GOP becoming a cult of know-nothings

November 28, 2021·

Supporters of former President Trump are seen the North Carolina Republican Party Convention on June 5

The Republican Party is becoming a cult. Its leaders are in thrall to Donald Trump, a defeated former president who refuses to acknowledge defeat. Its ideology is MAGA, Trump's deeply divisive take on what Republicans assume to be unifying American values.

The party is now in the process of carrying out purges of heretics who do not worship Trump or accept all the tenets of MAGA. Conformity is enforced by social media, a relatively new institution with the power to marshal populist energy against critics and opponents.


What's happening on the right in American politics is not exactly new. To understand it, you need to read a book published 50 years ago by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, "The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970." Right-wing extremism, now embodied in Trump's MAGA movement, dates back to the earliest days of the country.

The title of Lipset and Raab's book was chosen carefully. Right-wing extremism is not about the rational calculation of interests. It's about irrational impulses, which the authors identify as "status frustrations." They write that "the political movements which have successfully appealed to status resentments have been irrational in character. [The movements] focus on attacking a scapegoat, which conveniently symbolizes the threat perceived by their supporters."

The most common scapegoats have been minority ethnic or religious groups. In the 19th century, that meant Catholics, immigrants and even Freemasons. The Anti-Masonic Party, the Know Nothing Party and later the American Protective Association were major political forces. In the 20th century, the U.S. experienced waves of anti-immigrant sentiment. After World War II, anti-communism became the driving force behind McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Goldwater movement in the early 1960s ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice").

The roots of the current right-wing extremism lie in the late 1960s and 1970s, when Americans began to be polarized over values (race, ethnicity, sex, military intervention). Conflicts of interest (such as business versus labor) can be negotiated and compromised. Conflicts of values cannot.

You see "the politics of unreason" in today's right-wing extremism. While it remains true, as it has been for decades, that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican (that's interests), what's new today is that the better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic, at least among whites (that's values, and it's been driving white suburban voters with college degrees away from Trump's "know-nothing" brand of Republicanism).

Oddly, religion has become a major force driving the current wave of right-wing extremism. Not religious affiliation (Protestant versus Catholic) but religiosity (regular churchgoers versus non-churchgoers). That's not because of Trump's religious appeal (he has none) but because of the Democratic Party's embrace of secularism and the resulting estrangement of fundamentalist Protestants, observant Catholics and even orthodox Jews.

The Democratic Party today is defined by its commitment to diversity and inclusion. The party celebrates diversity in all its forms - racial, ethnic, religious and sexual. To Democrats, that's the tradition of American pluralism - "E pluribus unum." Republicans celebrate the "unum" more than the "pluribus" - we may come from diverse backgrounds, but we should all share the same "American values."

One reason right-wing extremism is thriving in the Republican Party is that there is no figure in the party willing to lead the opposition to it. Polls of Republican voters show no other GOP figure even close to Trump's level of support for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The only other Republican who seems interested in running is Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who recently criticized "Trump cancel culture."

If Trump does run in 2024, as he seems inclined to do, can he win?

It all depends on President Biden's record. Right now, Biden's popularity is not very high. In fact, Biden and Trump are about equally unpopular (Biden's job approval is 52 to 43 percent negative, while Trump's favorability is 54 to 41.5 percent negative). Biden will be 82 years old in 2024. If he doesn't run, the Democrats will very likely nominate Vice President Harris. When a president doesn't run for reelection, his party almost always nominates its most recent vice president, assuming they run (Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, Joe Biden in 2020). Democrats would be unlikely to deny a black woman the nomination. There is also some talk of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg running if Biden doesn't.

The 2024 election could be a rematch between Trump and Biden. Or a race between Trump and a black woman. Or between Trump and a gay man with a husband and children. Lee Drutman, a political scientist at the New America think tank, recently told The New York Times, "I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that's happened now. I don't see the rhetoric turning down. I don't see the conflicts going away. ... It's hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse."

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of "Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable" (Simon & Schuster).

How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics

From xenophobia to conspiracy theories, the Know Nothing party launched a nativist movement whose effects are still felt today

Lorraine Boissoneault

January 26, 2017

Anti-immigrant cartoon showing two men labeled "Irish Wiskey" and "Lager Bier," carrying a ballot box. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

Like Fight Club, there were rules about joining the secret society known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB). An initiation rite called “Seeing Sam.” The memorization of passwords and hand signs. A solemn pledge never to betray the order. A pureblooded pedigree of Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock and the rejection of all Catholics. And above all, members of the secret society weren’t allowed to talk about the secret society. If asked anything by outsiders, they would respond with, “I know nothing.”

So went the rules of this secret fraternity that rose to prominence in 1853 and transformed into the powerful political party known as the Know Nothings. At its height in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party, originally called the American Party, included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians. Party members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. They wanted to restore their vision of what America should look like with temperance, Protestantism, self-reliance, with American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation's highest values.

Know Nothings were the American political system’s first major third party. Early in the 19th century, two parties leftover from the birth of the United States were the Federalists (who advocated for a strong central government) and the Democratic-Republicans (formed by Thomas Jefferson). Following the earliest parties came the National Republicans, created to oppose Andrew Jackson. That group eventually transformed into the Whigs as Jackson’s party became known as the Democrats. The Whig party sent presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and others to the White House during its brief existence. But the party splintered and then disintegrated over the politics of slavery. The Know Nothings filled the power void before the Whigs had even ceased to exist, choosing to ignore slavery and focus all their energy on the immigrant question. They were the first party to leverage economic concerns over immigration as a major part of their platform. Though short-lived, the values and positions of the Know Nothings ultimately contributed to the two-party system we have today.

Paving the way for the Know Nothing movement were two men from New York City. Thomas R. Whitney, the son of a silversmith who opened his own shop, wrote the magnum opus of the Know Nothings, A Defense of the American Policy. William “Bill the Butcher” Poole was a gang leader, prizefighter and butcher in the Bowery (and would later be used as inspiration for the main character in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York). Whitney and Poole were from different social classes, but both had an enormous impact on their chosen party—and their paths crossed at a pivotal moment in the rise of nativism.

In addition to being a successful engraver, Whitney was an avid reader of philosophy, history and classics. He moved from reading to writing poetry and, eventually, political tracts. “What is equality but stagnation?” Whitney wrote in one of them. Preceded in nativist circles by such elites as author James Fenimore Cooper, Alexander Hamilton, Jr. and James Monroe (nephew of the former president), Whitney had a knack for rising quickly to the top of whichever group he belonged to. He became a charter member of the Order of United Americans (the precursor to the OSSB) and used his own printing press to publish many of the group’s pamphlets.

Whitney believed in government action, but not in service of reducing social inequality. Rather, he believed, all people “are entitled to such privileges, social and political, as they are capable of employing and enjoying rationally.” In other words, only those with the proper qualifications deserved full rights. Women’s suffrage was abhorrent and unnatural, Catholics were a threat to the stability of the nation, and German and Irish immigrants undermined the old order established by the Founding Fathers.

From 1820 to 1845, anywhere from 10,000 to 1000,000 immigrants entered the U.S. each year. Then, as a consequence of economic instability in Germany and a potato famine in Ireland, those figures turned from a trickle into a tsunami. Between 1845 and 1854, 2.9 million immigrants poured into the country, and many of them were of Catholic faith. Suddenly, more than half the residents of New York City were born abroad, and Irish immigrants comprised 70 percent of charity recipients.

As cultures clashed, fear exploded and conspiracies abounded. Posters around Boston proclaimed, “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are…vile imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” Convents were said to hold young women against their will. An “exposé” published by Maria Monk, who claimed to have gone undercover in one such convent, accused priests of raping nuns and then strangling the babies that resulted. It didn’t matter that Monk was discovered as a fraud; her book sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The conspiracies were so virulent that churches were burned, and Know Nothing gangs spread from New York and Boston to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville, Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis and San Francisco.

At the same time as this influx of immigrants reshaped the makeup of the American populace, the old political parties seemed poised to fall apart.

“The Know Nothings came out of what seemed to be a vacuum,” says Christopher Phillips, professor of history at University of Cincinnati. “It’s the failing Whig party and the faltering Democratic party and their inability to articulate, to the satisfaction of the great percentage of their electorate, answers to the problems that were associated with everyday life.”


Citizen Know Nothing. Wikimedia Commons

Phillips says the Know Nothings displayed three patterns common to all other nativist movements. First is the embrace of nationalism—as seen in the writings of the OSSB. Second is religious discrimination: in this case, Protestants against Catholics rather than the more modern day squaring-off of Judeo-Christians against Muslims. Lastly, a working-class identity exerts itself in conjunction with the rhetoric of upper-class political leaders. As historian Elliott J. Gorn writes, “Appeals to ethnic hatreds allowed men whose livelihoods depended on winning elections to sidestep the more complex and politically dangerous divisions of class.”

No person exemplified this veneration of the working class more than Poole. Despite gambling extravagantly and regularly brawling in bars, Poole was a revered party insider, leading a gang that terrorized voters at polling places in such a violent fashion that one victim was later reported to have a bite on his arm and a severe eye injury. Poole was also the Know Nothings’ first martyr.

On February 24, 1855, Poole was drinking at a New York City saloon when he came face to face with John Morrissey, an Irish boxer. The two exchanged insults and both pulled out guns. But before the fight could turn violent, police arrived to break it up. Later that night, though, Poole returned to the hall and grappled with Morrissey's men, including Lewis Baker, a Welsh-born immigrant, who shot Poole in the chest at close range. Although Poole survived for nearly two weeks, he died on March 8. The last words he uttered pierced the hearts of the country’s Know Nothings: “Goodbye boys, I die a true American.”

Approximately 250,000 people flooded lower Manhattan to pay their respects to the great American. Dramas performed across the country changed their narratives to end with actors wrapping themselves in an American flag and quoting Poole’s last words. An anonymous pamphlet titled The Life of William Poole claimed that the shooting wasn’t a simple barroom scuffle, but an assassination organized by the Irish. The facts didn’t matter; that Poole had been carrying a gun the night of the shooting, or that his assailant took shots to the head and abdomen, was irrelevant. Nor did admirers care that Poole had a prior case against him for assault with intent to kill. He was an American hero, “battling for freedom’s cause,” who sacrificed his life to protect people from dangerous Catholic immigrants.

COUNT THE STEREOTYPES

On the day of Poole’s funeral, a procession of 6,000 mourners trailed through the streets of New York. Included in their number were local politicians, volunteer firemen, a 52-piece band, members of the OSSB—and Thomas R. Whitney, about to take his place in the House of Representatives as a member of the Know Nothing Caucus.

Judging by the size of Poole’s funeral and the Know Nothing party’s ability to penetrate all levels of government, it seemed the third party was poised to topple the Whigs and take its place in the two-party system. But instead of continuing to grow, the Know Nothings collapsed under the pressure of having to take a firm position on the issue the slavery. By the late 1850s, the case of Dred Scott (who sued for his freedom and was denied it) and the raids led by abolitionist John Brown proved that slavery was a more explosive and urgent issue than immigration.

America fought the Civil War over slavery, and the devastation of that conflict pushed nativist concerns to the back of the American psyche. But nativism never left, and the legacy of the Know Nothings has been apparent in policies aimed at each new wave of immigrants. In 1912, the House Committee on Immigration debated over whether Italians could be considered “full-blooded Caucasians” and immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe were considered "biologically and culturally less intelligent."

From the end of the 19th century to the first third of the 20th, Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization based on their non-white status. “People from a variety of groups and affiliations, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Progressive movement, old-line New England aristocrats and the eugenics movement, were among the strange bedfellows in the campaign to stop immigration that was deemed undesirable by old-stock white Americans,” writes sociologist Charles Hirschman of the early 20th century. “The passage of immigration restrictions in the early 1920s ended virtually all immigration except from northwestern Europe.”

Those debates and regulations continue today, over refugees from the Middle East and immigrants from Latin America.

Phillips’s conclusion is that those bewildered by current political affairs simply haven’t looked far enough back into history. “One can’t possibly make sense of [current events] unless you know something about nativism,” he says. “That requires you to go back in time to the Know Nothings. You have to realize the context is different, but the themes are consistent. The actors are still the same, but with different names.”

Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/

Cramer slams government on coronavirus:

THIS MORNING ON SQUAWK ON THE STREET CNBC'S JIM CRAMER CALLS FOR SOCIALISM TO PROP UP BUSINESS SO THEY CAN PAY THEIR WORKERS, 
AND NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT DEBT, CALLS FOR THE FED TO ANNOUNCE
DEBT FORGIVENESS FOR 90 DAYS 

TWITTER CALLS HIM A COMMUNIST

Cramer slams government on coronavirus: ‘They know nothing,’ evoking his epic 2007 Fed rant

PUBLISHED THU, MAR 12 2020 Kevin Stankiewicz@KEVIN_STANK

KEY POINTS

CNBC’s Jim Cramer blasted the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus on Thursday, arguing “this is the time for radical action.” 

“They know nothing. We know more than they do, and that’s not acceptable either,” he said. 

Cramer said he is worried that multiple companies in the S&P 500 could go bankrupt within four weeks.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer blasted the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus on Thursday, arguing “this is the time for radical action.”

“They know nothing. They know nothing. We know more than they do, and that’s not acceptable either,” Cramer said, hearkening back to his famous 2007 rant about the Federal Reserve before the financial crisis.


“I want the federal government to know more than me. I knew more than they did in 2007, and I know more than they do now and it is disappointing,” he said on “Squawk on the Street.”

Later Thursday, President Donald Trump said that markets will be “just fine.” Trump made the comment as he was meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

Cramer said he is worried that multiple companies in the S&P 500 could go bankrupt within four weeks due to the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus.

“Are we going to sit here and let so many companies go bankrupt because of an illness? I think that is stupid,” Cramer said. “Once we settle that out and stop worrying about money, we can worry about health simultaneously. Right now we can’t do both.”

Cramer argued the government should temporarily suspend all manner of tax collection.

“Everyone owes the government at all time. Everyone in this country, individuals, corporations. That has to be suspended right now so they have more money,” Cramer said.

“Are these radical actions? You bet they are,” he added. “This is the time for radical action and the action can be done by the federal government.”

About 30 minutes later, Cramer took a phone call live on CNBC at 9:38 a.m. ET. After hanging up, he said he believes the government is debating some big options to tackle the economic and financial markets crisis due to the outbreak.

“You’re going to get clarity,” he said.

Cramer’s comments come after Trump’s prime-time address on Wednesday, in which the president announced travel restrictions that would curtail travel from most of Europe to the U.S. for 30 days in an attempt to slow the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump also said he will be asking Congress to provide payroll tax relief for Americans and instructing the Small Business Administration to “provide capital and liquidity” for small businesses.

Jim Cramer believes the White House is debating big plans to combat coronavirus and ease markets

PUBLISHED THU, MAR 12 2020

Matthew J. Belvedere@MATT_BELVEDERE


KEY POINTS

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Thursday that he believes the government is debating some big options to tackle the economic and financial markets crisis arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

Cramer made these comments after the S&P 500′s first-level, 7% down circuit breakers kicked in and paused trading for 15 minutes and following a call he took live on CNBC.
“I think that’s about to change,” Cramer said about the uncertainty about what further actions the Trump administration may take to deal with the coronavirus fallout.



CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Thursday that he believes the government is debating some big options to tackle the economic and financial markets crisis arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

Cramer made these comments after the S&P 500′s first-level, 7% down circuit breakers kicked in and paused trading for 15 minutes and following a call he took live on television around 9:38 a.m. ET on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“I think that’s about to change,” Cramer said about the uncertainty about what further actions the Trump administration may take to deal with the coronavirus fallout.

“I think that they will perhaps consider the idea that the federal government does not need to be paid during this period so therefore the people, the working people, get paid and are protected,” the “Mad Money” host said.

“I think they are debating the notion about whether they should have a trust fund ... also debating the notion right now about whether the Federal Reserve should be able to guarantee credit lines,” Cramer said. “The Treasury trust fund would indeed, perhaps, take advantage of the lower rates and make it so that people feel their credit lines would be backed up.”

“I believe that some of these plans that I mentioned are being debated right now and I feel better,” he said. “You’re going to get clarity.”

Later Thursday, President Donald Trump said that markets will be “just fine.” Trump made the comment as he was meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

About 30 minutes before he took the phone call, Cramer blasted the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus, arguing “this is the time for radical action.”

“They know nothing. They know nothing. We know more than they do, and that’s not acceptable either,” Cramer said, hearkening back to his famous 2007 rant about the Federal Reserve before the financial crisis.

“I want the federal government to know more than me. I knew more than they did in 2007, and I know more than they do now and it is disappointing,” he said.

Cramer said he’s worried about companies going bankrupt from the economic damage cause by the coronavirus. “Are we going to sit here and let so many companies go bankrupt because of an illness? I think that is stupid.”

Trump’s address Wednesday night failed to ease concerns about the possible economic from downturn the coronavirus. Wall Street opened sharply lower Thursday, with the S&P 500 down about 6% midmorning after reopening from the circuit breaker trading pause.

In his prime-time address from the White House, Trump announced a ban on most travelers to the U.S. from much of Europe for the next 30 days. He also said he will be asking Congress to provide payroll tax relief for Americans and instructing the Small Business Administration to “provide capital and liquidity” for small businesses.

‘Quiet!’ Trump snaps at reporter in Oval Office for grilling him on lies about Lev Parnas
TRUMP WAXES BIBLICAL DENYING LEV PARNAS THRICE
HIS EVANGELICALS HAVE HAD AN INFLUENCE ON HIM
Published on January 16, 2020 By David Edwards


President Donald Trump snapped at CNN’s White House correspondent on Thursday after he repeatedly asked questions about Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been implicated in the Ukraine scandal.

CNN’s Jim Acosta said that he asked the president about Parnas’ claim that Trump knew about his actions in Ukraine.

“Quiet,” Trump reportedly at one point.

Trump claims he doesn’t know who Lev Parnas is and says he takes lots of pictures with people and has never spoken to Parnas. Trump once claimed he didn’t have anything to do with the payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Pressed on the issue Trump demands the reporter be “quiet.” pic.twitter.com/PASdE2tEtg
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) January 16, 2020

Just asked Trump about Parnas claim that admin efforts in Ukraine were “all about 2020.” Trump insisted he’s only posed for photos with Parnas. Kept repeating that defense. Eventually told me to be “quiet.” Video coming… More to come…
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 16, 2020
Per WH pooler @debrajsaunders:

Questions
Parnas? “I don’t know him” except they had quick photo
“I meet thousands of people”
Told Acosta “quiet”
“I will probably be going to Davos”
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 16, 2020

Trump to reporters in Oval Office on Lev Parnas: “I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken to him.” Says Parnas is part of a “big hoax” and that he doesn’t know him “at all” other than taking pictures together, per @MichaelCBender.
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) January 16, 2020

Trump calls @RudyGiuliani one of the “great crimefighters” and a “very legitimate guy” but says he doesn’t know about his letter to Zelenskiy House Dems obtained from Lev Parnas.
— Ben Siegel (@benyc) January 16, 2020

Trump continues to insist that he has no idea who Lev Parnas is: “Well, I don’t know him. I don’t know Parnas other than I guess I had pictures taken… I don’t know him at all, don’t know what he’s about. Don’t know where he comes from.” pic.twitter.com/Srl3iSo5LW
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 16, 2020

“I don’t know him at all, don’t know what he’s about.\
Don’t know where he comes from.
Know nothing about him.
I can only tell you, this thing is a big hoax.”
– @realDonaldTrump denies knowing Lev Parnas, indicted Ukrainian associate of @RudyGiuliani. pic.twitter.com/aO4N7UGUxx
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 16, 2020

• Trump says 13 times in two minutes he does not know Lev Parnas despite photos

US POLITICS

Trump is like a cult leader, says Giuliani associate Lev Parnas

Trump again denied knowing Lev Parnas. So Parnas' lawyer posted more robust proof.


Despite a warning from Lev Parnas, President Trump claimed not to know him again Thursday. "I don't know Parnas, other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I don't know him at all, don't know what he's about, don't know where he comes from, know nothing about him. ... I don't believe I've ever spoken to him."

Jospeh Bondy, Parnas' lawyer, brought the receipts, posting a video taken at Mar-a-Lago in December 2016, where Trump is clearly talking with Parnas, who is standing next to him and also Roman Nasirov, a former Ukrainian official charged with embezzlement.

Here’s the “I don’t know him at all, don’t know what he’s about, don’t know where he comes from, know nothing about him” guy, w Lev Parnas & Roman Nasirov, former head of Ukrainian Fiscal Service, at Mar-a-Lago 12/16. @POTUS .@realDonaldTrump @Acosta #LevRemembers #LetLevSpeak pic.twitter.com/5B5QY2DJEg
— Joseph A. Bondy (@josephabondy) January 16, 2020

The Washington Post used that video in a jaunty roundup of Parnas posing, often on multiple occasions, next to Trump and other Republicans who claimed not to know him.

Calling Parnas a "Giuliani associate" is "way too limited — he is a full-fledged member of Trump Co," Chris Cuomo said on CNN Thursday night. As he ran through the details, he showed photo after photo of Parnas and Trump or members of his family and inner circle. "There are so many that I had to leave pictures out," Cuomo said.

Lev Parnas' ties to President Trump run deep

CNN's @ChrisCuomo says referring to Lev Parnas as an associate of Rudy Giuliani is "way too limited. He is a full-fledged member of Trump co." #ClosingArgument https://t.co/zIBpn9wgGd pic.twitter.com/KMUGKXEkNz
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) January 17, 2020

In fact, Parnas' connection to Trump stretches back to the 1980s, when he sold real estate for Trump's father, Fred Trump, The Washington Post reported in October. "When Parnas was 16, he worked at Kings Highway Realty, selling Trump Organization co-ops." Adam Entous elaborated at The New Yorker. Parnas told The New Yorker that job "was my first time knowing who Trump was, but, growing up in that area, you knew who Trump was, because his name was all over the place." After Parnas moved to Florida in 1995, Entous added, "on visits to New York, he stayed at Trump properties." 

Peter Weber

ON DISABILITIES

Man With Cerebral Palsy On Inspiring Nike's New Hands-Free Shoe

February 7, 2021
Heard on All Things Considered

 

Transcript

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Matthew Walzer, who at age 16 wrote a letter to Nike back in 2012 that helped inspire the brand's new accessible shoe line.


MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And finally, Nike unveiled a new sneaker design last week, but these are not named for some superstar or even up-and-coming athlete. No, these are called the Go FlyEase. And they are the company's first hands-free sneaker. That means no laces to tie, no Velcro to strap, no zippers necessary. It's the latest model of a Nike line made with accessibility in mind, so people living with disabilities or who just have trouble tying and untying shoes can also have a cool, supportive sneaker for everyday wear.

And that line exists in part because of Matthew Walzer. He is living with cerebral palsy, and that affects some of his motor skills. Back in 2012, when he was just 16, Walzer wrote a letter to the company asking them to make shoes that he and others like him could wear. Walzer collaborated on the early models of FlyEase, and he is with us now to tell us more. Hello.

MATTHEW WALZER: Hello, Michel. How are you?

MARTIN: I'm good. Well, congratulations, sir. It's not every day I get to meet the inspiration for a Nike shoe, so let me just drink it in for a minute here (laughter). So we'll get to the design in a minute. But I was just wondering if you could take us back to 2012, when you first wrote that letter. I mean, would you mind just reading a bit for me? I particularly liked the couple sentences that began with, out of all the challenges I've overcome in my life.

WALZER: Sure. (Reading) Out of all the challenges I have overcome in my life, there's one that I'm still trying to master - tying my shoes. Cerebral palsy stiffens the muscles in the body. As a result, I have flexibility in only one of my hands, which makes it impossible for me to tie my shoes. My dream is to go to the college of my choice without having to worry about someone coming to tie my shoes every day.

MARTIN: And you go on to describe, you know, that you're a great student, that you have most mobility, that - you know, you - obviously your speech is not impaired. You can do all the things. But, hey, you know, you're thinking about going to college and not being able to tie your shoes. What gave you the idea to write the letter? Did you think that they would see it, that the Nike folks would see it?

WALZER: You know, I want to take you back a bit, if I can, to the beginning of my life. I was born two months premature and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, CP, at birth. And I had overcome a lot to even get to the point to where I could feasibly know in the back of my mind that I could go away to college and that the only thing that was stopping me at the time was, you know, not being able to tie my shoes.

I have full dexterity in my left hand and very limited in my right. At the time, there was obviously nothing out there like there is now with the various options of FlyEase. And I didn't want to have to worry about who was coming to put on my shoes every day. And so I wrote this letter not only for myself, but also for the millions of other disabled people out there that can't put on their shoes for one reason or another. And I honestly wasn't expecting Nike to respond. I mean, it's hard to - as a 16-year-old to have that as my expectation. But I knew I had to make my voice heard and let Nike know that there is a need out there for a product like this.

MARTIN: So say more about why you wanted an athletic shoe because, you know, part of inclusivity, obviously is wanting to participate in things that everybody else can participate in. So you have every right to want, you know, a cool shoe, you know, like everybody else, and not necessarily to wear, you know, what my kids would call teacher shoes.

WALZER: (Laughter).

MARTIN: But is there another reason you didn't just want to be limited to slip-ons or sort of penny loafers or something like that?

WALZER: Sure. So with CP and, you know, various physical disabilities, you need a supportive shoe to assist with walking. And, you know, there are slip-ons and sandals, but those don't offer the support that someone like myself with cerebral palsy needs. And at the same time, you want something that looks just as good as it functions. And so that's why I, without question, wanted a basketball and a running shoe with a closure system that can be used by everybody.

MARTIN: So talk a little bit about - like, when you first saw them, do you remember what you thought?

WALZER: You're talking about the FlyEase Go?

MARTIN: The new ones, yeah, when they unveiled the first hands-free just a few days ago.

WALZER: Yeah. I saw them on Monday on social media. And once I saw the video of how they function, it's - you know, it's absolutely incredible. They have that kickstand system where the shoe kind of does all the work for you once you start to put your foot into it. And it's great for people that have little to no dexterity in their hands or have no hands at all for one reason or another.

When Nike's designing a shoe like this, it doesn't mean that everybody can't not wear them, right? You could wear them. I could wear them. It doesn't matter. And the entire concept of universal design as a whole needs to be further explored not just in the shoe industry and in the fashion industry, but across all sectors. I'm talking transportation. I mean, when a person with a disability goes and buys a car - right? - they have to go and pick out that car off the showroom and then go take it out to a third party and get it modified. We can't go in and work with Toyota or Ford and say, you know, I want the disability, you know, package, per se, like you get the convenience package on a car. And so we could buy a car in April and get it in October - because that's what happened to me.

You know, there's so many disabled drivers on the road as there's ever been. Like, why is it so difficult to get a car? You know, easy for all is easy for everybody. And something as simple as, you know, opening the bags that cereal comes in, you know, inside the box and how difficult it can be for someone like myself with limited dexterity to get that bag open sometimes. It's, like, why isn't this just easier? Because I'm sure if it was, someone without a disability would appreciate that just as much.

MARTIN: So can I go back and ask you - you know, you wrote this letter. You were thinking ahead to college. You obviously went, and (laughter) you did really well. How did it go for you? I mean, did you ever get sneakers in time to - I mean, was there a design available that allowed you to do what you wanted to do, which is, you know, take care of yourself?

WALZER: Yes. I mean, the prototype phase kind of even goes back to when I was in high school. So in high school and then the first year and a half of college, I wore, you know, Nike prototypes to school and to class every day. And so, yeah, there was a design in time. And the college in itself, on a personal level, was a lot of growing up emotionally faster than I was ready for but also making sure I advocated for things that I needed at my university to be able to function in a safe and inclusive manner, whether it was my - things with my dorm or transportation.

And so it just goes back to advocating. And my goals for the future are to work across different companies, organizations and sectors to address so many different issues that are out there that, to be quite honest, are being just ignored or not addressed.

MARTIN: Well, before we let you go, Matthew, you know I have to ask, are the sneakers cool?

WALZER: You know, I haven't tried them yet. I don't have a pair yet. So from what I've seen online, they are. They do look extremely cool. And I'm very, very excited to try them.

MARTIN: That was Matthew Walzer. His letter to Nike back in 2012 helped inspire the company's FlyEase line of sneakers. The newest hands-free model will be available later this year.

Matthew Walzer, thank you so much for being with us. Keep us posted - will you? - on everything you're up to.

WALZER: I will, Michel. Thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIKES ON MY FEET")



Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

.

HEY AMERIKA
We Know Too Much About Marijuana for It To Be Illegal
By Richard Cowan
07/14/20 

We Know Too Much About Marijuana for It To Be Illegal Photo: CBDCoupons.com

I won’t try to be subtle about this. When I say that we know too much about marijuana for it to be illegal, I am trying to make two points.

First and foremost, I am astonished that people in democratic countries that proclaim their commitment to individual rights at every possible occasion, have — for decades — accepted the legal argument that citizens should be arrested for using a plant because it might not be “harmless.”

Prohibitionist propaganda is often introduced with the statement that “marijuana isn’t harmless… like we all thought back in the Sixties.¨ Of course, if we all thought it was harmless then, why was it illegal?

Well, very simply, nothing is harmless for everyone, under all circumstances and at all doses, and, for many reasons, harmlessness is not a criterion for legalizing anything. Obviously, many things that everyone recognizes as potentially deadly… alcohol, tobacco, motorcycles, rock climbing, etc., are legal. Some people even say that guns are not harmless.


Ironically, cannabis is one of the few substances which does not have a possible lethal dose. Too much aspirin can cause fatal internal bleeding and even too much water can be deadly by upsetting the body’s electrolyte balance.

And of course, think of the children! But think of all the things that are legal for adults, but not for children. Are we to treat adults like children? And shall we start with guns?

On the other hand, would anyone argue that being arrested was harmless? But we have arrested over twenty million Americans in the last fifty years for marijuana possession. I also hope that we have discovered that “no-knock warrants” are not harmless.

In addition, the suppression of research on the medical uses of cannabis has certainly not been harmless, and that continues to be US policy. When we consider how much we have learned despite the government blocking research, I think that marijuana prohibition has killed a huge number of people, under medical supervision, of course.

See: People are lining up to grow marijuana for research. Trump’s Justice Department won’t let them.

My second point is that despite the government's blocking research — while claiming we need more research — we actually know far too much for marijuana to be illegal .


What do we know?
We know there is no lethal dose, while many legal drugs have killed millions of people. Why would there need to be more controls on cannabis than on alcohol, tobacco or over-the-counter pharmaceuticals ?
We know that most of the cannabis consumed even today continues to be contraband with unknown potency and purity.
We know that even black market marijuana used by people with seriously damaged immune systems does not seem to have caused significant problems, but it would be ethically impossible to do research to test that.
We know that despite decades of prohibition, marijuana is easily available for “children”, but it would be ethically impossible to do research on any deleterious effects of cannabis on children. Do they have problems because they used cannabis, or did they use cannabis because they have problems?
We know that in The Netherlands that the legal age to buy cannabis is eighteen, and that the Dutch argue that one of the advantages of allowing retail marijuana sales is called “separation of the markets” for hard and soft drugs. When someone goes into a Dutch “Coffeeshop” they will never be offered hard drugs. Consequently, the Dutch also have a much lower hard drug use and overdose rate than the US. Again, so much for the so-called “Gateway Theory”. Marijuana prohibition is the “Gateway” to hard drugs.
We know that although cannabis has been available over the counter in The Netherlands for over forty years, it ranks fourth in cannabis use in Europe, after France, Spain and Italy. It has always been behind the US and Canada.
We know that Dutch Coffeeshops and American marijuana dispensaries do not cause the problems that are associated with alcohol venues.
We know that legalizing marijuana does not cause the social or medical problems cited by prohibitionists, nor does prohibition prevent the problems it is supposed to suppress. In fact, there is remarkably little correlation between marijuana use and the laws against it.

SEE: Use See Prevalence of cannabis use in the last year in Europe as of 2018*, by country and Netherlands vs US

The Dutch model’s imperfections can also offer lessons for us, because it is a relic of the 1970s. The supply is still in the black market, so it has no quality controls. Weed and hash are sold out of open bins under less than perfect sanitary conditions, although there have not been any reported health problems.

For reasons of public safety and economic recovery we need to end marijuana prohibition now.
No “Special Commissions” or regulatory schemes are needed. Just get out of the way.
And stop pretending that we need the government to help us be free.
There is no justification for special taxes, because marijuana does not increase social or medical costs compared to alcohol or tobacco.
Disadvantaged neighborhoods don’t need “social justice” permits to allow a few lucky winners to charge higher prices and taxes on marijuana users because everyone was victimized by the Drug War. They need small eateries and other places to offer legal employment.
Social clubs for younger marijuana users should be organized by activists so the patrons are not preyed upon by “gangstas” who might draw them into the hard drugs scene or other criminal activity.
We need cannabis venues in “neutral” territories where different ethnic groups can meet peacefully.

The Drug War has become a war of all against all, and it has corrupted the police, politicians, the media and even (especially?) the medical profession.

So, let us be free. Let us live in peace. Is that asking too much? (Well, apparently.)
Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and co-founder of CBDCoupons.com.

Richard Cowan

I won’t try to be subtle about this. When I say that we know too much about marijuana for it to be illegal, I am trying to make two points.

First and foremost, I am astonished that people in democratic countries that proclaim their commitment to individual rights at every possible occasion, have — for decades — accepted the legal argument that citizens should be arrested for using a plant because it might not be “harmless.”

Prohibitionist propaganda is often introduced with the statement that “marijuana isn’t harmless… like we all thought back in the Sixties.¨ Of course, if we all thought it was harmless then, why was it illegal?

Well, very simply, nothing is harmless for everyone, under all circumstances and at all doses, and, for many reasons, harmlessness is not a criterion for legalizing anything. Obviously, many things that everyone recognizes as potentially deadly… alcohol, tobacco, motorcycles, rock climbing, etc., are legal. Some people even say that guns are not harmless.

Ironically, cannabis is one of the few substances which does not have a possible lethal dose. Too much aspirin can cause fatal internal bleeding and even too much water can be deadly by upsetting the body’s electrolyte balance.

And of course, think of the children! But think of all the things that are legal for adults, but not for children. Are we to treat adults like children? And shall we start with guns?

On the other hand, would anyone argue that being arrested was harmless? But we have arrested over twenty million Americans in the last fifty years for marijuana possession. I also hope that we have discovered that “no-knock warrants” are not harmless.

In addition, the suppression of research on the medical uses of cannabis has certainly not been harmless, and that continues to be US policy. When we consider how much we have learned despite the government blocking research, I think that marijuana prohibition has killed a huge number of people, under medical supervision, of course.

See: People are lining up to grow marijuana for research. Trump’s Justice Department won’t let them.

My second point is that despite the government's blocking research — while claiming we need more research — we actually know far too much for marijuana to be illegal .

What do we know?
We know there is no lethal dose, while many legal drugs have killed millions of people. Why would there need to be more controls on cannabis than on alcohol, tobacco or over-the-counter pharmaceuticals ?
We know that most of the cannabis consumed even today continues to be contraband with unknown potency and purity.
We know that even black market marijuana used by people with seriously damaged immune systems does not seem to have caused significant problems, but it would be ethically impossible to do research to test that.
We know that despite decades of prohibition, marijuana is easily available for “children”, but it would be ethically impossible to do research on any deleterious effects of cannabis on children. Do they have problems because they used cannabis, or did they use cannabis because they have problems?
We know that in The Netherlands that the legal age to buy cannabis is eighteen, and that the Dutch argue that one of the advantages of allowing retail marijuana sales is called “separation of the markets” for hard and soft drugs. When someone goes into a Dutch “Coffeeshop” they will never be offered hard drugs. Consequently, the Dutch also have a much lower hard drug use and overdose rate than the US. Again, so much for the so-called “Gateway Theory”. Marijuana prohibition is the “Gateway” to hard drugs.
We know that although cannabis has been available over the counter in The Netherlands for over forty years, it ranks fourth in cannabis use in Europe, after France, Spain and Italy. It has always been behind the US and Canada.
We know that Dutch Coffeeshops and American marijuana dispensaries do not cause the problems that are associated with alcohol venues.
We know that legalizing marijuana does not cause the social or medical problems cited by prohibitionists, nor does prohibition prevent the problems it is supposed to suppress. In fact, there is remarkably little correlation between marijuana use and the laws against it.

SEE: Use See Prevalence of cannabis use in the last year in Europe as of 2018*, by country and Netherlands vs US

The Dutch model’s imperfections can also offer lessons for us, because it is a relic of the 1970s. The supply is still in the black market, so it has no quality controls. Weed and hash are sold out of open bins under less than perfect sanitary conditions, although there have not been any reported health problems.

For reasons of public safety and economic recovery we need to end marijuana prohibition now.
No “Special Commissions” or regulatory schemes are needed. Just get out of the way.
And stop pretending that we need the government to help us be free.
There is no justification for special taxes, because marijuana does not increase social or medical costs compared to alcohol or tobacco.
Disadvantaged neighborhoods don’t need “social justice” permits to allow a few lucky winners to charge higher prices and taxes on marijuana users because everyone was victimized by the Drug War. They need small eateries and other places to offer legal employment.
Social clubs for younger marijuana users should be organized by activists so the patrons are not preyed upon by “gangstas” who might draw them into the hard drugs scene or other criminal activity.
We need cannabis venues in “neutral” territories where different ethnic groups can meet peacefully.

The Drug War has become a war of all against all, and it has corrupted the police, politicians, the media and even (especially?) the medical profession.

So, let us be free. Let us live in peace. Is that asking too much? (Well, apparently.)
Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and co-founder of CBDCoupons.com.

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald & Chris Hedges on NSA Leaks, Assange & Protecting a Free Internet

STORYDECEMBER 24, 2021

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges discuss mass surveillance, government secrecy, internet freedom and U.S. attempts to extradite and prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. They spoke together on a panel moderated by Amy Goodman at the virtual War on Terror Film Festival after a screening of “Citizenfour” — the Oscar-winning documentary about Snowden by Laura Poitras.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. 

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a special on two people who will not be home for the holidays: Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. In this special broadcast, we spend the hour with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges.

I recently moderated a discussion with them at the virtual War on Terror Film Festival after a screening of Citizenfour, the Oscar-winning documentary about Edward Snowden by Laura Poitras. The documentary chronicles how Snowden met with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald in a hotel room in Hong Kong in June 2013 to share a trove of secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance apparatus to spy on Americans and people across the globe. It was the biggest leak ever to come out of the NSA.

After sharing the documents, Edward Snowden was charged in the United States for violating the Espionage Act and other laws. As he attempted to flee from Hong Kong to Latin America, Snowden was stranded in Russia at the airport after the U.S. revoked his passport. He was granted political asylum and has lived in Moscow ever since.

I began by asking Edward Snowden to talk about why he chose to blow the whistle on the NSA.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: I grew up in the shadow of government. Both my parents worked for the government, and I expected that I would, as well.


September 11th happened when I was 18 years old. And it was one of those things that really changes the politics not only of the people but of the place. And at the time, I didn’t really question that. It just seemed like, you know, we had this new problem. Everybody on TV is saying we can deal with it. And when everybody else was protesting the Iraq War, I was volunteering to join it. And that’s because I believed the things that the government was saying — not all of them, of course, but I believed that the government was mostly honest, because it seemed to me unreasonable that the government would be willing to risk sort of our long-term faith in the institution of government for short-term political advantage. As I said, I was a very young man.


And I ended up going to work for the CIA undercover overseas out in the diplomatic platforms. Then I moved into contracting, which is really — you’re still working for the government, in government offices, taking the directives from government managers, working on government equipment, but the badge that you wear that identifies you changes from blue to green — the color of money, because most people go into contracting still working for the government in these classified spaces because you make basically twice as much for the same work. And then I worked in Japan for the NSA, before eventually bouncing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until I ended up in Hawaii in a little place called the Office of Information Sharing.


And it was only here — and I was the sole employee of the Office of Information Sharing; they didn’t realize how good I would be at that job, and neither did I — that I could see the whole picture, which was, at the same time that I was beginning to identify with the government, the government was beginning to identify less with its citizens and the public of the world, more generally.


What had happened was, as — you know, we grew up with this idea of the private citizen, because we have no power or influence relative to the great institutions of the day, and the public official— right? — where we know everything about them and what they’re doing, who they’re meeting with and what their policies are and what their interests are. We scrutinize them because they order our lives. Their directives determine what happens tomorrow. Well, that was being inverted. And because of the new war on terror, all the old norms, all the old ideals could be tossed away and replaced with a new system.


And that was the system of mass surveillance, that we were not publicly told about. The government knew it was likely unconstitutional and certainly illegal, but they continued with it anyway, because they argued to themselves, at least, it was necessary. It was not necessary, and it would take some time to establish that with facts, and that’s the story that we’ve gotten the years since.


But, in brief, realizing this, through the documentation of the architecture of the system, how it came to be, who was involved in building it and authorizing it and constructing it, which fell to people like me, who did not realize at each step of our careers what it was we were actually building, because the need-to-know principle collapsed your universe to your work. You didn’t realize what the office next door to you was doing. You weren’t supposed to, for those of us who did know. And it was only by breaking down those barriers, the fact that I moved from CIA to NSA, that I moved from actual officer of government to a contractor working for private companies extending the work of government, then finally working in this office where I could see sort of everything, not just at my agency but many other agencies, that I saw the large picture. And that was fundamentally that the government had lied not only to me but to all of us.


And this, to me, seemed like something, publicly, broadly, we had to know, because if government is, in a democracy, intended to be mandated by the consent of the governed, but we don’t know what it is that they’re doing, then that’s not consent, or it’s not informed consent. If consent is not informed, it’s not meaningful. And so I started writing to journalists. That brought me eventually to Glenn. And that’s where the story goes from there.


AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that, that reaching out to Laura Poitras and Glenn? And yes, I want you to tell the story again because there are many who haven’t seen the film, and it is that act that — and we’ll introduce Glenn — when you decided to leave everything that you knew so well, where you felt so safe, to enter a world where, as you said, you had no idea where you would end up.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: Well, when you first enter on duty at the CIA, they take you in a dark room. It’s a very solemn ceremony. You raise your hand and say, you know, “I,” — state your name, whatever — “do solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” They talk about the oath of secrecy. There is no oath of secrecy. There is a Standard Form 312, classified nondisclosure agreement, whatever, that you sign, which is what they’re actually referring to, but it’s not an oath. It’s a civil agreement.


Now, on the other hand, you do take this oath of service, as they describe it. And this, for me, is what animated [inaudible] forward. What happens when you have conflicting obligations? On one hand, you’re supposed to keep these secrets of government, because this is all classified information that we’re discussing. The fact that the government is breaking the law is itself a secret. But when the government’s lawbreaking is a violation of the Constitution that you entered into duty to uphold, what then do you do?


You know, I talked to my colleagues. I talked to my bosses. They wanted nothing to do with this. Many of them agreed that it was wrong, but they said, “You know, it’s not my job to fix it. It’s not your job, either.” And they knew what would happen as a result. Everybody knew the government was going to be extremely unhappy. And everybody who has done this in the past has ended up charged and imprisoned as a result of this.


But, for me, I felt that I had an obligation to do this. And so I gathered information that I believed was evidence of unlawful or unconstitutional activities. And I could have published it myself. I could have just put it up on the internet, established a website, possibly could have made it so it would not likely track back to me. However, I thought if I just declared myself the president of secrets and that I made some mistake — right? — there wasn’t much process involved there. The problem that got us into this situation was that the government itself was acting as a kind of unitary power. The office of the executive, the president of the United States, was saying that, “Look, you know, we decide what we will and won’t do. The courts have no role in this. The Legislature has no real role in this. Oversight hasn’t been functional for years,” which I’m sure the other panelists will describe. But I didn’t want to replicate that.


So I felt I could check my own worst impulses and suspicions by partnering with journalists — right? — who could then take my bias out of the equation, look at what the documents said, actually go to the government for a clarification where things weren’t here and to challenge government, but to do their own investigations, to go to companies for comment and everything like that, and find the best possible version of the truth, right? What is the most accurate representation of this? And of that superset of their investigation, what is the subset of that that’s in the public interest to know?


And working in absolute secrecy, again, with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, eventually Barton Gellman and Ewen MacAskill, I shared this archive of information with them, on — through the conditions that they publish, for example, only what they believe is in the public interest to know, not merely what I thought was useful to them. And that’s what brought us to this hotel room in Hong Kong, where I could explain what these documents actually meant for the first time, because, as Glenn can sort of testify to, these were very dense, technical documents, and they’re the sort of thing that journalists in the public world had never seen before, because they were so highly classified.


AMY GOODMAN: So, that does bring us to Glenn Greenwald. Glenn, talk about your first contacts with Ed Snowden, when you decided to make that trip to Hong Kong, the risks that you were taking — at the time, you worked for The Guardian — taking on all the institutions that you knew could certainly take you down.


GLENN GREENWALD: I recall, you know, in the weeks leading up to our ultimate meaning, Ed was kind of fixated on the idea that we all fly to Hong Kong to meet with him. And, you know, we still didn’t know who he was. We didn’t know in which agency he worked. And the fact that he wanted us to go to Hong Kong made everything much more confusing, because why would somebody with high-level access to top-secret documents of the U.S. security state — usually you would expect to find a person like that, you know, in the kind of underworld of Arlington, Virginia, not Hong Kong.


And I remember telling Ed, you know, “Look, I trust you. I feel like what you’re saying intuitively is genuine. But before I get on a plane and fly all the way literally across the world to the other side of the world, show me something that demonstrates that you’re authentic, that you actually have material that makes all of this worthwhile.” And he said, “I’m going to give you the tiniest tip of the iceberg.” And we spent, I don’t know, a good two weeks setting up just an encryption system to let him do that.


He sent me, I think, 20 documents. And even though those documents were, as he said, just the tiniest tip of the iceberg, they were shocking. You know, I mean, just the mere fact alone that top-secret documents had leaked for the first time ever from the NSA, the most secretive agency within the world’s most powerful government, was already momentous enough, independent other content. But among the documents were parts of what we were able to report as the PRISM program, the cooperation on the part of what at the time were the nine tech giants of Silicon Valley with the NSA, widespread data sharing, giving over wholesale information about their users to the NSA with no judicial checks, no legal framework, no democratic accountability. So, suffice to say, Ed sufficiently excited me and lured me.


I think that night I called my editor at The Guardian and demanded to fly to New York the next day, which I did. I met with her, Janine Gibson, showed her what I had, and everyone immediately knew that this was going to be one of the most important stories in the history of modern journalism, just based on those tiny number of documents, let alone the full archive. And that next day — so it was very fast — Laura and I boarded a plane from JFK direct to Hong Kong.


And, you know, I talked about before how I had spent the 16 hours so engrossed with the documents that by that point we had had not necessarily the best operational security ever reading top-secret NSA documents, you know, on a public passenger jet while flying across the world, but I knew this was, by this point, the kind of first opening ever into this sprawling, undemocratic security state. And I couldn’t help myself. I needed to see what was in there. And then we landed in Hong Kong 16 hours later.


And then, the very next morning, through a plan that Ed devised that involved lots of kind of spycraft, which was really important — we didn’t know at the time what U.S. government authorities knew about Ed and what he was doing and what we were doing, what Chinese authorities might have known, what local Hong Kong intelligence officials might have known. So all of that stealth was so important. But it was a huge blur. You know, we were 12 hours in a different time zone, had hurtled ourselves within a very short amount of time over to Hong Kong to meet someone we knew nothing about, you know, and I’ll never forget the moment that Ed walked in.


And I think both Laura and I — we’ve talked about this before — were shocked by many things, including his young age. You know, I thought the whole time I was talking to somebody who was likely 60 or 65 years old, in, you know, I think, part because of the sophistication of Ed’s insights, but also, you know, the thing that struck me so much and that to this day is a critical part of my worldview of how I look at things was, unlike most sources who, understandably, when they’re turning over top-secret documents to journalists and doing something the government regards as a crime, and therefore want to conceal their identity, from the start, you know, Ed’s posture was “I don’t want to hide. I want to identify who I am. I want to explain to the public why I’m doing what I’ve done and why I think it was so important.” And so, you know, my belief was that he was probably 65 or 70. It’s, I think, a lot easier to say, “I’m willing to risk life in prison,” if life in prison means 10 or 15 or 20 years of life expectancy rather than, you know, 60 or 70. So we were shocked by that.


And we went up to Ed’s hotel room and, Laura being Laura, immediately turned on the camera and, me being me, immediately began interrogating Ed. I think we had like maybe 10 seconds of niceties before I forced him into this very intense interrogation. We were sitting maybe a few feet apart from one another in this small hotel room. And by the end of the day, I was convinced that Ed was authentic, that the documents he had given us were genuine, and that this was a story that the public had an immediate right to know, should have known years ago.


And the courage and the kind of principled conviction that drove Ed to do what he did, I think, immediately infected both myself and Laura. Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian journalist, joined us the next day. And he, I think, was contaminated by that, as well. And I think that eventually that made The Guardian very passionate and willing.


And that act, as we all know, created these reverberations that really to this day last, that the government is always trying to spy on what it is that we’re doing — they particularly target marginalized and vulnerable groups; at the time, the hot, you know, number one on their list was obviously Muslim communities around the world, including in the United States — and that journalism and whistleblowing is one of the few, if not the only, means we have to find out what they’re doing and to guard against their abuses.

AMY GOODMAN: Journalist Glenn Greenwald. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA documents. When we come back, we’ll continue our discussion with Glenn and Ed Snowden and be joined by another Pulitzer Prize winner, the journalist Chris Hedges. We’ll talk about surveillance, internet freedom, Julian Assange and more.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our discussion with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges. I asked Ed Snowden to talk about what he felt was most significant about the documents he leaked in 2013 exposing the NSA’s massive surveillance apparatus.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: The most important thing about the stories of 2013 that I think people can look was it was not a story about surveillance. It was a story about democracy. The surveillance system, the global mass surveillance system, was the product of a failure in governance, where we the public had sort of lost our seat at the table of democratic governance, because secrecy, the state secrets regime and the classification animal had grown to such a size that it was allowed to push public oversight further and further to the fringes of the decision-making apparatus, until it was basically no longer present at all. What that meant was for the first time in history there was the technical capability and the political reality that it was possible to construct a system that had not existed before.


Now, what did that system do? In history, traditionally, government surveillance has occurred in a targeted manner, whether it is the police going, “We suspect this person of a crime,” going to a judge, showing their basis for it, establishing probable cause, the judge OKs it. Then they put teams over this person. They have people follow them when they leave their house in the morning. They have another team go inside their house and place listening devices, place video surveillance, you know, copy their notepads, take photographs of whatever’s going on, flown their hard disks, whatever. This is a human-enabled capability. And that put necessary constraints on how frequently it could be used. And as the government agents are sort of following this person through their life, sitting down in the cafe behind them, you know, trying to see who they meet with, writing down license plates and all these things, they don’t hear every word that the person says, generally, but they get the idea. They see who they met with. They see how long they were there with that person. They see where that person went afterwards, because they sent someone to follow them.


These activity records were now available for the first time in a form called metadata. Things that are analogous to what a private detective would get from following you around in your daily life and taking pictures and writing down notes were now being produced by the smartphones in our pockets, by the laptops on our desk or on the couch next to us. But it was also coming from your TV. It was also coming from your car, you know, the systems inside of that. It was coming from automated license plate readers. All of these things for the first time were producing information, that now the government went, “What if we didn’t have to go to a judge in every individual case and say we thought this person was up to no good? What if, under the aegis of the threat of terrorism, we could say we want to collect all information that could potentially, theoretically, be relevant to a terrorism investigation before we need it? And we’ll simply say, 'Look, we're not going to look at this information if you’re not suspected of a crime, but we will still gather it about you as though you were committing a crime.’”


This is what changed, and this is what continues today. What has actually happened that expands this to an even greater state of alarm is that now this is a business model. Now corporations are getting into this, and they’re competing against each other to see who can provide a similar product, an even more attractive product, not just to governments, who they do sell this information to as a service, but also to advertisers and anyone else who’s willing to pay. That’s what’s changed.


AMY GOODMAN: Which brings us to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Chris, you’ve spent decades exposing how governments wield lethal power, from Central America to the Middle East to the Balkans. Ed Snowden said that behind his disclosures was the balance of state power versus people’s power to meaningfully oppose that power. Can you talk about the significance of what Ed just said in terms of exposing the wars that the U.S. has engaged in to this day?


CHRIS HEDGES: I would focus narrowly on what everything that Ed exposed for the press. So, when I began reporting the war in El Salvador in '83, when we got secret or classified information, they were documents. We didn't transfer anything electronically. And this was the traditional way. But in order to get those documents, you had contacts with people who were willing to pass them to you.


And so, what happened — and this was under the Obama administration — the aggressive use of the Espionage Act against anyone who would reach out — Kiriakou, Drake were mentioned, and others — shut down traditional investigative journalism, which I did periodically as a foreign correspondent and then did after 9/11 when I was based in Paris covering al-Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. And so, friends of mine — I left the paper in 2005, but friends of mine who were still doing investigative reporting at the paper said, in terms of getting any information on the inner workings of power, of government, it has become impossible. And I won’t quote her, but a former colleague of mine at the paper, an investigative journalist, said, even when she speaks to someone at the DOJ or anyone else, they’re nervous about even reciting official policy over the phone, something that sounds like a press release, because they don’t want to get tagged for speaking to a journalist. In fact, they’re already tagged.


And so, I think it’s important to understand that what Ed did and what Glenn did is the only way left. Jeremy Hammond was another figure. When I sued Obama over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which overturned the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the military from being used as a domestic police force, we used the emails — I think there were some 3 million emails — Hammond had hacked into with Stratfor, a private security firm like the one Ed worked for, and the Homeland Security, where they were — the chat was trying to tie domestic opposition groups to foreign terrorist groups. So, I mean, they were asking, “Was anything posted on this particular site, this jihadist site?” so they can use terrorism laws against them.


And so, the last readout, as a journalist, comes from figures like Ed, but, of course, the cost is catastrophic. In his case, if he was not in Moscow and they had grabbed him, he would be facing the kind of charges that Julian Assange is facing — who didn’t leak, by the way, didn’t hack into anything; he just published the material. So, I think, for me, what’s been so distressing about the modern kind of period is that that wholesale surveillance, that ability to follow anyone, has really shut down our traditional access to people with a conscience inside systems of power, which is the only way that we can do any real reporting on the national security state. And it’s left — and you see what they’ve done to Ed, what they’ve done to Glenn. I mean, after he published that, he wasn’t sure whether he could come back to the United States. So, that, for me.


And then, in speaking about the crimes of empire, I mean, that gets into another issue, which is the collapse of foreign correspondents, because as revenues have fallen to the floor, all the foreign bureaus are gone. There’s no reporting. People will pull a clip from — you know, disseminated out of Syria or something that somebody has sent out, but that’s not reporting. So, there’s a giant black hole about what’s happening, which was, of course, again, what made the Iraqi and Afghan War Logs so important.


And then, I will, just in defense of people there, most of whom are now freelance — and covering a war is very expensive, I mean, if you want to be safe. So, I was driving in Bosnia a $100,000 armored car, you know, satphones, all this kind of stuff. But it is dangerous. I think the danger level has exponentially increased, not so much from Sarajevo, where the Serbs were intentionally trying to shoot journalists, indeed shot 45 foreign correspondents. But you can’t go into the caliphate. I mean, you can’t go in with — into Syria with many of these groups, because you’ll get kidnapped. But that has created, for me, as somebody who was overseas, a just terrifying — it’s drawn a veil on what the empire is doing.


And, you know, to quote Thucydides, the tyranny that Athens imposed on others, when he’s attacking the death of Athenian democracy and the rise of the Athenian Empire, it imposes on itself. So I guess my last point would be that many of the techniques of surveillance and control that Ed exposed were often first tested. I mean, Gaza is a laboratory for the Israeli military and intelligence service, and they will talk about it as being tested against the Palestinians. So we often see on the outer reaches of empire the techniques that gravitate back to the United States, as of course they have.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: First off, you’re absolutely right about the laboratory aspect. I’ve said before, all of this stuff moves from war front to home front. And we see these same kind of techniques that were present in the archive of material that I provided to journalists in 2013, being used to, you know, map the movements of cellphones in Afghanistan, being applied by the FBI against Black Lives Matter protesters just within the span of 10 years. I mean, this stuff moves fairly quickly, from something that seems exceptional capability that can only be used in war, far away, against, you know, the other, it moves right here home to being used on your neighbors or you.


But you spoke about this dynamic that, you know, it’s just something I perseverate on — I think about this a lot — which is, it’s become more difficult to access officials and have them tell you anything, much less than the truth about anything. The relationship between sources and the journalists that they work with, in context of power, I think, all over the place, has become a threat. But those doors have really been closed. And this has, I think, enormously increased the necessity but also the power of documentary releases, you know, things like Chelsea Manning provided, things like I provided, Ellsberg provided in the '70s, but also we see in the case of this Facebook person, Frances Haugen. It feels as though we're in — everybody talks about this post-truth dynamic, where the actual facts of a case are disputed as frequently as the interpretation of them. People try to deny what the obvious truth is. And it seems like documentation has a way around that.


I would just ask: Where do you think things are headed from here, if we no longer have access to factual information from the government? You have a much greater history of doing this than a lot of us here do. Amy, you’ve also seen this your entire life. Democracy Now! is one of the few outlets that I think reports aggressively on this. Government is perennially deceptive. It’s snowing on us in regards to what is happening, because they want us to view the facts of our reality through their preferred lens. When they begin shutting out the voting public from the facts of our reality, what they actually are, and at the same time any documentary release is quite literally criminalized, what happens next?


CHRIS HEDGES: Well, what happens next is East Germany, which I covered, except that we’re far more efficient than the Stasi. And I just — I’ll let Glenn, because he’s written on this better than I have — I don’t think the Facebook whistleblower is a whistleblower. I think she’s a tool of the security and surveillance state, and they’re using her to justify the kind of censorship they want against people like you and Glenn.


So, you know, this gets into a whole other analysis, but we’ve undergone what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état. It’s over. Anytime you have a tiny cabal that seizes power, in our case corporate, and all of the institutions, especially the democratic institutions, are deformed to essentially buttress and increase that power and wealth, then, of course, you’re leaving the vast majority, you know, the 99%, if we want to use that term, as — the whole process is about disempowering them. And that surveillance has to become more draconian.

AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, formerly with The New York Times. We’ll continue with Hedges, Edward Snowden and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald when we come back. And we’ll talk more about the imprisoned publisher Julian Assange.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our discussion with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges. I asked Ed Snowden to talk about U.S. attempts to prosecute and extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who suffered a mini stroke in a British prison in late October as he fought to avoid extradition to the United States to face espionage charges. He faces 175 years in prison. A British court has now ruled in favor of the Biden administration’s appeal to extradite Assange to face charges in the U.S., in a ruling condemned by journalists around the world as a major blow to press freedom. This is Ed Snowden.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: I think what a lot of people miss — and we see this in the public responses to sort of leaking, whistleblowing, whatever you want to call that, this documentary release — is both sides of the aisle, Democrat, Republican — honestly, pick any country, pick their political dynamic, it doesn’t matter — power does not respond well to its bad behavior or misbehavior being exposed. That’s very clear. And that’s what happened in my case. That’s what will happen in every case. There is no course or access to courts or process or protection for someone who makes the government uncomfortable or produces a large enough political threat, an entirely political threat, a nonviolent publication of truthful information.


This is all Julian Assange has ever done. All of the charges against him that you see the government talk about — communicating national defense information, espionage, conspiracy, there’s even an entirely constructed hacking charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is supposed to show [inaudible] military computers or something but is absolutely ridiculous because, for one, it never actually happened. It’s the product of a 20-second conversation between a supposed Chelsea Manning, supposed Julian Assange, because the chat transcript is pseudonymous; they don’t even know it’s these people. But then it’s describing this alleged Manning trying to access the administrative account for the personal machine, the work machine that’s being used to copy this material. It’s not going to provide any additional access, I can tell you — I work with these kind of machines, I understand how it was. It was entirely a source protection conversation. It was entirely about how could Manning protect their identity, if indeed this was Manning, from being discovered. Now, the government is presenting that as if, you know, Julian Assange hacked the Pentagon or whatever. It’s absolutely ridiculous. If you look at the constellation of all of this, you know Julian is one of history’s greatest criminals, you know? [inaudible] less time than they’re threatening Assange with. And what was Assange’s crime? Telling the truth about something that the government did not want to be told.


And then, you know, Chris mentioned this other Facebook person, and I think a lot of people miss this. It doesn’t really matter why a whistleblower or anyone else publishes this material, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Facebook’s dirty laundry. It doesn’t matter whether it’s John Podesta’s risotto recipes. It doesn’t matter whether it’s material regarding the absolute government’s internal truth of mass surveillance. The whistleblower is the mechanism. They are the lever. We don’t have to like them, but they don’t truly matter once they’ve done this. And this is why, you know, it’s wonderful, the support that I receive, and I very much hope that Julian will receive more of it. He absolutely hasn’t, particularly from the press, which is, I think, one of the great media tragedies of our time. But the response should be a little bit like, you know, “Thank you very much for your whistleblowing, but now please stop telling us what we should do about Facebook. You are not specially placed to answer a public conversation. We’ll listen to you. We’ll hear you out, sure. But you shouldn’t be treated as the speaker of God’s honest truth simply because you held it in your hand and provided it to someone else.” That’s a wonderful thing. It’s a public interest gesture, right? But I think a lot of the opposition people have to this is there is an elevation where the whistleblower label is applied to someone, and then everything they say from then is supposed to receive additional weight. Perhaps it could, but their statements shouldn’t really be evaluated any differently than another person’s.


GLENN GREENWALD: You know, it’s interesting. I was reflecting on what I had said at the beginning, which is that in some ways these events that we’re convened to discuss seem like they were 10 lifetimes ago, and in a lot of ways anything that happened before Trump does, and then in other ways a lot of it seems like it happened just yesterday. And I think the reason for that is, is because sometimes there are really important details that we’ve forgotten.


So, Chris mentioned and alluded to, for example, the Stasi, and I remembered just now — I probably haven’t thought about this in several years even though it’s incredibly important and revealing — that when there was a report around the time we were doing the Snowden reporting that the NSA had been spying, under President Obama, on the personal cellphone of Angela Merkel. She called Obama, indignant, enraged, by all accounts, and very meaningfully, given that she had grown up in communist East Germany under the actual Stasi — it wasn’t an abstraction to her but a very vivid memory — invoked the Stasi and said, essentially, “What you’re doing is what they did.” And that caused German newspapers to go and interview Stasi agents, former agents of the Stasi. And what they said about these Snowden revelations were, “We would have loved to have had the capacity that the NSA developed, but it was beyond anything that we could have possibly dreamed of. What they have done is so far beyond anything we were capable of doing or even thought about doing. This is ubiquitous surveillance that they’ve created.” And I thought that was really poignant. And sometimes that — details like that have gotten lost.


I think the reason, on the other hand, though, it seems like yesterday is because so many of the kind of battles that were waged as a result of what Ed did and the fallout are very much with us today. You know, I think that at the time when we started the reporting and the debates that were provoked by them unfolded, the focus was on the infringement of our right to privacy. Obviously that was an important part of the story. But I always felt like the story was about a lot more than that. One part of it was whether or not we actually have a democracy in anything other than name only, if incredibly consequential events are being undertaken in the dark without anybody knowing about what’s being done. You know, one of the things that was so striking is, when we revealed these programs, it wasn’t just the public and the media that had no idea the NSA was doing any of these things, it was members of the Intelligence Committee and members of the National Security Committees and the U.K. Parliament who wrote op-eds saying, “We had no idea any of this was happening.” And so, for me, a big part of what we were doing was waging a battle on behalf of the public’s right to know.


And so much of the reason that there was so much intense backlash against the story and against Ed, the reason eight years later he’s still in Russia, and then, when Donald Trump floated the idea of a pardon on a bipartisan basis, people were so outraged — the reason they were so angry about it wasn’t necessarily because of the right to privacy aspect, it was because of their ability to make consequential decisions, the most consequential decisions, without anyone knowing about what they’re doing, was imperiled by these revelations. And that’s the same reason that Julian Assange is now in prison, not necessarily because they’re specifically angry about what he revealed in 2010 or 2016, or even the Apple Vault revelations; what they’re really angry about is that he represents, still, a weapon that prevents them from doing what is most important to them, which is the ability to run the world, including societies that are ostensibly democratic, without anyone knowing what they’re doing.


But the other aspect of it I think is really important with regard to this whole, you know, Facebook disclosures and the debate that’s taking place over how we combat things like misinformation and fake news, as a result of Frances Haugen, but even before that, is — you know, I had mentioned that that first day that I interrogated Ed, what I wanted to know and needed to know more than anything was — you know, you’re 29 years old, you have a loving family, you have a girlfriend with whom you’ve had a very fulfilling relationship, you have this incredibly bright future ahead of you — why would you want to risk your entire life, spending the rest of your life in a high-security prison, for this cause? Like, why is this important enough to you to do? And what finally convinced me about Ed’s motives was when he told me about how a free internet was so central to everything that he was able to do in his life, growing up, you know, in a lower-middle-class home without the ability to travel internationally and lots of those privileges that people who come from wealth have, that the internet was his gateway into exploring the world, something with which I had identified so much. And so, in a lot of ways, I saw our cause back then not necessarily this more limited definition of protecting the right of privacy, but protecting a free internet, this invention that is singularly capable of empowering people and emancipating people and enabling us to communicate and organize without centralized corporate and government control.


And I see so many of the current controversies about how much censorship there should be online that comes from Facebook and Google, the anger that Facebook and Google aren’t censoring enough, which I think is the big takeaway from these disclosures from Frances Haugen, debates about how much the government should be controlling the internet, very much a central part of that same battle that was being waged when Ed came forward, when Julian came forward, which is: Can centers of power around the world tolerate any kind of instrument, like the internet, that enables people to interact freely, to think freely, to develop ideas freely, to organize freely, outside of the control of centralized authority?


EDWARD SNOWDEN: What is happening to Julian Assange today and WikiLeaks, this case, as Glenn said, I don’t think any — any reasonable person believes it has anything to do with what he did in 2009, with publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the Guantánamo Bay Files, which received rewards all over the world, high prizes in journalism. Everyone recognizes it today as a public interest story of historic importance. It is the best work that WikiLeaks has ever done.


GLENN GREENWALD: And The Guardian, New York Times, El País, every major news outlet around the world participated because of that recognition.


EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right, absolutely. And it’s like you just — this was a positive event, even though the administration obviously hated it. But we’re not in that world now, right? We’re 2020, 2021. We are far from it. And now it’s dug up, and now it’s used against him. And I think everyone recognizes the question is why, or should recognize the question is why.


This is a case of political character that asserts a political crime, and political crimes never qualify for extradition. And then, what is a political crime? Political crime is any crime in which the victim is the state itself. Assassination is not a political crime, because the head of state is still a person, right? You shoot the president, the archduke, whatever, you still qualify for extradition because you’ve harmed an individual. The state as an apparatus, when you are publishing its misdeeds, and that is itself held up to be criminal, there is no more political crime, which makes Julian Assange a political criminal, or a political prisoner. They certainly want to make him a political prisoner. If Assange is a criminal, we all are criminals, because we all want to know the truth. We all deserve to know the truth. And we must know the truth, at least the outlines of it, in order to exercise our roles as citizens in a free society. Glenn said, again, that he believed in 2013 the motivating force for his participation is the free internet. I’d go further and say it’s the free society.


CHRIS HEDGES: About the press, they hate — I’m talking about institutions like the Times — they hate Julian. And they hated him when he was giving them that information. And the reason they hate him is because he shamed them into doing their job. I don’t know if I told you, Amy, but every time I sat with Bill Keller, who couldn’t stand me, of course, and wanted me out of The New York Times, he would bring you up. He goes, “Well, I guess you could work for Democracy Now!” I mean, he had this thing about you, well, because you —


EDWARD SNOWDEN: High praise.


CHRIS HEDGES: You shamed him. That’s what the alternative press does: It shames them. But there’s a real hatred, because they want to present themselves as the journalistic and kind of moral center. And so, that’s why the press, after these revelations, turned with a vengeance.


GLENN GREENWALD: I think that the Julian case is so important, not only because he is still in Belmarsh, but because it does provide this prism into all of these issues. It was, ironically, Bill Keller who was the first person to smear Julian’s personality, by writing a column where he said, “I have worked with Julian. He smells. His socks are so dirty. They don’t even come up to his ankles.” This media — the role of the media in all of these things that we’re talking about, the corporate media, I think, is so crucial, because, obviously, if the media were out there, like they were doing under Trump, saying that Joe Biden is imperiling press freedoms, and raising their voice, it would be a lot more difficult to do what they’re doing to Julian, but they’re not.


And I think it gets back to what Chris said: Julian was doing the kind of whistleblowing and reporting, like Ed was doing, that the government doesn’t want. And what they do, what they think is reporting, is when the CIA comes to you or the FBI comes to you and says, “Here’s the information we want to be published,” and then they go and publish it. And I think they are a huge impediment to so many of the goals that we’ve been talking about trying to reach, but also a crucial instrument that’s being used by these centers of authority to maintain these repressive structures in place.


AMY GOODMAN: In the little time we have left, Ed, you know, Julian Assange is in the Belmarsh prison, faces 170 years in prison in the United States. Yahoo News revealed that the CIA had a — was plotting to kidnap or assassinate him. If we could end by you commenting specifically on that, and also, then, in your own case, what is your hope of returning home? What communications are you having with the Biden administration? Is there any hope?


EDWARD SNOWDEN: Well, I definitely haven’t communicated with the Biden administration. I didn’t communicate with the Trump administration. We’re not really calling each other every day. But, you know, that’s quite a ways back.


My case, I’m just going to set it aside, because it’s — you know, there’s no movement, and it doesn’t really matter. History will be the judge. If they want to force me into exile, fine. You know, I’m not going to be miserable. I will make as positive an impact on the world as I can, from the situation that I can.


About the case with Julian and the assassination plans against him, the rendition plans against him, it’s really an extraordinary story. You who are listening, haven’t read this, you absolutely should. You know, the CIA was planning out of the White House, and their partners in London, having gun fights in the streets of London. If, you know, they had to shoot out the tires of a plane, who was going to do that? Which service was going to do it? Just absolutely — you know, it’s crazy. It’s hard to believe — or it should be hard to believe, but, unfortunately, in the direction that our society is progressing in the post-9/11 period, it is becoming more familiar. And I think that’s uniquely threatening.


It’s funny. When I came forward in 2013, in Citizenfour, I think there’s a comment in the film where I’m like, you know, “The embassy is right up the street. They could rendition me, hire the Triads and whatever, you know, just try to off me.” Whether they do it hands-on or whether they say, “Oops, it was an accident. He fell,” to me, those things were possible. And at the time, even journalists who were working with me — Barton Gellman, Washington Post at the time, said he thought that was, you know, a little bit ridiculous. But years later, as he began to see he himself was subjected to surveillance, he saw that the U.S. intelligence services had been keeping tabs on his reporting before he was ever involved with me. And, of course, now we see things like Julian. Force is not a barrier to the state when it comes to securing their objectives. And I believe anything they could have done to stop this story, they would have done, if they believed it did it. If that meant taking action against me, if that meant taking action against a journalist, I believe they would have done it.


In the case of Julian Assange, that thinking has been vindicated. Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. That’s not a judgment on him. That’s the fact. He is not the source; he is the publisher. That means he should be less at risk than the whistleblowers. And yet somehow he has ended up more at risk. Now, the question is: How is that possible? Has Assange changed? And when you look at what the charges against him are, not really — talking about things that happened in the distant past. What has changed is the nature of the state and its relationship to the press. And if we let that be established, with them murdering Assange, not with a gunshot in the streets of London, not with a drone, but with concrete in Belmarsh or Florence or whatever prison they put him in, that is not better. Whether you kill someone fast or you kill someone slow, if you are killing them because you don’t like what they say, that is, I think, a final judgment on the state rather than on the victim of the state.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges. I spoke to them as part of our discussion at the virtual War on Terror Film Festival. We’ll link our entire discussion at democracynow.org.

And that does it for today’s show. Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Mary Conlon. Our general manager is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude and Dennis McCormick. I’m Amy Goodman. Remember, wearing a mask is an act of love.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Up Next
Snowden Reveals How He Secretly Exposed NSA Criminal Wrongdoing Without Getting Arrested