Brenna T. Smith is a college graduate who has already been accepted for a job at the New York times tweeted with excitement that her *first* story for USA Today had dropped. What was the story she broke that she was alerting people to? She, along with co-authors Jessica Guyunn and Will Carless, was snitching to the public that marginalized people accused of crimes are trying to get a fair trial by paying for legal representation, sometimes in sneaky ways that the government and mega corporations don’t want them to.
The article, titled, “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” doesn’t provide much of a service to the public except to act as Democrat activism spotlight, pressure and shame tech companies to do more than they already have “to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online” as Glenn Greenwald, whom we’ll get to here in a moment, noted.
Pretty awful, right? The political Left would normally agree, traditionally, but in the current political climate that is all Sports Team and not-so-much morality about right and wrong – Smith was doing the Cathedrals work because in this case, the government and oligarchical corporations opposing these groups are Democrats and Democrat-centric, and the marginalized people are Trumpsters. So f*ck them and their right to a fair trial, amirite?
Glenn Greenwald called the author alerting people to the article out for it by merely congratulating her for what she was looking for congratulations about. ie: her tweet’s thesis, to paraphrase, is “hey guys! look at this! I’m so proud to begin my journey in journalism this way” and Greenwald takes that premise and illustrated its clownworld nature in dissent:
Greenwald, being one of those “problematic” Leftists that stays true to their liberal ideology regarding institutionalized government power, corporate power, and its inherent conflicts with marginalized groups and minorities – *even when it’s the “other team”* that is affected by them – got the bigots on his side angry, per usual.
The problem is though that these haters don’t really have anywhere to go with their anger due to the contradictions of the ire with the facts of the situation, so they force themselves into pretzel-ion contortions to make a case that vaguely rationalizes their position, as Ben Collins did in his attempt to defend Brenna’s corporate shilling here below (and you can see how easy such a line is to demolish, as Daniel Foster does in his reply) –
Ben Collins’ narrative-nonsense aside – the factual claims he used to make it are also just as nonsensical. Journalists not shilling for power structures, and the people who read them, have known for months now that the Jan 6 rioters didn’t include any extremist organizations except for a few ANTIFA suspects. As Politico reported, and Greenwald pointed out – many of these so called extremists didn’t do anything extreme enough for prosecutors to charge them with…
That’s because despite the propaganda from the Biden administration and it’s apostles using fear-language about an “insurrection” (that was completely unarmed, and verifiably not an insurrection in any way) and potential attempted murder and threats to the Republic – the actual offenses the majority of rioters were guilty of boiled down to nothing more than trespassing. From the Politico report linked above:
“My bet is a lot of these cases will get resolved and probably without prison time or jail time,” said Erica Hashimoto, a former federal public defender who is now a law professor at Georgetown. “One of the core values of this country is that we can protest if we disagree with our government. Of course, some protests involve criminal acts, but as long as the people who are trying to express their view do not engage in violence, misdemeanors may be more appropriate than felonies.”
The prospect of dozens of Jan. 6 rioters cutting deals for minor sentences could be hard to explain for the Biden administration, which has characterized the Capitol Hill mob as a uniquely dangerous threat. Before assuming office, Biden said the rioters’ attempt to overturn the election results by force “borders on sedition”; Attorney General Merrick Garland has called the prosecutions his top early priority, describing the storming of Congress as “a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
And yet – these unarmed misdemeanor trespassers continue to be demonized as murderous threats and have their rights trampled by government and giant corporations because of it.
The Angry Leftist Backlash…
These are some randomly chosen responses to Greenwald that each represent the most common talking points and line of argument that dozens of others were seen also using:
They can just get public defenders…
^This guy says applauds the journalist for “exposing” that some people being persecuted with ludicrous charges threatening to ruin their lives are trying to get voluntary help from other private citizens to get a good defense. He “didn’t know [that] was happening” and needed corporate journalism to expose that dirty deed. See, it’s a good thing because these people who haven’t been convicted of a crime yet are “terrorists” for having protested against the state that he’s simping for here
Disagreeing with a Leftist is Cancel Culture…
+Criticizing a women is misogynst…
+The targets of the piece can afford it…
A lot of haters used the 3 outrage points in ^this reply, accusing Greenwald of:
1- being involved in Cancel Culture for… er… disagreeing with someone (lol – that’s not what cancelling is, or what cancel culture is/means)
2- being misogyst for disagreeing with a woman (lol – that *is* basically what that word is/means in modern times, sadly), &
3- dismissing the argument that a huge corporation using its platform to persecute minority groups is fine because, like, duh you guys – if you can afford to both take a day off work and buy a night at a DC Holiday Inn for $70, then you can obviously also afford the $10,000+ attorney fees to go up against the limitless funds of the United States Government. like come on guys.
That last one is especially poorly thought out, not just because of the “if you can afford a hotel room then you can afford weeks of legal defense bills” idiocy but because it creates a fan fiction about everyone charged and their employment. Typically the logic goes “if you have time to spend a day protesting, you probably don’t have a job”, but these people can’t go with that or they might have to defend the rights and personhood of people they were told were meritless scumbags, so they have to invent jobs and lives for them and then determine that their take-home-pay from those employment positions is more than enough to buy fair representation against the State.
If these people deserve legal defense, then don’t allow people to help them pay for it – just defend all of them yourself!
^Then there’s this one using the excuse that instead of advocating for freedom of association among people making consensual bids to help defend the persecuted – Greenwald (who lives in Brazil) should fly back to the US, drop his life and livelihood, rent a house, reactivate his license to practice law in the States, and then represent all 200+ cases of those charged in the Jan 6 riots. You know, because Reasons. Makes way more sense than just letting those people pay for their own individual legal representations.
Disagreement is harassment & bullying
+ this is apPauling because Brenna is an intern for USA TODAY
“A literal intern”. lolwut? It’s okay to use your platform on twitter to disagree with a metaphorical intern, but a “literal intern” who uses their corporate platform on the nations 2nd most distributed news source to “bully and harass” (by Kendall Brown’s logic – not by realist terms) marginalized groups under persecution by the state for protesting their government in unarmed but inappropriate ways is cool?
The full cry-bully Septuplet
The award goes to Soledad O’Brien for fitting all 7 of the most shallow and vapid anger tropes used to dismiss rather than rebut valid points in one single tweet.
- Call dissent an “attack”
- “You can’t disagree with females” trope
- “She’s just an intern [writing for a major corporate journalism outlet]”
- Light criticism = “nasty” to snowflake mentality
- “It’s Misogynistic to criticize women” trope
- Dismissal of legitimate point as “trolling”
- “This person doesn’t deserve the time [that i’m spending to convince you that that is the case]” trope
The Power-Play Tactic at hand – Explained
Media figures, outlets, and their supporters have never appreciated dissent but this level of whining about a pundits criticism of a journalists use of their corporate platform is a fairly new cultural development, though a very old tactic.
The strategy is a straight power-play that leverages victim culture to create an aggressive soldier-class that is expected to be treated like clergy. If they could get away with using religious status terms like that, they no doubt would, but instead they anoint their offensive linemen & women as a clergy-class by using the “poor baby / how dare you!” defense and attack. The Left, more than anyone else, desires not just a fair ability to make its case, but a totalitarian monopoly on an issue without dissent. Since they can’t legally do this, they socially engineer this as best they can by using figures with pitiable pasts or underage figures like Greta Thunberg to make their aggressive arguments and then cry foul if criticized. Their dream scenario:
And this, of course, in the context of journalists and pundits actively targeting private citizens, and often minors to be taken down. Compare, for example, the treatment of Brenna T Smith, an adult woman who bragged about exposing the powerless to further scrutiny and persecution with her first journalistic attempt and got sarcastically congratulated for it, to Nick Sandman – a 16 year old boy who politely stood still and smiled while getting harassed by a senior adult banging a drum in his face for no reason and became national news under the false premise that he was somehow bullying his harasser.
Greenwald recognizes the tactic and called it out as well: