Glenn Greenwald Suplexes WaPo 'Reporter' in Political Labels Debate as a Larger Point Is Made

Over the last several years as “wokeism” has taken root within the Democratic party and the media, and cancel tactics have become their preferred method for dealing with people who they can’t force into submission or compliance, interesting political alliances have formed among prominent figures on the right, left, and everywhere in between that a decade ago would have been unheard of.

The basis for such alliances has been the basic understanding that if woke cancel culturalists are allowed to win then we will eventually reach a point where there is only one official preferred narrative permitted to be safely expressed in our society without fear of reprisals including loss of reputation and/or livelihood and even more dangerously on down the line, freedom of speech.

This is why we see the opinions of former New York Times writers who had wake-up calls being promoted by conservative commentators on social media. It’s why we’ve seen podcasters like Joe Rogan and former Occupy Wall Street documentarian and self-described “disaffected liberal” Tim Pool gain in popularity on YouTube and other platforms among diverse groups of people.

There is an implicit understanding among all of them that even though conservatives and liberals will rarely agree on much that there must be agreement from all sides on the fundamentals of society, with a key fundamental being the freedom to express yourself and have a different opinion without being shamed and canceled because you dared venture away from herd mentalities.

This understanding is at the heart of why we frequently see independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald as a guest on Tucker Carlson’s program. The two disagree on a lot, but have found common ground on issues like rampant liberal media bias, the rot that is at the core of American intelligence agencies, and the need to vigorously question the grounds for U.S. entanglement in foreign conflicts.

Though Carlson is generally considered to be “on the right” and Greenwald “on the left” based on past writings, you wouldn’t know it from reading a recent piece from Washington Post “reporter” Philip Bump who though not a media reporter pretended to be one in his write-up on how Carlson is a conduit for allegedly finding “powerful proponent[s] for [the right’s] straw men.”

There was a lot to take issue with in the article, but one area that raised eyebrows was in Bump’s portrayal of Greenwald as a “right-wing pundit”:

Soon after [UFC fighter Bryce] Mitchell was done speaking, his no war/no Biden riff started to spread on social media. Right-wing pundit Glenn Greenwald shared it with his millions of followers on Twitter, writing how it was “amazing what you hear when you listen to people who don’t pay constant attention to politics for a living and therefore don’t have their basic values corrupted and perceptions warped by constant propaganda.”

That was news to a lot of people, Greenwald especially, who zapped Bump not because he wrongly labeled him but because obviously Bump was using the word “right-wing” as a slight, a means to discount Greenwald’s opinion altogether:

Liberals like @pbump call everyone they disagree with “right-wing” or Russian agents. It’s just how US discourse works. Liberals were angry at @TheFIREorg because of that NYT op-ed, so they called it “right-wing” even though they defend the free speech of leftists & Palestinians. https://t.co/OsBR87yKik

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 9, 2022

I don’t care about these labels. Except “civil libertarian,” I never claim or reject any. They’re just empty insults liberals pundits like @pbump and WPost use to disqualify. But I have a long list of views nobody could call “right-wing,” but the WashPost can lie about enemies.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 9, 2022

When Bump (who I can promise you is one of the more liberally biased “reporters” at the WaPo) laughably tried to play the victim, Greenwald was not having any of it, pointing out that one of the reasons Bump had likely targeted him bas because he (Greenwald) had broken actual newsworthy stories, unlike Bump.

“Also, if you’re upset about having never broken any major stories of note in your life,” Greenwald tweeted, “working harder would be a better solution than calling journalists who have “pundits,” all to to expel your resentments, jealousies, and bitterness.

The larger point here, and which Greenwald also noted is that labeling someone as “right-wing” has become the media’s way of signaling to a reader/viewer that this person is a fringe kook/bigot/insurrection-y type who is just a couple fries short of a Happy Meal if you catch my meaning. It’s the same thing they do when they label questioners of the level of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine/Russia situation as having a “soft spot for Putin.”

There’s no basis in reality for it, but it’s a way for them to try and get readers to dismiss that person’s opinion as unworthy of serious consideration all because that person has strayed from Official Narratives™. They’ve not only done it to Greenwald but a number of other prominent writers/media contributors who generally have taken leftist viewpoints in the past (like ex-NYTer Bari Weiss, for example) but who also very clearly see the direction this country is headed from a free speech perspective if we don’t reverse course soon.

As a right-winger myself, I say these people should look at it as a badge of honor that so-called “straight news reporters” have been reduced to trying to discredit them by labeling them in such a way. It shows that their critics have run out of dishonest tactics to use, resorting to the only weapon in their arsenal they have left.

Sadly for Bump and others like him, they’re going to figure out one day (if they haven’t already) that using such loaded labels as a way of shortchanging a person’s opinion is not the powerful tool it used to be, as more people like the Greenwalds, Carlsons, Pools, and the Bill Mahers of this world join together despite their other differences in united opposition against dangerous leftist GroupThink.