Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 18

In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints

Terrorist attacks, and the emotions they spawn, almost always prompt calls for fundamental legal rights to be curtailed in the name of preventing future attacks. The formula by now is routine: The victims of the horrific violence are held up as proof that there must be restrictions on advocating whatever ideology motivated the killer to act.

In 2006, after a series of attacks carried out by Muslims, Republican Newt Gingrich called for “a serious debate about the First Amendment” so that “thos...

The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights in Charlottesville

Each time horrific political violence is perpetrated that is deemed to be terrorism, a search is immediately conducted for culprits to blame other than those who actually perpetrated the violence or endorsed the group responsible for it. It’s usually only a matter of hours before the attack is exploited to declare one’s own political views vindicated, and to depict one’s political adversaries as responsible for, if not complicit in, the violence. Often accompanying this search for villains is...

What’s Worse: Trump’s Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals and CIA Operatives to Subvert It?

During his successful 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, for better and for worse, advocated a slew of policies that attacked the most sacred prongs of long-standing bipartisan Washington consensus. As a result, he was (and continues to be) viewed as uniquely repellent by the neoliberal and neoconservative guardians of that consensus, along with their sprawling network of agencies, think tanks, financial policy organs, and media outlets used to implement their agenda (CIA, NSA, the Bro...

What’s Worse: Trump’s Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals and CIA Operatives to Subvert it?

During his successful 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, for better and for worse, advocated a slew of policies that attacked the most sacred prongs of long-standing bipartisan Washington consensus. As a result, he was (and continues to be) viewed as uniquely repellent by the neoliberal and neoconservative guardians of that consensus, along with their sprawling network of agencies, think tanks, financial policy organs, and media outlets used to implement their agenda (CIA, NSA, the Bro...

Brazil’s Corrupt Congress Protects its Bribe-Drenched President, Finalizing Elites’ Two-Year Plot

House Speaker Rodrigo Maia of the right-wing Democrats Party and President Michel Temer.

Photo: Folhapress

Just over a year ago, in Brasília, one of the most nauseating and humiliating political spectacles I’ve ever seen took place over nine hours. In Brazil’s lower House – a body where a majority of members are implicated in corruption investigations – one dirty, shady cretin after the next stood up in front of television cameras and flamboyantly declared that their conscience, their relig...

The Intercept Brasil Completes its First Year, With Plans to Grow Further

The Intercept Brasil turns one year old today. On our launch date of August 2 of last year, we explained our purposes and objectives by observing that “there is a hunger among Brazilians for alternative forms of reporting.” That hunger is grounded in the grim reality that the country “has long been dominated by a tiny number of powerful media institutions, almost all of which supported the 1964 coup and the subsequent 21-year brutal right-wing military dictatorship that followed, and which ar...

Scholars Say Mother Jones Distorted Their Research for Anti-Homeless Article

An article published on July 14 by Mother Jones produced widespread anger. The piece, written by Kevin Drum, began by discussing newly published research from two political science professors on public perceptions of homeless people. Drum addressed the seemingly contradictory findings that people generally support aid to the homeless but also favor banning panhandling and sleeping in public.

Drum’s controversial passage came when he attempted to reconcile these views with this reasoning (emph...

U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel

The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli sett...

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

One of the most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devo...

As Momentum Grows to Remove Brazil’s President, New Pressure Campaign Sparks Rage

A new, innovative public campaign, aimed at securing the removal of Brazilian President Michel Temer, was launched on Monday night with a new website, at 342agora.org.br, designed to enable public pressure on Congress. The site is called “342 Now” – referring to the number of votes needed in the lower House to proceed with an investigation and ultimate removal of Temer – and its complex design allows online users to send messages to every Congress member not only by email but also through the...