Open Letter to Glenn Greenwald (Updated with Glenn's Replies)

Glenn,

I respect your work, although I’m less pessimistic than you regarding President Obama. I was confused by one of the statements in your post “Charlie Savage on Obama's embrace of Bush/Cheney "terrorism policies". You refer to “Obama supporters” claiming that anyone who criticizes him as being (among other things) “Marxists”. I followed the links and read the text, but I didn’t see any evidence to support your claim. I saw Nate’s observation that the ’radicals’ borrow ideas from the 19^th century Marxist approach to social change.

The attribution you make seems fuzzy at best. If I follow it, it goes: Glenn criticizes Obama -> RKR observes that the criticism seems to fit with a recent model by Nate Silver of ‘radicals’ (including a reference to Marxist ideas among others) -> therefore Glenn is: referred to by some Obama supporters -- using the Fox News script -- as "Far Leftist, Marxist, reactionary, radical demagogues.” It seems like a stretch and I’m not sure what the point is (other than trying to increase division among liberals).

The other thing that bothers me is that you seem to have allowed your defensiveness over an obscure slight detract from the main point of your post - which, as an Obama supporter and a human rights supporter, I thought was important and not over the top.

I’m also posting this on my blog in a cynical attempt to get hits. Feel free to flame me and drive traffic to my site so I can get my adsense off of $1.63 :)

Update: Glenn replied to my message and was a good sport about allowing me to post his response.

From: "ggreenwald@salon.com"
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:51:46 AM
Subject: Re: confused

Did you read Nate's post?

Apparently, there are two types of progressives -- the type like him, who are rational incrementalists.

And another type who are impatient with what Obama is doing and critical of him-- those are irrational, dangerous, radical, reactionary, Marxist Far Leftists.

And I'm the one dividing progressives by linking to that?

I didn't say Nate singled me out as in the radical Marxist reactionary Far Left camp. From what I could tell, he put David Sirota in that group. Other people have stepped forward to declare themselves rational (progressives) and put more and more Obama critics on the radical/Marxist/Far-Leftist list.

I don't think Nate intended it as such, but I thought what he wrote was really, really ugly.

My response:

I didn't get that the choices were rational vs. irrational from his post. In reference to who's dividing progressives, I'd rather be called a 'radical' than be told that I'm using the Fox News script. Plenty of progressive folks refer to themselves jokingly as DFH's. I wouldn't expect those people to get too upset about getting labeled as 'radical', but maybe I'm off the mark.


Anyway, thanks for the reply. Do you mind if I post it?

and his response:

If one category is "rational progressives," what are the people who are in the other category if not irrational?

More to the point, these are the terms he used to describe the other category: Marxist, Far Left, dangerous, reactionary, demagogue, radical.

Liberal bloggers jokingly call themselves "DFHs" in the same way that gay people jokingly refer to themselves as "faggots" -- as ways to mock the term and drain it of its meaning.

I don't think any liberals expect to be called Marxist, Far Left, dangerous, reactionary, demagogue radicals by other progressives -- especially ones who, while spewing those ugly terms, praise themselves for being "rational."

I like Nate. I think he's done great work. I don't think he was driven by bad motives here, just by animus towards David Sirota. But he wrote a post invoking all the worst Fox News demonizing terms -- it was almost McCarthyite in the words it used and the unspecified group of people it smeared.

I didn't really intend that first email to be public when I wrote it, but feel free to post the emails, though I'd appreciate it if you'd post both in unedited form. Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald

done