories like that, where every person is purporting to know definitively exactly what the motive of the shooter was and by huge coincidence they all have latched on to whatever ideology or faction or motive most serves their own political worldview to demonize the people with whom they most disagree, or whatever ideology or group of people they most hate. That's always what is done. And I guess in some cases, if a shooter leaves a particularly clear and coherent manifesto, and we have had those sometimes, we have had Anders Breivik in Norway, who made it very clear that his motive was hatred for Muslim immigrants who shot up a summer camp in Norway. We had the Christchurch, New Zealand killer who attacked two mosques and mass murdered dozens of Muslims at a mosque and made clear he was doing so because it was viewed that Islam is a danger. We had the mass shooter in a Buffalo supermarket, who made manifest their white supremacist views. We've had mass shooters who are motivated by hatred of Christianity, as happened in the Nashville shooter attack on a Christian school there, I mean, I could go on and on. 

As I said, every single political faction produces mass shooters, mass killers, evil, crazy people who use violence indiscriminately against innocents in advance of their beliefs. But most of the time, and you might even be able to say all of the times – I mean, maybe I don't like the phrase all of the times because you can conceive of exceptions, but close to all the time, most of the time, people who go and just randomly shoot at innocent people whom they don't know are above all else driven by mental illness and spiritual decay, not by political ideology or adherence to a political cause. That often is the pretext for what they're doing; that may be how they convince themselves that what they are doing is justified. But far more often than not, the principle overriding factor is the fact that the person is just mentally ill or spiritually broken, by which I mean just a completely nihilistic person who has given up on life and wants to just inflict suffering on other people because of the suffering that they feel or their suffering from delusions. 

And this isn't something I invented today. This is something I've long been saying. And I just want to make one more point, which is, even though there are sometimes manifestos that are extremely clear and say, “I am murdering people in a supermarket that is African-American because I hate Black people and I don't think they belong in the United States,” or “I believe that white people are the sole proper citizens of the United States and I want to murder and kill inspired by those other mass murderers” that I mentioned, even then, it may not be the case that the person's representation of what they're is the actual motive because it could be driven by a whole variety of other factors, including mental illness, or all kinds of other issues to be able to conclude in six hours, even with a crystal-clear manifesto that the person did it for reasons that you're ready to definitively assert are the reasons is so irresponsible. It's just so intellectually bankrupt. 

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