Glenn
Greenwald's Web of Propaganda
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
December 19, 2018
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 Purportedly
dedicated to "adversarial journalism," whose "prime target
is the U.S. intelligence apparatus," Glenn Greenwald's Intercept, according to one commentator, "makes no pretense of being a
neutral news organization...its one-sidedness is so flagrant and relentless
that it easily traverses the line separating argumentation from
propaganda."
That is true in many areas. Greenwald blames the United States and its
allies for the existence of Islamic terrorism, and claims that the 9/11
attacks are used as a pretext to violate Americans' civil liberties, as
well as that the FBI acts to create and encourage crimes by Muslims. He has
minimized the importance of numerous prosecutions
against Islamists in the United States, often omitting facts about
defendants in his essays.
Among Greenwald's most egregious claims, he has:
1. Justified the murder of Fort Hood soldiers by Nidal Hasan
and the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by an Islamic terrorist.
2. Justified the murders committed by ISIS and al-Qaida.
3. Justified the killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas and
Hizballah.
4. Denounced Israel, not Iran, as the "bogeyman" in
the Middle East, claiming that Israel is a major terror actor.
5. Likened U.S. actions in Iraq to the Nazi seizures of
Austria and Czechoslovakia.
6. Accused the U.S. military of deliberately targeting Muslim
civilians instead of targeting actual terrorists.
7. Characterized the terrorists held at Guantanamo as patriots
who were merely defending their lands from foreign invasion.
8. Claimed that officials declare an act to be terrorism only
when Muslims commit it, rather than when non-Muslims are the perpetrators.
9. Claimed that the FBI is targeting Islamist terrorists and
simply framing Muslims.
10. Claimed fancifully that the U.S. media uncritically
parrots U.S. government claims.
11. Charged writers and thinkers who criticize Islam with an
"anti-Muslim animus."
12. Claimed that criticism of Palestinian terrorism leaves the
Palestinians with no options to fight Israel's "occupation."
13. Charged that accusations of anti-Semitism are just ploys
to shut down criticism of Israel.
14. Denounced the U.S. killing of jihad terror mastermind
Anwar al-Awlaki.
15. Sided with Marc Lamont Hill and justified his genocidal
call "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
Greenwald has also participated in numerous conferences and events
sponsored by U.S. Islamist organizations, such as the Hamas front, the Council on American
Islamic Relations ("CAIR").
Greenwald often criticizes the use of the term "terrorism"
when applied to violent acts by Muslims, especially in attacks on Western
soldiers, falsely claiming that for the most part, "Palestinians are
attacking purely military targets, not civilians. Those military targets
are soldiers deployed to their soil as part of an illegal occupying army.
In what conceivable sense can that be 'terrorism'? If fighting an occupying
army is now 'terrorism' simply because the army belongs to Israel and the
attackers are Palestinian, is it not incredibly obvious how this term is
exploited?"
On the 2013 murder of British soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby, hacked to
death on a public street by Islamists in Woolwich, England: "That this
was a barbaric and horrendous act goes without saying, but given the legal,
military, cultural and political significance of the term
"terrorism", it is vital to ask: is that term really applicable
to this act of violence? To begin with, in order for an act of violence to
be "terrorism", many argue that it must deliberately target
civilians. That's the most common means used by those who try to
distinguish the violence engaged in by western nations from that used by
the 'terrorists': sure, we kill civilians sometimes, but we don't
deliberately target them the way the 'terrorists' do."
He has rationalized Nidal Hasan's 2009 terrorist attack at
Fort Hood in a similar way: "But here, just as was true for Nidal
Hasan's attack on a Fort Hood military base, the victim of the violence was
a soldier of a nation at war, not a civilian."
This is part of his larger claim that the United States and its allies
have deliberately killed Muslim civilians, so that these terror attacks are
simply retaliation: "The US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly
killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but
defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be 'terrorism'
because it is combatants, not civilians, who are the targets. Can it really
be the case that when western nations continuously kill Muslim civilians,
that's not 'terrorism', but when Muslims kill western soldiers, that
is terrorism?"
Greenwald even claims
that terrorists interned at Guantanamo were merely defending their own
country: "Amazingly, the US has even imprisoned people at Guantanamo
and elsewhere on accusations of 'terrorism' who are accused of nothing more
than engaging in violence against US soldiers who invaded their country."
He has accordingly complained that his opponents are "protecting the
narrative that Islam is a uniquely violent force in the world, that Muslim
extremists pose a threat that nobody else poses, and that the US, the West
and its allies (including Israel) are morally superior and more civilized
than their adversaries, and their violence is more noble and
elevated."
Greenwald is highly critical of U.S. and our allies' international
action and policy and argues there is an Islamic terrorism in the West has
been caused by the foreign policy of the United States and Western allies:
"As the attackers themselves make as clear as they can, it's not
religious fanaticism but rather political grievance that motivates these
attacks. Religious conviction may make them more willing to fight (as it
does for many in the west), but the motive is anger over what is being done
by the US and its allies to Muslims....It's vital to understand this causal
relationship simply in order to prevent patent, tribalistic,
self-glorifying falsehoods from taking hold."
Unsurprisingly, Greenwald has defended Iran while criticizing Israel in
his discussions of U.S. foreign policy. In a debate with Bill Maher on
foreign policy, he declared: "We play a significant role in what is
happening in the Middle East because we've been interfering and dominating
that region is order to have access to their oil and protect Israel"
He made the demonstrably false claim that ".Iran isn't invading lots
of other countries and occupying them for a decade. Nor are fundamentalist
Muslim countries like the United States is."
His anti-Semitic views are glaring such as when Greenwald asked Maher:
"Have you heard about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for the
last 50 years -- motivated in part by extremists' views by Judaism?"
(For the record, there is not one Israeli soldier or civilian in Gaza.)
Given his animus toward Israel, it is not surprising that Greenwald downplays the
threat of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizballah: "And we have
organizations on the [terrorism] list that are not even remotely a threat
to the United States, such as Hizballah [Greenwald conveniently
forgets the fact that Hizbollah has killed several hundreds of Americans
and Hamas has killed scores of American civilians], which whatever you
think of them are not in any way devoted to harming Americans. They are
devoted to protecting their citizens against the State of Israel. And yet
it is criminal in the United States to do anything that is deemed to be
material support for Hizballah and Hamas."
When Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups shot more than 400
rockets at Israel's civilian population in November 2018, Greenwald made no
comment about the human rights violations directed toward Israel or her
population, but focused only on Israel's response: "Israel
threatened last week to begin 'levelling' high-rises in Gaza and now is
making good on that threat, destroying a TV station, a radio station &
an apartment building. They're not even pretending this was accidental;
they admit they were targeted."
Greenwald has accused UN Ambassador Nikki Haley of lying about the
situation in Gaza and has asserted that Gaza is still occupied by Israel,
claiming that "the world knows she's lying, which is why the US just
lost in the UN on Israel."
Greenwald has likewise claimed that "when Palestinians fight against
occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced — and often killed — as
'terrorists.' ...If fighting Israeli occupying forces is barred as 'terrorism,'
and nonviolent boycotts against Israel are barred as
"anti-Semitism," then what is considered a legitimate means for
Palestinians and their allies to resist and end the decades-long, illegal
Israeli occupation? The answer is: nothing. Palestinians are obliged to
submit to Israeli occupation in a way that none of the people demanding
that would ever themselves submit to occupation of their land. All forms of
resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed illegitimate. That,
manifestly, is the whole point of all of this."
Even more fantastically, Greenwald has asserted that "Israel intends to continue to rule
over and occupy Palestinians and deny them self-governance, political
liberties, and voting rights indefinitely," and that Israel is on a
"march to permanent apartheid." Israel, Greenwald insists, is "an apartheid, rogue, terrorist
state," and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "this
far-right, bloodthirsty, militaristic figure."
Greenwald also is dismissive of American counter-terror efforts: "We
insist on endlessly trading liberties for false security, eagerly doing so
with every new attack. That mind-set does far more harm than good. In the
wake of 9/11, it ushered in the Patriot Act, mass surveillance, torture and
two decade-long wars."
In line with this, he has claimed that the FBI is actually engaged in a massive
conspiracies to target and frame Muslims: "The FBI's informants have
been so unstable and aggressive in trying to recruit members to
join Terrorist plots that the targeted mosque members themselves have
reported the informant to the FBI. Time and again, at the direction of
these paid provocateurs who know that their ongoing payments depend upon
enabling prosecutions, young Muslims in their late teens or early twenties
end up saying something hostile about the US and/or statements that are
otherwise politically offensive. The DOJ takes those inflammatory political
statements and combines them with evidence of commitment to Islam to depict
the target as a dangerous jihadist."
To Greenwald, America, not the terrorists, is the real villain: "Who has brought more death, and
suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades than the U.S.
national security state?"
In late November 2018, Greenwald sided with CNN analyst and Temple University professor,
Mark Lamont Hill, who was criticized for his call, in a speech before the
U.N., for a "free Palestine from the river to the sea":
"CNN's firing of Marc Lamont Hill over his Israel/Palestine speech is
a major victory for 'online call-out culture' but a major defeat for the
right to advocate for Palestinian rights, to freely critique Israel, and
for journalism and public discourse to accommodate dissent." He stated
that Hill's remark, which expressed tacit approval for a new genocide of
the Jews, was "somehow construed as being anti-semitic."
In response to arguments that the Kurds support the invasion of Iraq,
Greenwald even went so far as to liken U.S.
action to Nazi actions against Austria and Czechoslovakia: "Many
Czech and Austrian citizens of Germanic descent, viewing themselves as a
repressed minority, welcomed Hitler's invasion of their countries, while
leaders of the independence-seeking Sudeten parties in those countries
actively conspired to bring it about. Did that make those German invasions
justifiable?"
Given his deep hatred for the United States, it is not
surprising that Greenwald would also be an apologist for ISIS: "The constant orgy of condemnation
aimed at this group seems to have little purpose other than tribal
self-affirmation: no matter how many awful acts our government engages
in, at least we don't do something like that, at least we're not as bad as
them....To the extent that these denunciation rituals make us forget or
further obscure our own governments' brutality – and that seems to be the
overriding effect if not the purpose of these rituals – they are worse than
worthless; they are actively harmful."
Greenwald decried the 2011 killing of jihadist cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki, and claimed that racism facilitates the War on Terror:
"Many Americans can (a) say that they oppose the targeted killings of
Americans on foreign soil while simultaneously (b) supporting the killing
of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen because, for them, the term 'Americans' doesn't
include people like Anwar al-Awlaki. 'Americans' means their aunts and
uncles, their nice neighbors down the street, and anyone else who looks
like them, who looks and seems 'American'. They don't think those people
- Americans - should be killed without charges by the US government if they
travel on vacation to Paris or go to study for a semester in London. But
the concept of 'Americans' most definitely does not include people with
foreign and Muslim-ish names like 'Anwar al-Awlaki' who wear the white
robes of a Muslim imam and spend time in a place like Yemen....But the
effort to depict Muslims as something other than 'real Americans' has long
been a centerpiece of the US political climate in the era of the War on
Terror."
Clearly, Greenwald's mocking summation of his critics' characterization is
actually 100 percent correct: Greenwald is indeed a "pro-Terror,
US-blaming Terrorist-lover, Jew-hating Terror-apologist." Read our
full report here.
Related Topics: Media
| Steven
Emerson, Glenn
Greenwald, The
Intercept, terrorism
definitions, Nidal
Hasan, Palestinian
terrorism, Hamas,
Hizballah,
Mark
Lamont Hill, CAIR,
anti-Semitism,
Lee
Rigby, Anwar
al-Awlaki, ISIS
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