Glenn Greenwald’s Fawning interview with Alex Jones

When Glenn Greenwald announced that he would host the premiere of a documentary on Alex Jones — and interviewing the infamous conspiracy theorist — many who once respected the famed investigative journalist lamented this new low in his career.

Greenwald retaliated in a series of tweets confusing the ‘damn stupid’ notion that journalists should refrain from interviewing bad people, pointing out that mainstream media journalists have no qualms about interviewing George W. Bush and his ilk.

Fair point.

And even Greenwald interview with Joneswhich is currently on trial (there is three triesin fact) for repeatedly lying that the child victims of the Sandy Hook shootings were actors in a false flag operation, was not the kind of exchange one would expect between a journalist and an infamous purveyor of lies and conspiracy theories.

Greenwald kicked off the interview by asking Jones to be “disturbingly beautiful” with a “natural charisma” when he started his media career. He praised the InfoWars host for questioning the war in Iraq and “spreading huge amounts of skepticism and doubt about the CIA, America’s security state.”

But when Greenwald finally got down to what Jones is famous for – the rampant conspiracy theories — he repeatedly described those lies as “mistakes.”

This is no leniency Greenwald gives to the main target of the interview, the mainstream media, which he has repeatedly criticized for various sins, from the Russia investigation to Iraq.

A telling part of the conversation came when Greenwald asked Jones about the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol. A Jones riot helped fuel rants about a grand plot to overthrow the election and steal the presidency from donald trump.

“Thinking back to what happened with January 6, and most people there heeding those warnings to be non-violent, but a few people didn’t, and they were able to leverage that and bring out this narrative of insurrection, that to this day, that’s what they’re trying to shape the legacy of the Trump movement and Donald Trump himself,” said Greenwald.

“Do you view January 6 as something that was a huge strategic mistake with regret?” He asked. “Or do you think it’s basically a media distortion that took what was otherwise a good event and turned it into something darker?”

Greenwald paints an extremely generous picture of Jones’ actions on January 6. While the InfoWars host did indeed encourage non-violent protest, he raged at a rally the day before the riot as “globalists” tried to steal the election.

“I don’t know how it’s gonna end, but if they wanna fight, they better believe they got one!” he said. The next day he said on InfoWars“This is the most important call to action on home soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776.”

He then marched on the Capitol with a megaphone, chanting “Stop the theft” to the raucous crowd.

When Greenwald was asked about Jan. 6, Jones claimed the riot was fueled by plainclothes police seeking to spark a violent event so they could enforce martial law.

“It was like a thousand feds and military who were in civilian clothes,” he said. January 6, Jones said, “was intended to provoke us into a violent event that was to spiral out of control.”

Greenwald tried to point to the “underlying cause of Jan. 6,” which he correctly identified as Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen, by asking Jones if he considered the theory of the election plot stolen as similar to his false claims about Sandy Hook:

There’s a moment in the movie where you were talking about Sandy Hook and I thought something you said was very poignant, which is that anyone can get carried away with their ideology where you almost start to get so anti-establishment – I really feel it myself sometimes – that you kind of want to question what the establishment is saying just because they lie so often that you kind of want to argue that they are untrustworthy institutions, regardless of the argument you make.

Throughout the interview, Greenwald credited Jones for admitting he was wrong about Sandy Hook, which is another absurdly generous take on what happened: Jones was pursued by the tormented families of the victims and forced to recant and apologize for lying about their dead children.

Greenwald asked Jones if he conducted some kind of evidence-based investigation into the 2020 election, or if his claim that he was robbed “was that kind of ethos, as a way of saying that the The establishment was so against Trump from the start in illegitimate ways that I’m going to kind of endorse this cause, not because it’s necessarily true in detail, but rather as some sort of thematic way to protest.

So, according to Greenwald’s Doctrine of Media Criticism, when the mainstream media gets it wrong, it is guilty of vicious and unforgivable lies. When Alex Jones Says Kids Shot Dead In School Shooting Are Pretending, Fueling years of threats against the families of the victims, or when his claims about a stolen election fuel a deadly riot in the United States Capitol, he is simply expressing “a philosophy.”

It is good, for Greenwald, that Jones’ claims are not “necessarily true” in their details, as they are a “thematic way of protesting” against the establishment. In other words, his lies, or errorsare noble, because they advance the cause of counter-arism.

David French wrote recently about this rise of mindless contrarianism on the right with which Greenwald has formed a strange new alliance.

Unlike critical thinkers, who are universally skeptical, French wrote that “the contrarian errs twice: he is both excessively cynical and excessively credulous. He is too fast not to believe one side and too fast to believe the opposite.

“The same people who were catastrophically wrong about the seriousness of COVID or the effectiveness of vaccines continue to benefit from an audience made up of the same people who demand rigorous and ruthless accountability from their political opponents,” French wrote. .

This last argument has come, unfortunately, to define all of Greenwald’s media criticism. He is ruthless in holding cable news hosts to account like Nicole Wallace Where Rachel Maddowbut blind to the demagoguery and relentless dishonesty of Tucker-Carlson.

Damon Linker made a similar case to French regarding what he calls Greenwald’s “selective skepticism”.

Over the years, Linker argued, Greenwald developed a healthy distrust of government and complicit media. But this skepticism has become selective. While holding the mainstream media to a high standard of truth and accountability, Jones is treated with excessive credulity.

“Again and again, Greenwald applies intense skepticism to a finite list of political and journalistic enemies while applying none to those with whom he shares antipathies,” Linker wrote. “His enemies’ enemies are his friends, and friends apparently get an automatic pass.”

Jones is, of course, not the heroic truth-teller that Greenwald wants him to be.

Although he prompted the InfoWars host to admit that, like his Sandy Hook lies, his stolen election crusade was also fake, Jones told Greenwald that the election was indeed stolen – and provided a series debunked claims to support this lie.

“I’ll be honest, which the establishment doesn’t do,” Jones said. “It was a yes, no, it was a pre-cooked deal that obviously Biden won’t get more votes than Trump.”

“Look at Biden, I mean the guy can’t tie his shoelaces, he didn’t win the election,” he said.

Jones quoted Chez Dinesh D’Souza comically bad election movie as proof.

“Now looking back with 2000 slippersall this stuff that came out, I mean, I think obviously I don’t think Biden got more votes than Trump,” he said.

Greenwald, who spent most of the interview condemning the media as dishonest, said nothing in response to this blatant lie.

Linker has some valuable advice that media critics like Greenwald would be wise to follow:

By all means, beware of supposedly established facts, reigning tales of heroes and villains, and much more being said and done in Washington and the media. But don’t respond by lowering your guard against peddlers and charlatans on your side, or any side, even, and perhaps especially, if they share your prejudices about who is the least trustworthy of all. .

Jones is so obviously a charlatan that one wonders if Greenwald is beyond salvation. When he finally asked Jones to provide an explanation for “errors” in his coverage, such as Sandy Hook, Jones admitted that when it comes to truth, he isn’t particularly rigorous.

“Being on the air four or five times a day, you’re very cavalier,” he said.

“You drink vodka, you smoke cigarettes and you do no matter“, Jones explained. “And you’re like, ‘Oh yeah that’s a bunch of fake BS!’ And you are prosecuted for it. Oh my God.”

This is an opinion piece. The opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.