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Citizen Greenwald: Hypocrites (Nazis?) R Us

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COMMENT: While lam­bast­ing Bill Maher and oth­ers for crit­i­cal com­ments about Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ists, Cit­i­zen Green­wald was not par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed by the recent pres­ence of Andrew Auern­heimer at a recent social gath­er­ing at which he and Lau­ra Poitras were present.

Were this an iso­lat­ed inci­dent, one might be more inclined to dis­miss it as hap­pen­stance.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this fits all too neat­ly into a pat­tern with Cit­i­zen Green­wald. In an ear­li­er pro­fes­sion­al incar­na­tion as an attor­ney, he spent years run­ning legal inter­fer­ence for Nazi mur­der­ers. (This is dis­cussed at length in FTR #754.)

Do note that the arti­cle below bad­ly under­states Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s pro-Nazi activ­i­ties.

In addi­tion, Wik­ileaks also tracks back to Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments. Eddie The Friend­ly Spook Snow­den is part and par­cel to the “Paulis­tin­ian” milieu. (To flesh out one’s under­stand­ing, do check out FTR #755, about Wik­ileaks and FTR #756 about the Paulis­tin­ian milieu. Wik­iLeaks and the Paulis­tini­ans are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Green­wald and his asso­ciates.)

Both Green­wald and Snow­den’s polit­i­cal idol Ron Paul have spo­ken in a sim­i­lar vein about the shoot­ing of a Cana­di­an sol­dier in Ottawa.

Although they wax equiv­o­cal, both are saying–in effect–that Cana­da got what it deserved for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the air war against ISIS.

“iPad Hack­er Released From Jail, Par­ties with Glenn Green­wald, Pub­lishes Neo-Nazi Screeds” by Bob Cesca; The Dai­ly Ban­ter; 10/09/2014.

 Way back in 2010, a so-called “white hat” hack­er named Andrew Auern­heimer, known online as “Weev,” exploit­ed a secu­rity loop­hole on Apple’s iPad and acquired the names of 114,000 AT&T cus­tomers who sub­scribed to the iPad 3G data ser­vice. Fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion, Weev, who had “stolen” (his words) the user data was pros­e­cuted and con­victed. To his cred­it, Weev informed AT&T of the secu­rity flaw and the com­pany quick­ly but­toned it up. But back in April of this year, Weev’s con­vic­tion was over­turned because he was evi­dently tried in the wrong state (New Jer­sey). He was sub­se­quently released from Pennsylvania’s Allen­wood Fed­eral Cor­rec­tional Com­plex on April 11, 2014. The indict­ment remains, but the con­vic­tion no longer stands.

Dur­ing his time in jail, Weev appar­ently became a neo-Nazi, com­plete with a tat­too not unlike Edward Norton’s tat­too in Amer­i­can His­tory X — a giant swasti­ka on his right pec­toral. After his release, he post­ed a series of racist and anti-Semit­ic remarks on a web­site called The Dai­ly Stormer, a white-suprema­cist site not to be con­fused with The Dai­ly Caller, The Dai­ly Beast or The Dai­ly Ban­ter. Via Gawk­er, here are some choice pas­sages:

I’ve been a long-time crit­ic of Judaism, black cul­ture, immi­gra­tion to West­ern nations, and the media’s con­stant stream of anti-white pro­pa­ganda. Judge Wigen­ton was as black as they come. The pros­e­cu­tor, Zach Intrater, was a Brook­lyn Jew from an old mon­ey New York fam­i­ly.[...]

The whole time a yarmulke-cov­ered audi­ence of Jew­ry stared at me from the pews of the court­room. My pros­e­cu­tor invit­ed his whole syn­a­gogue to spec­tate.[...]

They took con­trol of our sys­tems of finance and law. They hyper­in­flated our cur­rency. They cor­rupted our daugh­ters and demand­ed they sub­ject them­selves to sex work to feed their fam­i­lies. These are a peo­ple that have made them­selves a prob­lem in every nation they occu­py, includ­ing ours. What’s sad­dest is that we are the enablers of this prob­lem. The Jews abused our com­pas­sion to build an empire of wicked­ness the likes the world has nev­er seen.

No gray area there. Weev clear­ly hates Jews, African-Amer­i­cans and any­one he per­ceives as “anti-white.”

Oh, and in addi­tion to his con­ver­sion to the neo-Nazi cause as well as his seem­ingly pro­lific online hate speech, Weev attend­ed a par­ty in New York soon after get­ting out of jail. The par­ty was held by none oth­er than Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras to coin­cide with the cer­e­mony in which the duo received the Polk Award for their report­ing on Edward Snow­den and the Nation­al Secu­rity Agency.

Unless he crashed the par­ty, he was obvi­ously an invit­ed guest. But for a moment let’s assume Green­wald didn’t know Weev was invit­ed. Long before the par­ty, Green­wald had pre­vi­ously defend­ed Weev in The Guardian back in March, 2013, months before the author/reporter rose to inter­na­tional acclaim. Indeed, Green­wald named Weev as a “hack­tivist” who was being wrong­fully per­se­cuted by U.S. author­i­ties.

Just this week alone, a US fed­eral judge sen­tenced hac­tivist Andrew “Weev” Auern­heimer to 3 1/2 years in prison for exploit­ing a flaw in AT&T’s secu­rity sys­tem that allowed him entrance with­out any hack­ing, an act about which Slate’s Justin Peters wrote: “it’s not clear that Auern­heimer com­mit­ted any actu­al crime”, while Jeff Blag­don at the Verge added: “he cracked no codes, stole no pass­words, or in any way ‘broke into’ AT&T’s cus­tomer data­base – some­thing com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firmed dur­ing tes­ti­mony.” But he had a long record of dis­rup­tive and some­times even quite ugly (though legal) online antag­o­nism, so he had to be severe­ly pun­ished with years in prison.

For a moment, let’s set aside the whole neo-Nazi thing. Let’s also not re-lit­i­gate the past in which Green­wald, dur­ing his law-prac­tice days, defend­ed a com­pletely dif­fer­ent neo-Nazi. The fact that Green­wald con­tin­ues to blur the line between hack­ing and activism is utter­ly baf­fling. The man­ner in which he ratio­nal­ized Weev’s actions is a gross illus­tra­tion of gra­tu­itous spin and dan­ger­ous over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion.

“Glenn Green­wald on ‘The Last Word:’ Cana­di­an Attacks Weren’t Ter­ror­ism” by Charles John­son; Lit­tle Green Foot­balls; 10/29/2014.

Here’s the Mighty Glenn Green­wald on the Lawrence O’Donnell show, explain­ing that in his view the attacks in Cana­da last week were not ter­ror­ism — but on the oth­er hand, the US and Cana­da and Israel (he’s obsessed with Israel) are always com­mit­ting ter­ror­ist acts.

I think that’s a fair descrip­tion of his view­points. See what you think.

“Once-Peace­ful Cana­da Turns Mil­i­taris­tic; Blow­back Fol­lows” by Ron Paul; Ron Paul Insti­ture for Peace and Pros­per­i­ty; 10/26/2014.

. . . . Con­sid­er­ing Canada’s peace­ful past, the inter­ven­tion­ist Cana­da that has emerged at the end of the Cold War is a gen­uine dis­ap­point­ment. Who would doubt that today’s Cana­da would, should a draft be re-instat­ed in the US, send each and every Amer­i­can resister back home to face prison and worse?

As Glenn Green­wald point­ed out this past week:

Cana­da has spent the last 13 years pro­claim­ing itself a nation at war. It active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan and was an enthu­si­as­tic part­ner in some of the most extrem­ist War on Ter­ror abus­es per­pe­trat­ed by the U.S.

Cana­da has also enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly joined Pres­i­dent Obama’s lat­est war on Iraq and Syr­ia, pledg­ing to send fight­er jets to par­tic­i­pate in the bomb­ing of ISIS (and like­ly many civil­ians in the process).

But Canada’s wars abroad came back home to Cana­da last week.

Though hor­rif­ic, it should not be a com­plete sur­prise that Cana­da found itself hit by blow­back last week, as two attacks on Cana­di­an soil left two Cana­di­an mil­i­tary mem­bers dead.

Green­wald again points out what few dare to say about the attacks:

Regard­less of one’s views on the jus­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty of Canada’s lengthy mil­i­tary actions, it’s not the slight­est bit sur­pris­ing or dif­fi­cult to under­stand why peo­ple who iden­ti­fy with those on the oth­er end of Cana­di­an bombs and bul­lets would decide to attack the mil­i­tary respon­si­ble for that vio­lence.

That is the dan­ger of inter­ven­tion in oth­er people’s wars thou­sands of miles away. Those at the oth­er end of for­eign bombs – and their sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers or any­one who sym­pa­thizes with them – have great incen­tive to seek revenge. This feel­ing should not be that dif­fi­cult to under­stand. . . .

 

Discussion

One comment for “Citizen Greenwald: Hypocrites (Nazis?) R Us”

  1. Pan­do has an inter­view of ‘weev’ from his new home in Beirut. He’s still as charm­ing as ever:

    Pan­do Dai­ly
    ‘weev’ in Beirut: I can’t go home until “most of the agents of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment are dead.”

    By Dan Raile
    On Novem­ber 21, 2014

    “The only hope I have of return­ing to the land I love, where I was kid­napped at gun­point and had my house bull­dozed, is if there is a such a con­sis­tent lev­el of change that most of the agents of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment are dead. I want to go home but I can’t.”

    It’s late on a Tues­day evening and I’m sit­ting with Andrew Auern­heimer in the posh envi­rons of east Beirut’s Achrafieh neigh­bor­hood. The man most peo­ple know by his online han­dle, “weev,” is seat­ed across from me at a cozy cafe just down the street from the city’s flag­ship West­ern-style shop­ping mall. Auern­heimer, 29, is explain­ing why he’s been liv­ing in Beirut for the past month, and why he can’t return home to Amer­i­ca.

    Weev’s road to Lebanon began in a New York City bar in May. He was just a few weeks out of fed­er­al prison, sprung on appeal after 14 months of incar­cer­a­tion and years of legal and pub­lic spar­ring with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment over hack­ing charges. Weev want­ed to catch the tele­vised spec­ta­cle of NASCAR dri­ver Josh Wise rac­ing around the track at Tallede­ga in a car embla­zoned with the head of the celebri­ty Shi­ba Inu, Doge, and the name of its hon­orary cryp­tocur­ren­cy, Doge­Coin. As a native of Arkansas and the inter­net, Auern­heimer says he couldn’t miss it.

    We’ve tells me how he’d met his girl­friend that night. A Syr­i­an Alaw­ite and a tat­too artist, she has intro­duced Auern­heimer into her cir­cle in Lebanon and cov­ered a sig­nif­i­cant amount of him with Norse sym­bol­o­gy in per­ma­nent black ink.

    The mass-mar­ket appeal of their whirl­wind mod­ern romance is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that one of those tat­toos is a painstak­ing roco­co swasti­ka over his chest. (Thank­ful­ly, Gawk­er has already cov­ered that exten­sive­ly – it got me off the hook when Auern­heimer offered to show it to me.)

    The star-crossed love angle goes part of the way toward answer­ing the ques­tion that had com­pelled me to seek out Auern­heimer dur­ing a recent trip to Lebanon. Name­ly, why in hell would an avowed white nation­al­ist super-troll and hack­er be liv­ing in Beirut?

    Inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty is pret­ty atro­cious in Lebanon, not to men­tion the fre­quent elec­tri­cal out­ages. I hard­ly need to men­tion that the Mid­dle East isn’t entire­ly rec­on­ciled to the idea of West­ern suprema­cy, or that the cur­rent vogue of right-wing nation­al­ist move­ments through­out Europe (which weev describes as “promis­ing”) is antag­o­nism toward immi­grants from the for­mer lands of the Ottoman empire.

    Over the course of a cou­ple of hours, cof­fee, cig­a­rettes and a plate of french fries, the pieces of an expla­na­tion come togeth­er.

    Auern­heimer describes him­self as the “point per­son for the press” for the loose­ly orga­nized crews of which he is mem­ber, and has writ­ten that “I make art… I see fed­er­al courts, finan­cial mar­kets, world media and the very act of human per­cep­tion as the can­vas.” Per­haps by meet­ing Weev and report­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, I’m act­ing as a con­duit for the expres­sion of this sort of “art.” If so, I’m tak­ing in mind the words of one of my favorite authors, Oscar Wilde:

    “We can for­give a man for mak­ing a use­ful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for mak­ing a use­less thing is that one admire it intense­ly. All art is use­less.”

    By this token, the cyber-activ­i­ty of weev is either use­less art or unfor­giv­able, harm­ful provo­ca­tion and quite pos­si­bly both.

    He says he’s encour­aged by recent mili­tia move­ments like that of Neva­da ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy, but that they don’t have their pri­or­i­ties straight. He tells me that he views Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh as a hero, and explained his vision of send­ing tiny drones laden with high explo­sives to the per­son­al res­i­dences of US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment employ­ees.

    “We are close to hav­ing atom­i­cal­ly pre­cise engi­neer­ing for asym­met­ric war­fare. Cheap, 3D-print­ed drones. The tech is sim­ple. The drones that the US uses for airstrikes are crap. Sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions behind. Pret­ty soon any­one who wants will be able to have some­thing bet­ter.”

    “Some­how we need to get the ‘sol­dier types’ con­nect­ed with the peo­ple who have the ideas about who should be tar­get­ed and how,” he says. “It’s about the ide­o­log­i­cal prepa­ra­tion of a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion.”

    Auern­heimer was freed from prison when his con­vic­tion was over­turned as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in vio­la­tion of his 6th amend­ment rights to a fair tri­al in the juris­dic­tion where an alleged crime takes place. But he doesn’t get misty-eyed about the ben­e­fits of America’s rule of law.

    “I’m pro-con­sti­tu­tion. I think it’s prob­a­bly the great­est polit­i­cal doc­u­ment ever writ­ten. But it’s been total­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cor­rupt­ed. It’s not rule of law, its rule by lawyers. The only lan­guage the gov­ern­ment under­stands now is fear and vio­lence. And if you’re will­ing to go far enough, they’ll lis­ten. There was no Waco after Waco. They blinked.”

    ...

    Lebanon has no extra­di­tion treaty with the Unit­ed States. Weev says that was a cru­cial cri­te­ri­on for him in choos­ing a new home. Oth­er can­di­date coun­tries were Ser­bia and Andor­ra, which he says is still his first choice, if he can ever afford it. He also tells me that he would pre­fer to live in Syr­ia, but is wait­ing, con­fi­dent­ly, for things there to “cool down.”

    * * *

    Of course, trolling doesn’t work unless it elic­its pro­found reac­tions of dis­gust, hate or anger. And weev is one of the internet’s most famous trolls. He is also, some­what uncom­fort­ably, a dandy of dig­i­tal civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans due to his intran­si­gence in the face of fed­er­al harass­ment, out at the bleed­ing edge of the first amend­ment.

    Weev’s three-year scrap with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has been chron­i­cled in great detail in the media and through his own chan­nels (here’s the 2010 Gawk­er arti­cle that start­ed it.) It’s a thorny sto­ry with no sym­pa­thet­ic pro­tag­o­nist, and all sorts of legal, tech­no­log­i­cal and social impli­ca­tions. It was a promi­nent bat­tle in the so-called “hack­er-wars,” and he has received sup­port, on civ­il rights grounds, from the EFF and Glen Green­wald.

    Recent­ly, weev has jumped into the fray of the online brouha­ha around Pan­do reporter Yasha Levine’s report­ing on the ori­gins and fund­ing of Tor, a con­fus­ing mias­ma of alliances that has seen Tor evan­ge­lists claim­ing they are under­paid by the gov­ern­ment and a promi­nent ACLU Speech, Pri­va­cy and Tech­nol­o­gy Project staffer invok­ing the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.

    Auernheimer’s swasti­ka tat­too is not a rhetor­i­cal device. Nor is his relo­ca­tion to Beirut a sim­ple farce. I can attest that the sort of vit­ri­ol weev reg­u­lar­ly writes on the inter­net springs as read­i­ly from Auernheimer’s lips as his key­board.

    “Amer­i­ca doesn’t have a gun vio­lence prob­lem, it has a minor­i­ty prob­lem,” he says.

    ...

    One aspect of the cul­ture that weev obvi­ous­ly enjoys is the con­cept of “wasta,” an entrenched orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple in Lev­an­tine neigh­bor­hoods, economies and polit­i­cal life, which rough­ly means “clout” or “influ­ence” or “who you know.” It also sig­ni­fies pro­tec­tion.

    “I’ve got some wasta,” weev says. “Enough to mit­i­gate a con­trolled kid­nap­ping sit­u­a­tion. But there is a much greater risk that the US gov­ern­ment could just kill me.”

    He refers to wasta fre­quent­ly through­out our talk, and clear­ly rel­ish­es the idea of a net­work of pro­tec­tion that doesn’t cave to threats of pros­e­cu­tion or vio­lence. He says he owes his wasta to his girlfriend’s fam­i­ly ties in Beirut.

    “In Arkansas, where I was born and raised and the only home I’ve ever real­ly known, no one was will­ing to step up for me,” he says.

    Weev has writ­ten of his own par­ents, who coop­er­at­ed with inves­ti­ga­tors in his case, that they “are per­fect exam­ples of how sec­u­lar lib­er­al­ism destroys fam­i­lies and will rot out the foun­da­tions of our very civ­i­liza­tion,” and that he pities his moth­er as “a brain­washed drone of a state gone mad.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 22, 2014, 9:33 pm

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