> There was nothing politically hapless about Eric Schmidt. I had been too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast. But that is not the sort of person who attends the Bilderberg conference four years running, who pays regular visits to the White House, or who delivers “fireside chats” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
My Grandmother had a subscription to American Free Press, a weekly/biweekly/monthly (?) newspaper. One of their reporters had covered the annual Bilderberg conference for decades.
The regular media did not discuss the Bilderburgers' activities. The organization kept a very tight lid on the existence of their group and where they'd be meeting, but that reporter successfully figured out what they'd discussed year after year. Future presidents tended to show up -- it was a part of the vetting process I guess, "will this 'Bill Clinton' fellow be useful to us?" and so forth. Both parties' candidates would tend to make an appearance, so they'd be up to date on the Agenda for the years to come.
The Bilderberg group was named after their first meeting location, "Bilderberg Hotel, a hotel in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, namesake of the Bilderberg Group" (wikipedia disambiguation page).
I recall reading this long ago, but had forgotten about it.
Meanwhile since 2016 I have been wondering why in the world Assange would have so obviously been in the bag for Donald Trump. Was he Russian intelligence? I always was skeptical of the Russia thing, or thought it was exaggerated at least. Did Assange go fascist along with so many others in the former hacktivist subculture? Maybe but I didn’t see any overt proof of that.
Then I see this again and wonder if it was less about being in the bag for Trump than being against Hillary Clinton and the people around her. It seems like Assange and I’m sure others were determined that Hillary Clinton should be kept out of the presidency at any cost.
I feel like there has got to be a story here that hasn’t been told.
My own opinion is this:
I get wanting change and there are a lot of bad things you can say about the current powers that be, but if you want revolution you have to offer something better than the status quo. Fascism and race nationalism are things that are decidedly worse than the status quo. I don’t support nihilistic revolution for the sake of revolution either. It almost always ends up in something as bad or worse than what existed before. Revolution only works when there are better ideas or at least better people, and I see neither.
>Meanwhile since 2016 I have been wondering why in the world Assange would have so obviously been in the bag for Donald Trump.
I somehow missed the confusion around Assange. His M.O. has been so consistent.
When the cables came out, it was what I expected from the organization I read about years prior on slashdot back in highschool - back when it was new and only a curiously to the tech press. I remember very well listening to NPR in 2010 and struggling to understand why NPR struggled to understand who this Assange guy was. And how they took the scraps of his personal history they managed to find, and were so bewildered that they weren't able to create a more romantic story about his motivations than the plainly expressed ones.
When the emails came out in 2016, I had smartened up to the way the media could only ever understand him as a power broker, and wasn't surprised by the confused coverage. But wikileaks actions were still within my expectations from the organization I read about on slashdot back in highschool.
I like to think I know better than to be suckered in by an official line, but the quality of unprovable explanations can be judged by their predictive accuracy.
Wired Magazine, 2016: Want to Know Julian Assange's Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago
>I get wanting change and there are a lot of bad things you can say about the current powers that be, but if you want revolution you have to offer something better than the status quo.
Part of the idea of democracy as we understand it today is that speaking truth to power is itself helping make the world a better place. Even if Team Edward has worse policy than Team Jacob, that doesn't mean choosing not to expose Team Jacobs's flaws when the opportunity presents itself.
An interesting take but I am not sure it holds up in the post-truth world of “firehose of falsehood” tactics.
Speaking truth to power assumes that truth can be recognized as such and that it will be comprehended rationally. What we saw with the email leaks was that the fact that a leak occurred was used as a “hook” to spin a massive network of falsehoods. To this day nobody remembers anything about that leak except “pizzagate.” Was there anything of legitimate truth-to-power interest in there? Maybe, but it was instantly drowned in the ocean of bullshit that is social media.
Other far more damaging leaks have occurred but nobody remembers them. They are messages in a bottle bobbing somewhere out there in that vast ocean of shit.
You see... you can lie with the truth. Just twist it and tack on falsehood. The small amount of truth there makes the lie more powerful.
Maybe that was the establishment’s response: “flood the zone.” If so it worked.
If Assange isn’t a fascist in the bag for fascists, he is naive. Personally I still lean toward him being in the bag for the fascists. He strikes me as someone too smart not to see what I outlined above and how the current tactics of his organization play right into it.
Wikileaks tactics cannot work unless we can drain the real swamp, namely social media, and get people talking like facts and reality matter. In the present climate leaks are ineffective or worse actually enable more deception.
Its quite a jump to go from Julian Assange releasing documents that implicate Hillary Clinton. To then state he is in the bag for Donald Trump, and to even further state that he could be a fascist.
Do you have any evidence to support these claims he could be a fascist other than the fact he released documents on Hillary?
Edit:
While I don't like to bring post history into this. This user also called Glen Greenwald a fascist only one day ago.
I didn’t outright call either a fascist, just said I wondered and suspected given what seems to be their biases.
In Assange’s case he clearly and obviously has been in the bag for Trump. He timed the release of Hillary’s emails so they could be harnessed as part of a disinformation smear campaign right before the election but not long enough before to allow a response. This campaign was also the genesis of the mythos of the Q movement.
As for Greenwald there seems to be a clear spin to just about all his work for the past few years.
In both their cases I find it impossible to believe that there are no leaks or whistleblowers for them to report upon that concern the Trump orbit. Trump’s entire career is a history of shady deals, con artistry, and exaggeration, and are there still people who argue that he is not a fascist after the events of January 6th? He re-enacted Mussolini’s march on Rome almost exactly, but thankfully with far less competence. We are lucky he and most of his followers are bumbling fools.
In today's radicalized political climate labels like racist, fascist, and terrorist get flung around so carelessly that they have lost their meaning and power. People simply refuse to take you seriously once they recognize how improperly these terms are applied and as such are effectively being redefined.
The fact that such an extreme proposition (someone being a fascist) is even entertained and on such flimsy grounds is troubling. Glenn Greenwald is a progressive and a critic of Trump, yet he's suspected of being a fascist? It seems like these terms are used as ad hominems to defame character, rather than arguing based on the merits, because the mainstream left can't stand honest criticism from their own side of the political spectrum.
It seems all it takes to raise suspicion of being a fascist is saying some favourable things about Trump or some things that benefit Trump politically. The problem with that is that everyone that's honest is gonna have to say favourable things about Trump some of the time, cuz he's simply not that bad. Trump is just a 90's democrat with a New York attitude that somehow managed to get elected as a republican president, yet here we are talking about him and half the country as if Hitler and his movement have been reincarnated.
About the january 6th thing. I've personally heard Trump's political strategy to challenge the election being expounded for months by the people involved and it did not involve any violence at any point. They expressly warned against the use of violence, feeling that it was unnecessary, unethical, and counterproductive. The violence was perpetrated by a separate group that acted against the express wishes of the president and did not even attend the rally, but went straight to the capitol. Trump and his confidants were well aware how counterproductive violence would be before the events of january 6th unfolded. He's not a stupid guy. If he had wanted a coup, I guarantee you he would have had it executed properly, but his eyes were already on 2024, and for him to peacefully protest the alleged stealing of this election was gonna be a win-win situation: either he proves his case and is vindicated, or he demonstrates the alleged corruption of the system which will fuel his next run for office.
I don't blame you for having such a caricatured picture of Trump, though. It's what the media has been spoon feeding everyone for years now. Unless you go out of your way to look for the person behind the caricature, you will have a hard time understanding anything that is going on. Both sides need to stop demonizing each other.
I don’t base my view of Trump as a fascist on January 6th. I just saw it as confirmation. Trump by the way did call for people to march to the capitol in language that at least made those idiots feel as if they’d been told to do what they did, and Giuliani was even more explicit with his “trial by combat” comments. I have no way of knowing if they intended it to go that far, but they certainly should not be surprised. If Trump is not a stupid man then he ought to understand the mindset of that bunch.
I am also well aware of how words like fascist, communist, etc are just tossed around. In this case I mean it precisely. Steve Bannon’s favorite philosopher is Julius Evola and Trump is surrounded by and beloved by doctrinaire race nationalists and fascists. Neo-Nazis and similar ideologues are almost universal in their fanatical support of him.
Fascism is an ideology that has to be fought at all costs, and Greenwald if anything gives cover and support to it. I have never seen him write anything critical of Trump or actual Nazis like Bannon and Steven Miller. Instead he attacks the other side at opportune times, and while I am not overjoyed about the existing Democratic Party they are at least not fascists.
By the way I think the same thing about authoritarian communism, but last I checked a Leninist did not occupy the White House and there are no Bolsheviks wearing Stalin apologist shirts storming the capital. If there were I’d be saying communist, not fascist.
It was very clear from the speeches given at the rally that Trump and team had placed their bets on the constitutional process where representatives and senators would dutifully object to certain electors on behalf of their constituents who have doubts about the integrity of the election. These would ask for a 10 day review by an independent commission (something I think could have brought the country closer if executed properly, regardless of the outcome). Any violent intervention before the conclusion of that process would have (and has) impeded that process.
Which of Trump's words do you think incited the people to storm the capitol? I got a few points that cast doubt on the theory that Trump incited the violence:
- Trump's speech said: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. ... We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women."
- The people stormed the capitol while the speech was still ongoing, but it takes at least 35 minutes to get there from where Trump was giving the speech, so these people were actually a separate group that were not present at the rally to hear Trump speak.
- There were at least some identified antifa agitators encouraging violence among the relatively small number of Trump supporters (victims of the Q anon disinformation campaign) that initially breached the capitol.
- Trump supporters that arrived from the rally were opposing the group that initially breached the capitol. They condemned the siege, told people not to aid the rioters or follow their example. This shows evidence that the people that actually were at the rally had clearly understood Trump's explicit intent to keep things peaceful.
What really caused the tragic events on jan 6th IMO:
- The Q anon disinformation campaign that had been escalating towards violence for some time, claiming that any day now Trump was gonna take over the country using the military
- The media fuelling the Q anon narrative of Trump doing a military coup by propagating their own versions of this insane conspiracy theory
- The FBI, Pentagon, DC mayor not taking decisive action despite knowing of the plans circulating on the message boards populated by the lunatic fringe (Q anon)
I'm glad you do oppose the careless use of words.
About the guilt by association game: Richard Spencer and David Duke endorsed Biden 2020. Is Biden a fascist now too? Trump has denounced white supremacy on countless occasions and designated the KKK a domestic terrorist organization, he is pro israel. I don't think Trump (or Biden) is a fascist. He's a New York liberal that is too conservative for the democrat party (mostly because the dems have moved leftward) but has drawn the republicans to the left.
About Glenn Greenwald, he has been smeared as a Trump supporter since 2016 (because that's how the establishment left demonizes their leftwing critics, by calling them conservative), but Glenn denounced Trump as opposing "everything he has devoted his career to defending" [1]. The fact that Glenn is still willing to hold the democrat party accountable regardless of political expediency makes him one of the few real journalists. When everyone on the left was covering up Joe Biden's corruption scandal, he dared call it out. That's called being principled. Despite it being politically advantageous to Trump, the electorate deserves to know before making a choice.
My Grandmother had a subscription to American Free Press, a weekly/biweekly/monthly (?) newspaper. One of their reporters had covered the annual Bilderberg conference for decades.
The regular media did not discuss the Bilderburgers' activities. The organization kept a very tight lid on the existence of their group and where they'd be meeting, but that reporter successfully figured out what they'd discussed year after year. Future presidents tended to show up -- it was a part of the vetting process I guess, "will this 'Bill Clinton' fellow be useful to us?" and so forth. Both parties' candidates would tend to make an appearance, so they'd be up to date on the Agenda for the years to come.
The Bilderberg group was named after their first meeting location, "Bilderberg Hotel, a hotel in Oosterbeek in the Netherlands, namesake of the Bilderberg Group" (wikipedia disambiguation page).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_meeting