Does smearing Snowden and Greenwald count as right-wing propaganda?

[MannyGoldstein]

There was a poll yesterday in which DUers voted overwhelmingly (6 to 1!) that "promotion of rightwing propaganda is a per se violation of community standards", and thus offending posts should be hidden. And this makes sense to me - right wing nonsense should not be tolerated on DU.

My question: should sustained attacks on the messengers who carry important truths to us also be considered as right-wing propaganda? In particular, I'm thinking about the stuff that hijacks virtually every thread about Operation Spy on Everyone™, e.g., "Snowden sux!!! and should be in jail!" , and "Smearmaster Greenwald is a smearing Libertarian Paulite greed-head who was once in favor of the Iraq war***" After all, isn't this a standard right-wing technique to distract from discussing substantive issues?




***so were some, but by no means most, Congressional Democrats. But the same folks don't complain about that - instead we get a handful of "oh grow up" tossed at our heads.

18 votes, 3 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Unless it makes sense within the context of the thread, "attacking the messenger" is a right-wing tactic and should be dealt with as such
	18 (100%)
	Attacking the messenger is fine.
	0 (0%)
	3 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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