Glenn Greenwald kicks the Left and the ACLU after Charlottesville. (Please Forget His Nazi Clients)

[VermontKevin]

Glenn Greenwald's new column at the Intercept is a rambling piece of junk where he ostensibly defends the ACLU against "misguided"leftist attacks because they defended the free speech rights of Nazis to organize a rally in Charlottesville. To prove that there are "attacks" he lists a whole bunch of tweets from people who are upset and are using the free speech afforded to Twitter users to express their outrage in 140 characters.

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville/?comments=1#comments

Greenwald conflates two different things: speech, and the call to violence. Why? This serves two purposes:

1) In doing so Glenn fundamentally insults the ACLU and those on the Left who would rightfully question its actions. The ACLU didn't go to court and in fact would not go to court to protect the rights of the KKK to incite violence. They would protect the right of the KKK to march. And that's precisely what the ACLU did. It defended the right of these horrible people to protest, not to commit or incite crime.

Once Greenwald's done using the ACLU as a strawman, he proceeds to bash President Obama for killing Anwar Awlaki, the man who oversaw the attempted attacks on British Air and Chicago synagogues and many other terrorist attacks. He then bashes Hillary Clinton for proposed legislation over flag burning from 2005, because obviously he needed to bash Clinton and that was the only thing he could find. And then he finally works his way around to Donald Trump, and assures us that his speech is bad and hateful, BUT...

2) Then the true purpose of the article reveals itself. How do you hold Trump and his Klan and Nazi allies accountable not for their free speech, but for their calls to violence and the resultant acts of crime that occur? You don't. You can't. It would be a violation of the free speech rights of Trump, and the Klan, and the Nazi's to civilly sue and hold them accountable for the lunatics of their movements whom they inspired and exhorted.

In his column, Greenwald forgets to mention that he had a Nazi client who was sued for inciting murder. Greenwald lost.

Anderson v. Hale and World Church of the Creator is a civil rights case in which Reverend Stephen Anderson sued the World Church of the Creator, charging them with advocating a “Racial Holy War” that incited a man’s murderous rampage.

On April 4, 2000, CCR filed a civil rights suit on behalf of Reverend Stephen Anderson in Chicago federal court against Matthew Hale, the leader of the World Church of the Creator, and the estate of Benjamin Smith, who shot Reverend Anderson three times. The suit, which was filed under the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and the Illinois Hate Crimes Act, charged that Hale conspired with Smith to violate the civil rights of Reverend Anderson on the basis of his race.

On July 3, 1999, Reverend Anderson, who is Black, was shot three times while he was standing in the driveway of his home in Decatur, Illinois. The man who shot him, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, was a complete stranger who went on a three-day-shooting spree that left two people dead and nine people wounded. Smith was an active member of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist hate group based in Peoria, Illinois that was led by Matthew Hale, its so-called “Pontifex Maximus.” The church advocated a “Racial Holy War,” which it defined as a “total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races of the world.” Each of Smith’s targets was Black, Asian American, or Jewish, and several were shot near their synagogue or church. Smith’s murderous rampage came to an end when he took his own life as the police were about to apprehend him. Following Smith’s shooting spree, Hale failed to express compassion for Smith’s victims or their families. Rather, Hale stated that he was happy with Smith’s zealotry for the church’s cause and applauded Smith for dying a “martyr for free speech for white people.”

Rather than risk a court determination, defendants elected to discuss an out-of-court settlement.

Last modified: October 9, 2007

https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/anderson-v-hale-and-world-church-creator

I hope the victims in Charlottesville sue the Nazi/Klan bastards into the ground. I hope they include Trump, and whoever else in the White House helped egg this on. Yeah, these assholes can say what they want, but they don't get to escape the consequences of their speech. The car that killed Heather Heyer had many co-pilots. Make them pay.

[MineralMan]

1. Gruck Feenwald!

That is all.

[VermontKevin]

2. I'm tired of fake Lefties who always find the time to bash Obama and Clinton.

[MineralMan]

3. Yeah, me too!

Very tired of them.

[leftstreet]

5. I'm tired of people claiming Greenwald is a leftist. He isn't n/t

[leftynyc]

4. Ignoring him is the best revenge

Just pretend he doesn't exist.

[VermontKevin]

6. His media outlet is too big to ignore. And his recent hiring of anti-Clinton James Risen

is very troubling. James Risen used Free Republic posters as sources.

[leftynyc]

8. No, it's not

98% of people never heard of him or his outlet. Just ignore him. Unless I see it posted here, I never see his stuff and I do twitter and many message boards.

[BannonsLiver]

15. Really? I ignore it every day.

[geek tragedy]

7. the crown prince of the alt-left nt

[Coventina]

9. More like Clown Prince.

(Sorry, comic girl here)

[WinkyDink]

10. "Greenwald conflates two different things: speech, and the call to violence." He wouldn't be alone.

[VermontKevin]

11. It suits the Nazis to conflate those things. Keeps them from paying for their actions.

[yardwork]

12. Greenwald is desperately trying to deflect from his complicity in all this.

[VermontKevin]

13. Nazi civil clients, and claiming that the Deep State is unfairly targeting Trump?

Yeah, those positions aged well.

[yardwork]

14. Putin consolidates power through a white supremacist ideology.

Shutting down independent media. Demonizing Jewish people. Oppressing women and minorities. Jailing and torturing gay people. Putin has done all that and more but Greenwald didn't bat an eye.

The chickens are coming home to roost, baby.

[Blue_Tires]

16. Glenn's gonna Glenn...

Last edited Tue Aug 15, 2017, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

All the things he could be talking about, he sets up a pathetic strawman column over something that stopped being a major issue after Skokie...

The bottom line is Glenn Greenwald is on the end of the horseshoe, and since he has staked his reputation on a Trump administration being better than Hillary on her best day, he'll never directly criticize Trump or his Russian puppetmasters... Hell, even after Reality Winner dropped all those files on his doorstep HE STILL WON'T FUCKING ADMIT THE RUSSIANS INTERFERED WITH THE ELECTION

[VermontKevin]

17. Yeah, thus the "proof" he posted of "attacks" were from Twitter users that no one

ever heard of. The ACLU was just a vehicle for him to bash Democrats, the Left, and insulate himself from anyone remembering that he decided to defend Nazis in a civil suit.