[alejohausner]

Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.

[mmaunder]

Laura Poitras' documentary Citizenfour is an excellent introduction to the amazing work that Glenn does and has done, and how he's been personally targeted - although I don't recall whether the doc includes Glenn's partner being harassed by US authorities.

[acdha]

He became well known for exposing surveillance but that instinct to portray himself as exposing government hypocrisy lead him to parrot Russian intelligence/Trump campaign attacks on Clinton and Biden long after he should have realized that the right posed a much greater threat to civil liberties and were feeding him information in service of their own campaigns, not transparency. It’s really undercut his earlier work.

[mmaunder]

Examining Glenn's work through an ideological lens leads to this kind of rhetoric. It's why he's so good at what he does. He's crossed ideological boundaries constantly in pursuit of the truth of a matter, and in defense of the public.

[wredcoll]

"pursuit of the truth" is an ideology. What are you trying to say here?

Glenn is, essentially, hypocritcal because he ignores things that go against his predetermined narrative.

Does he post true things sometimes? Sure, but is it really worth filtering through the rest?

[slopinthebag]

I think what they are saying is a common sentiment among people who don't belong in any of the major political camps. It's a common experience to take heat from all sides because, surprisingly, neither "side" in politics is perfect nor particularly virtuous.

[wredcoll]

But we're not criticizng him for not registering for the democratic national convention or the republican one or whatever you think "belonging to a political camp" even means (what does it mean, exactly?)

He's being crticized for repeating lies and refusing to post truths.

[gbriel]

His ideology is “America bad”, which leads to some alignment with foreign influence and arguably leads to him spreading propaganda

[slopinthebag]

If only his ideology was "Republican America bad, Democrat America good", then he would not be aligned with foreign influence and wouldn't be spreading propaganda.

[weird_tentacles]

^ This ... and note, it is sarcasm.

[beepbooptheory]

To anyone on Twitter in like 2016-2019, this is a rather funny sentiment to have about him. I can remember my respect for him dissolve day by day. I didn't even remember until now if he was pro- or anti- Trump, probably neither still. But I simply remember that he slowly turned into the worst caricature of a smug Twitter media guy. Just turned into "hot take" haver and seemed to lose his own plot.

If you know you know I guess, but even then, broken clocks and all that. There was a point where he was such a cool guy to me, and I grew up a little in a good way seeing him turn into whatever he did.

It may just be Twitter's fault at the end of the day too!

[slopinthebag]

It's probably Twitter. There are people I know IRL who are completely different on that platform, it's unbelievably toxic.

[acdha]

That’s my impression, too. Not hardcore MAGA so much as falling into the addiction of thinking he was smarter than “the establishment” about everything and taking contrarian stances to show they couldn’t boss him around. Twitter’s algorithm was like a drug for those guys because they’d give a radioactive hot take and get a bazillion notification pings.

[bahmboo]

This was my experience too. So many 'voices' just turned into grifters and self promoters. Garland, Mensch, etc.

[acdha]

Uh, that’s how he likes to style himself but that’s more of an ideological stance than you’re complaining about. A true focus on truth and defense of the public would have included questions like “are the Russians totally unbiased in feeding me this information?” or “am I serving the public by refusing to admit I made a mistake and repeated untrue claims which were highly beneficial to the political party who amplified my claims?”

[dTal]

This is the same "useful idiot" trap that Julian Assange fell into. It's a challenge to incorporate the lessons of people like these without falling into the opposite trap, that of cynical apathy.

[mancerayder]

He's great for privacy, surveillance and a centrist liberal critique of both parties, but his obsession with Israel is annoying and distracting from the other non- partisan contrarian attitude that I like him for.

[Cyph0n]

Heh, “obsession”, as if Israel has been doing absolutely nothing of interest for the past two years. Not to mention its blatant involvement in the domestic US political scene via AIPAC and friends.

[tootie]

Is he taking a break from being a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda?

[Applejinx]

Those guys find it useful when there's some kind of legitimate gripe to use. He needn't take a break, it's very much Western companies doing this. He doesn't even need to put in an ad for whatever doubtless sanctioned Russian services would like to replace these Western tech giants.

Sometimes actual problems can be readily exploited for sinister purposes. Doesn't mean the original problems aren't also sinister, just be damn careful where you intend to flee to :)

[epolanski]

Can you make an example?

[tootie]

He has frequently laundered the notion that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the West's fault for expanding NATO. He also told Tucker Carlson he believed the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hosted American bioweapons labs. He has spent his entire career being a grandstanding contrarian who is occasionally correct.

[user3939382]

Right if you’re not a mouthpiece for the US State Depts horrific foreign policy you’re a Russian propagandist. My family fought in every war going back to the Revolution and I think our policy on Russia is complete shit. AFAIC we started the whole conflict.

[wredcoll]

> AFAIC we started the whole conflict.

Is this talking point still being paid for? I haven't seen it in a while, but I guess I don't keep track that closely.

What are the other russian provided talking points these days?

[rsync]

I would direct you to George Kennan[1] and his 1997 NYT article where he said, among other things:

"... expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking ..."

Is it your position that he was paid for, or in some way disingenuously held, this view ?

I don't have strong opinions on this topic but I note with interest that there seem to be contrary viewpoints that aren't not puppets/trolls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

[tootie]

It doesn't matter if he was paid and I have no indication Greenwald ever was either. Only that this line of thinking aligns with Russian propaganda and is also complete nonsense.

Saying we should constrain the sovereignty of Eastern European nations to not hurt the feelings of their most dangerous rival is just bullshit. Russia's goals are simply neoimperialist and they obviously had no intention of waiting for Ukraine to join NATO or the EU before invading. They certainly had no similar provocation to snatch territory from Moldova and Georgia.

[rsync]

I am not saying these things. I have no strong opinion on this topic.

I am simply pushing back on the notion that anyone who disagrees with my parent was paid to do so.

I don't believe that Kennans position (in 1997) was disingenuous or dishonest.

[antonvs]

Kennan was arguing a Russian position, which makes sense given his long focus on Russia, and time there. What he wrote doesn’t actually support the idea that the West “started” anything.

Strengthening a defensive alliance is not “starting” something, that’s just the usual narcissistic gaslighting used by people with nefarious intent.

[wredcoll]

Did I miss the news of ukraine joining nato or something?

More to the point, this is some hardcore "she was asking for it" victim blaming.

You know who started the war? THE COUNTRY THAT LAUNCHED THE INVASION.

[user3939382]

You missed the news where our own state dept officials are on leaked calls hand selecting the anti Russian government of Ukraine weeks before their coup or the news where Merkel admitted we negotiated treaties with Russia over Ukraine in bad faith.

The war started with our expansion of NATO, followed by couping Ukraines govt, multiple fake peace treaties, and finally Ukraine murdering thousands of culturally Russian civilians in Eastern Ukraine. I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military not when someone walks over a border. Although your narrative doesn’t work then right?

[TiredOfLife]

He literally reposts russian lies.

[jeffbee]

"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...

[alejohausner]

Rumble is indeed a free for all, with lots of angry kooks. But it’s also a place where reasonable dissenting voices have found a way to get their ideas heard. It’s a mixed bag.

[embedding-shape]

As it should be. If it's not a mixed bag, you're in an echo-chamber. That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.

[stackghost]

HN is one massive echo chamber. Sorry to be the one to point it out to you. Why do you think HN has such a bad reputation for being smug corporate bootlickers?

The elitism and groupthink here is fucking wild.

[embedding-shape]

Every places have echos of echo-chambers, but some are worse than others. At least on HN you can choose to see stuff heavily downvoted, in many other places moderators just remove posts as they see fit. You'll get more different point of views here than on many other places, but I'd be happy to hear what places you consider less of an echo-chamber than HN.

[aydyn]

Wait a second, I instantly recognized your post as self-deprecating humor and not glazing and had a light chuckle. You mean that:

>That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.

Is unironically what you think and posted in earnest? Thats WILD.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Well… let’s be fair… outside of tech specific posts, this place is Reddit/r/poltics maybe the lite version. This is an echo chamber on at least a dozen major topics.

[embedding-shape]

> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?

[lqstuart]

It's always fun reminding people that the internet was invented by the US military

[embedding-shape]

So was the programming compiler, not sure what that's supposed to tell us. Programming languages are violent?

[kstrauser]

And Tor was a US Navy project. What’s your point?

[zrail]

Yes.

[nvr219]

Suffering from success.

[Applejinx]

They couldn't possibly make all that money from just Nazis: I'm given to understand they're doing really well these days. I had the impression that Substack became heavily co-opted by anti-Nazis and have done nothing to defend the feelings of the Nazis they're also happy to host. Not sure what the balance is currently, but again: they couldn't possibly be making all that money from just Nazis, and I think that's instructive.

[kspacewalk2]

His focus has also involved generous amounts of simping for Russian fascists, excusing their colonialist wars, etc. Not an anti-imperialist, just anti-US.

[ambicapter]

link?

[WillPostForFood]

https://voxukraine.org/en/messing-with-the-truth-disinformat...

[epolanski]

Both the quotes of this, otherwise empty, article are reasonable and do not make him a Kremlin mouthpiece.

Stating that the west, and the US, has actively used Ukraine as a puppet in the geopolitical game is a fact.

It's also a fact that US troops and NATO forces have increasingly surrounded Russia since the 90s.

Mind you, I think that the NATO argument is bogus.

What happened in Ukraine was not a matter of Russian security, but Putin's own ambitions and paranoia against democratic waves in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

[stefan_]

You mean Snowden had to force his material on him, he reluctantly published it, got hooked on the fame and promptly jumped the shark

[karp773]

I personally miss Snowden's revelations so much. Such a brave soul! He should keep doing what he does best and never stop. It's sad that we have not heard any new revelations from him for a long time, though. Any ideas why he stopped?

[embedding-shape]

I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or something, but Snowden essentially lives in exile from his home as the US government would like to punish him for exposing the secrets of the US government spying on everyone. Not sure what new revelations could come from him.