Glenn Greenwald is having his moment in the sun. He is currently enjoying what every establishment hack and pawn dreams of: a fawning writeup in the New York Times, which paints a tired, stale, and well-worn picture…portraying Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a pseudo-fascist, and Greenwald as a champion of the free press, heroically standing up to a dictatorial government that will end freedom of speech and expression if it has its way.
The problem is that Glenn Greenwald is hardly the champion of freedom of the press. There is a cause, however (really a religion) to which he dedicates every moment of every waking day: the global socialist movement, and its constant struggle to enslave the peoples of Latin America.
This, of course, involves Greenwald repeatedly and willfully ignoring a whole host of grievous violations of freedom of speech and the press on the part of Latin American leftist leaders: Rafael Correa, Fidel/Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez/Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales, and Cristina Kirchner first and foremost among them.
The problem is that the people of Latin America woke up long ago, and have since soundly rejected the Pink Tide at the ballot box expelling Communist, socialist, and Marxist governments from office at breakneck speed. With the exception of Mexico, the past decade has been a harsh one for the Latin American left…an ideological consortium which makes other global leftist movements look moderate by comparison.
Hugo Chavez is dead…Rafael Correa is a wanted man…Dilma Rousseff was impeached…Lula is imprisoned for corruption…Kirchner is running again but she won’t win…and Glenn Greenwald isn’t happy about any of this.
How Greenwald has fooled many into believing that he is some anti-establishment, anti-corruption crusader, is remarkable. Greenwald’s true patrons are at the heart of the big-government leftist socialist establishment that nearly ruined the entire Latin American region, ushering in the greatest era of corruption in modern history: Venezuela and its drug trafficking empire, Kirchner and her merry band of thugs, Lula and Rousseff and Odebrecht and Petrobras…the dictatorship in the making in Bolivia where Evo Morales in clear violation of the Constitution and the results of a nation-wide referendum is running for an unprecedented fourth term, and the pro-Ortega paramilitary thugs who have murdered thousands in cold blood…Greenwald, the intrepid journalist who creams himself to expose corruption, has nothing to say about any of this.
Rather Greenwald belongs to a new class of militant Brazilian (or Latin American) leftist, so aptly described by Kenneth Rapoza in Forbes:
“On Twitter, their followers wear it with a badge of honor: leftist, esquerdista, Marxist, Marxista, Palestinian flags, Cuban flags, no Brazilian flags…Maybe even a nod to veganism, almost a sacrilege in Brazil. Brazil’s new left, led by academics and the jet-set version of the media A-list, consider Lula a political prisoner.”
Now, Greenwald is supposedly a “hero” because he is defending Lula da Silva, who turned Brazil into his own personal crime empire, while accepting millions in bribes. Lula has had his conviction upheld at every single level of Brazil’s justice system for obvious, blatant, and incontrovertible corruption whereby he (and numerous other Workers Party officials) used their offices to personally profit, and treated the Brazilian state as their own personal piggy bank.
The supposedly “bombshell” trove of texts from Brazilian prosecutor Sergio Moro that Greenwald has unearthed, do absolutely nothing to prove the innocence of former president Lula da Silva, or absolve him from corruption charges. They mainly show that Moro, like the vast majority of Brazilians, was concerned about the brazen, endemic, and rampant corruption that the Workers Party allowed to run wild during their fourteen years in power.
The idea that Glenn Greenwald is some kind of hero for journalistic freedom is laughable. This is the guy whose major collaboration that catapulted him onto the national stage was with Edward Snowden…the whistleblower who believed in his principles so much that he sought personal protection from Vladimir Putin. That’s right…Putin, noted champion of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Greenwald is a servant of the global socialist movement. His husband David Miranda is a federal deputy in the Brazilian Congress, representing a socialist political party: the Party of Socialism and Liberty, which boasts a meager 10 of 513 seats in the lower house of Congress.
In a recent piece in The Intercept, we have a prime example of Greenwald’s brand of political advocacy described as journalism.
Greenwald suggests that the Brazilian Congress was outraged at Moro’s grievous injustices, visited upon Lula da Silva, and heralded a Congressional crusader for truth and justice, who courageously took to the floor to denounce Moro’s supposed abuses of power.
Who, exactly, was that crusader? None other than Glauber Braga…part of the ragtag band of Marxist activists from the same party that…surprise, surprise, Greenwald’s husband David Miranda hails from.
Interesting. What’s even more interesting is that when Braga cites his greatest political influences, he names a veritable who’s who of leaders of Brazil’s Communist and socialist movements. His greatest influence is cited as Carlos Marighella, a radical Marxist-Leninist whose ideas overlapped with those of Che Guevara, and who was involved in the kidnapping of US Ambassador to Brazil Charles Burke Elbrick.
Marxist-Leninist thought…Che Guevara…and kidnapping of an American diplomatic official.
Braga, undoubtedly, represents the entire 513 member body…and his close relationship with Greenwald’s husband David Miranda makes him a most credible and unbiased source, correct?
In the world of Glenn Greenwald, yes, that is the case.
It is also interesting to note that Greenwald’s article does not contain a single word of Moro’s text messages.
Greenwald presents himself as an anti-corruption crusader, but he has defended his patrons Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, the most corrupt politicians in the history of Brazil, time and time again.
The individuals that Greenwald really has a soft spot for are all authoritarians and totalitarians: Putin, Silva, Rousseff, Castro, Ortega, Chavez, and Maduro.
Greenwald has managed to pull off an incredible magic trick: disguising his brand of left-wing/socialist political advocacy as journalism.
But here is the real trick:
He managed to convince the founder of eBay to give Greenwald a quarter of a billion dollars to pursue his brand of so-called “journalism.”
Greenwald is enjoying his moment in the sun. Will he be able to force Bolsonaro to remove Moro from office? Most likely not. Will he be able to force Bolsonaro from office? Certainly not. Will he be able to tarnish Bolsonaro’s reputation sufficiently to thwart his reelection bid? That remains to be seen…but the most likely answer is no.
Just remember when you read Glenn Greenwald’s “journalistic work” from South America (he’s at least honest enough to admit that the Trump Russia collusion investigation is a total fabrication), remember to recognize it for what it is: left-wing political advocacy, disguised as journalism.