Journalist Glenn Greenwald feels "censorship has become the liberals’ North Star" but only when rhetoric they want to silence doesn’t coincide with their ideology.
If the left can force Spotify to abandon podcast star Joe Rogan, then nobody is safe from "their petty-tyrant tactics," he argued in a new Substack.
"American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard," Greenwald wrote on Substack.
He explained that liberals used to focus on getting "hate speech" censored but have since expanded to targeting anyone spreading "misinformation" or "disinformation," except when their preferred news organizations are the guilty party.
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Glenn Greenwald feels "censorship has become the liberals’ North Star" but only when rhetoric they want to silence doesn’t coincide with their ideology. (EVARISTO SA/AFP via Getty Images)
"When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being ‘Russian disinformation,’ and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is ‘disinformation’ that requires banishment," Greenwald wrote.
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"Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die," Greenwald continued. "Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely."
Greenwald feels the "’disinformation’ term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them" and it’s simply not possible to disagree with the left nowadays.
"The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of ‘disinformation.’ Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard," Greenwald wrote.
The censorship attempt du jour revolves around calls for Spotify to take action against Rogan amid claims he is spreading COVID misinformation. Liberal musicians have pulled their music from the streaming giant as part of a public rebuke of Rogan. As a result, Spotify will begin to put a disclaimer at the beginning of Rogan’s show when he discusses COVID.
Democratic have called for Joe Rogan to be silenced by Spotify. (Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images | getty)
Greenwald pointed that top Democratic officials have called for Rogan to be silenced, but he’s not surprised by it because "censorship has become the liberals’ North Star" of late.
"Given the climate prevailing in the American liberal faction, this authoritarianism is anything but surprising. For those who convince themselves that they are not battling mere political opponents with a different ideology but a fascist movement led by a Hitler-like figure bent on imposing totalitarianism — a core, defining belief of modern-day Democratic Party politics — it is virtually inevitable that they will embrace authoritarianism," Greenwald wrote. "When a political movement is subsumed by fear — the Orange Hitler will put you in camps and end democracy if he wins again — then it is not only expected but even rational to embrace authoritarian tactics including censorship to stave off this existential threat. Fear always breeds authoritarianism, which is why manipulating and stimulating that human instinct is the favorite tactic of political demagogues."
As a result, Greenwald feels it’s "not hyperbole to observe that there is now a concerted war on any platforms devoted to free discourse and which refuse to capitulate to the demands of Democratic politicians and liberal activists to censor" and platforms that allow free speech to flourish are being demonized.
"The emerging campaign to pressure Spotify to remove Joe Rogan from its platform is perhaps the most illustrative episode yet of both the dynamics at play and the desperation of liberals to ban anyone off-key. It was only a matter of time before this effort really galvanized in earnest. Rogan has simply become too influential, with too large of an audience of young people, for the liberal establishment to tolerate his continuing to act up," Greenwald wrote.
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"If liberals succeed in pressuring Spotify to abandon their most valuable commodity, it will mean nobody is safe from their petty-tyrant tactics," he wrote to conclude the lengthy piece. "But if they fail, it can embolden other platforms to similarly defy these bullying tactics, keeping our discourse a bit more free for just awhile longer."
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.