How Glenn Greenwald Made the Russia Scandal Disappear
By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait
February 13, 2018
2:00 pm
There once was a time when right-wing conspiracy theorists flourished, argues Glenn Greenwald. “But those people have been largely scorned and relegated to obscurity. The new conspiracy theorists — the ones who casually suggest that when a plane crashes, it is really a secret attempt by Putin and Trump to silence one of the passengers (who wasn’t even a passenger) — are found not on far-right websites, but on MSNBC and at Harvard Law School.”
The right’s conspiracy theorists have been relegated to obscurity? Really? Because I can think of a number of counterexamples. Some of them have influential platforms, or even extremely high-level jobs in the federal government.
This passage reveals a great deal about Greenwald’s peculiar approach to the Russia investigation. When evidence first appeared in 2016 linking Russia to hacking of Democratic emails, and the Trump campaign to Russia, Greenwald dismissed the whole question as an absurd, neo-McCarthyite smear. “Democrats seem to have one tactic with their adversaries and enemies, which is to accuse them of being Russian agents,” he explained, so they concocted a conspiracy theory, which was embraced by a liberal elite in alliance with “a shadowy, secretive world of intelligence and military operatives.” In fact, he believed, Clinton was just as Link to tweet
?lang=en" target="_blank">in cahoots with Russia as Trump, and there was “a very extreme dearth of evidence” Russia even had anything to do with the hacks.
If you have been following the news in organs of the dreaded coastal Establishment, like the Washington Post and New York Times, you have seen Greenwald’s claims dismantled piece by piece. Russia’s responsibility for the hacks is no longer in question, and the connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia keep widening.
If you have been following the news from Greenwald, through his columns, tweets, and appearances on Fox News, you have received a different impression altogether. The nutty conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia just keep getting nuttier as the left loses its mind in a desperate bid to discredit the election.
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