Greenwald v. Kinsley
P. Schultz
June 2, 2014
Below is a
link to Michael Kinsley’s review of Glenn Greenwald’s book, No Place to Hide, which is about Edward
Snowden’s adventure as a “leaker par excellence.” Of course, Greenwald sees
Snowden’s activities as quite useful and even honorable in the current
environment in the United States, which Greenwald characterizes as repressive
in the extreme.
“Greenwald writes about ‘the implicit
bargain that is offered to citizens: Pose no challenge and you have nothing to
worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we
do, and you’ll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the
authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of
wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience and conformity.’”
For
Kinsley, this is just poppycock and Greenwald himself illustrates why this is
the case:
“Greenwald doesn’t seem to realize that
every piece of evidence he musters demonstrating that people agree with him
undermines his own argument that “the authorities” brook no dissent. No one is
stopping people from criticizing the government or supporting Greenwald in any
way. Nobody is preventing the nation’s leading newspaper from publishing a
regular column in its own pages dissenting from company or government
orthodoxy. “
But Kinsley
seems to miss or perhaps he wants to miss the character of what he labels
“repressive tolerance,” a concept he identifies with Herbert Marcuse and
attributes to Greenwald. Kinsley fails to recognize that Greenwald and his
likes, and the apparent tolerance of his and their views, are absolutely
essential to a regime of “repressive tolerance.” Without dissenters like
Greenwald, how could the regime demonstrate its alleged “tolerance?”
But where
does the “repressiveness” come in? Precisely in reviews like Kinsley’s review,
which is an attempt to marginalize Greenwald, as this is how a regime of
“repressive tolerance” works. The dissenters are allowed to speak, even encouraged
to speak, but then they are marginalized in this way and that. This is the
meaning of David Gregory’s attempt to criminalize Greenwald’s activities, an
attempt that Gregory thought was subtle. Consider the following:
Greenwald’s
notion of what constitutes suppression of dissent by the established media is
an invitation to appear on “Meet the Press.” On the show, he is shocked to be
asked by the host David Gregory, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted
Snowden, . . .
why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” Greenwald was so
stunned that “it took a minute to process that he had actually asked” such a
patently outrageous question.
And
what was so outrageous? Well, for starters, Greenwald says, the “to the extent”
formulation could be used to justify any baseless insinuation, like “To the
extent that Mr. Gregory has murdered his neighbors. . . .” But Greenwald does not deny
that he has “aided and abetted Snowden.” So this particular question was not
baseless.
I agree
that Greenwald should not have been surprised by Gregory’s attempt to
marginalize him in this way. But Kinsley misses the crux of this little drama,
which is that Gregory felt free to raise a question with Greenwald he would
never raise with, say, President Bush or Obama or even the head of the NSA. Can
you imagine the outrage if a reporter had asked Bush or Obama whether they
should be charged with “a crime” or with “high crimes and misdemeanors” given
the illegality or secretiveness of the NSA spying activities? “To the extent
that you lied to the nation about WMDs in Iraq, President Bush, why shouldn’t
you be charged?” Oh boy, wouldn’t the outcry be fun to hear?
What
Gregory and Kinsley are doing is marginalizing Greenwald and Snowden, which is
the essence of “repressive tolerance.” It is the equivalent of Socrates’
banning of the poets from his best political order in book 10 of the Republic.
Only the “banning” is disguised in such sentences as these from Kinsley’s
review:
But in “No Place to Hide,” Greenwald
seems like a self-righteous sourpuss, convinced that every issue is
“straightforward,” and if you don’t agree with him, you’re part of something he
calls “the authorities,” who control everything for their own nefarious but never
explained purposes.
And, the proof of the
pudding, so to speak, is that after having read Kinsley’s review of Greenwald’s
book, if you take it seriously, there is no reason to read the book. You can
dismiss as the work of “a self-righteous sourpuss,” even overlooking perhaps that
Kinsley is as self-righteous in his review as Greenwald is said to be in his
book! Why is it easy to overlook Kinsley’s self-righteousness? Well, because
his is in the service of the established order. To wit:
The question is who decides. It seems
clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and
their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government
secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a
democracy (which, pace
Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the
government.
NB: Without anything
approaching an argument, Kinsley asserts that the U.S. is still a “democracy,”
where, allegedly, decisions made by the government are in fact made by a
majority of “the people.” BUT THIS IS THE ISSUE! Or, at the very least, it
should be the issue. And how can it be asserted that a government which is secretly
spying on its citizens, and even lying about doing so, be considered “democratic?”
It is quite incredible, literally, to argue that a government that secretly
undertakes activities and lies about them to its citizens is “democratic”
insofar as in a democracy, it is the people who are suppose to determine the
government’s policies.
But you would never know this from
Kinsley’s review. And it is only once this issue is obfuscated that Greenwald
and Snowden and their actions can be assessed solely from the point of view of
“national security.” If this issue is not blurred, however, then Greenwald’s
and Snowden’s actions can and should be assessed from a political point of
view. Were Snowden’s actions – and Greenwald’s – in the service of “democracy”
or not? And if they were in the service of “democracy,” rule by the people,
shouldn’t the cost in terms of “national security” be assessed in light of
this?
This is the essence of “repressive
tolerance,” viz., the most important political questions are replaced with
other, less important questions, allowing the powers that be to govern independently
of and even contrary to the wishes of the people. And those who point to this
situation are deemed “marginal” at best, “criminal” at worst, because after all
we all know, or should know, that crimes against the state are far worse than
crimes against the people and their right to self rule. In fact, it is the
essence of “repressive tolerance” to teach the people that those who wield
power are incapable of criminal behavior and that, therefore, their actions
must be accepted or, at the very least, tolerated because they were done with
the best of intentions.
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