Glenn Greenwald Addresses Marxist Conference, Defends Terrorists, Minimizes 9-11 Attacks

Glenn Greenwald is the Guardian journalist who broke the story of the NSA snooping. Greenwald came to prominence during the Bush years by denouncing that administration’s anti-terrorism policies. To his credit, Greenwald is one of the few on the left who has remained consistent and now criticizes Obama policies with almost as much zeal as he criticized Bush. Not to his credit, Greenwald developed a habit of using fake commenters to defend his written positions when others criticized him, and then denied that he engaged in any sockpuppetry. Greewald blamed the sockpuppetry on his boyfriend.

Also not to his credit, Greenwald’s criticism of US anti-terror policy may not be coming from a civil libertarian perspective at all. It may result from a very very far left, Marxist, world view. Adam Levick has posted video clips of Greenwald addressing the International Socialist Organization’s annual conference in 2011. Greenwald speaks about the drone program that has been used to target and kill terrorists including American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki used the Internet to spread his Islamist doctrine, and among his acolytes was Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood mass killer in 2009. Speaking about Awlaki in 2011, Greenwald told the socialist gathering that Awlaki’s only crimes were “speak[ing] effectively to the Muslim world about violence that the U.S. commits [in Yemen] and the responsibility to stand up to that violence.”

The violence that the US commits in Yemen is aimed at taking out terrorists who target and kill US civilians and military personnel. The US violence, then, is aimed at defending people like Greenwald to go on criticizing his own country.

In another clip, Greenwald downplays the 9-11 terrorist attacks, in which Islamist terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, as “minimal in scope.” Radosh has posted both clips here.

Greenwald casts himself as a civil libertarian. No real civil libertarian, though, associates with admitted socialists and aligns himself with the talking points of Islamist radicals. His work with Snowden, who has fled to Hong Kong after leaking the NSA’s data-mining programs and may be working with the Chinese government, casts strong doubt on Snowden’s motivations.