Glenn Greenwald Profile picture
Jun 18, 2021 18 tweets 9 min read Read on X
Questions About the FBI's Role in 1/6 Are Mocked Because the FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media

greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-ab…
The FBI has been manufacturing and directing terror plots and criminal rings for decades. But now, reverence for security state agencies reigns.

Look at the FBI cartoons these liberal media corporations employ to mock any suggestion FBI may be dishonest or less than scrupulous:
It is confirmed fact that the FBI has infiltrated at least some if not all of the key groups they allege plotted the 1/6 Capitol riot.

It is infinitely more rational to believe they had informants embedded in these groups than to smugly mock the suggestion that they did not.
What's particularly galling about the liberal defense of FBI -- "oh, don't be so conspiratorial and weird as to wonder if the FBI might have manufactured and used informants to direct terror plots -- is that we know they did this, repeatedly, throughout the first War on Terror.
What's really happening is clear. During the Trump years, reverence among liberals for the FBI & CIA skyrocketed. Liberal media outlets like HuffPost are virtual FBI outposts, working for them to find their suspects. So any maligning of the FBI is met with anger and disgust.
Mock all you want. Use ad hominem fallacies against those doing the reporting and raising these questions (they're white nationalists!). Anyone rational will demand answers to these questions. Anyone who tries to delegitimize them is a propagandist for the security state.
But this is liberal media culture: no questioning the FBI. No demanding evidence before the security state's claims are believed. Trust in the FBI and CIA operatives who dominates large media corporations. But these questions still demand answers:

greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-ab…
Here's a popular journalist among the online left, making the same key point that Revolver News and Fox made in raising these questions. Maybe since he's saying it, the CNN/NBC/WPost axis can start to think about it instead of smugly mocking it:

This is an actual quote from CNN's @ChrisCuomo when purporting to debunk questions about FBI's role in the 1/6 riot:

"Let's talk about what is true, and not true, in this scenario. Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe....What's the reality here?"

This is the news you're consuming.
Literally nothing makes liberals angrier -- especially their (ahem) journalists -- more than suggestions than perhaps the FBI is being less than truthful or their actions less than scrupulous.

That's why they love the outlets that employ all the FBI operatives. Just see this:
When you work for a news outlet that has an almost entirely liberal/Democratic audience -- which is true of NYT, WP, NPR, CNN, MSNBC -- and you're reporting on an agency that 80% of Democrats revere (FBI), obviously the only thing you can do when someone maligns them is mock it.
How can you honestly report on questions about the ethics or truthfulness of the FBI or CIA when you look around you and see that the media corporation that pays your bills and mortgage has hired all of the leaders of those agencies? You're trapped, required to protect them.
FBI and CIA used to control large US media corporations clandestinely. Now they do it in the open. The TV stars who work for them don't think there's anything odd about saying: "now, to get the truth, we turn to my colleague, the ex FBI/CIA Director. Tell us what we should know."
This is liberal TV 👆. The corporate execs programming for a liberal audience do this because they know liberals eat this shit up. They know they've been trained to see CIA/FBI operatives as oracles of Truth, so that's who they hire. Those mocking FBI's role have this mentality.
When it comes to understanding what did and did not happen on 1/6, these are the outlets -- filled with former FBI and CIA agents on their payroll -- that you should absolutely trust. Look how reliable they are:
I'll be on Fox at the top of the hour, 8 pm ET, talking about this article and the reason liberals and their journalists are so protective of the FBI (as polls show, both the FBI and CIA are very popular among the vast majority of liberals: just a fact):

greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-ab…
I just got to talk about the CIA's pernicious Operation Mockingbird for the first time on American television, I believe, ever. You'll never guess where I got to do that.

intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…
The amazing thing is that Operation Mockingbird -- the clandestine CIA plot to shape US media coverage to manipulate Americans -- would now be completely gratuitous, since now they just do it right in the open by placing their operatives in the newsrooms of corporate outlets.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ggreenwald

Jul 22
Please watch this. If you're American or British, you're paying for the mass famine Israel has been imposing and continues to impose on Gaza.

Alex de Waal is a leading famine scholar who has worked on most recent famines. Listen to what he says here about starvation in Gaza:
More here from Waal -- if you can bear to listen to it -- on exactly what the IDF and US are doing to block food from entering Gaza, and the reason why Stage 5 famine and dying of starvation is one of the worst ways a human being can perish:

The French Press Association issued a statement on how they have had journalists die in war zones -- but never of starvation.

Several of their Gazan colleagues can no longer work due to severe malnutrition.

This century's worst crime against humanity:

Read 4 tweets
Apr 2
Yale's "Fascism expert" Jason Stanely -- Yale's "Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy" (does anyone now who that is?) -- explains why he's fleeing the US in fear withYale's Timothy Snyder and his wife Marci Shore -- to Canada, which he calls "the Ukraine of of North America." Image
He says Canada is Ukraine beacaue it's a bastion of freedom and nobility threatened an by authoritarian neighbor.

The absolute narcissism and melodrama of these people: there are those whose civil liberties are threatened. Celebrated, rich Yale professors are not among them.
Extra gross that Snyder is very wealthy by heralding himself the world's leading warrior against fascism. His book implores others not to "anticipatorily obey" Trump.

2 months into Trump's term, he flees the US as if he's an underground #Resistance leader in occupied France.Image
Read 4 tweets
Mar 8
If Joe Biden had announced that any private universities that allow criticism of him or Dems shall immediately lose all federal funding -- while keeping the funding if they allow criticisms of Trump -- would that have been constitutional since no school has the right to funding?
How about if Biden cut off all federal funding to universities that deny the validity of the trans identity or the existence of multiple genders -- on the ground that such teaching incites violence against trans people and is hate speech?

Would that have been constitutional?
The only tactic needed to induce support for censorship is train people to believe the views they hate are violence.

Anti-trans activists are inciting violence and calling for genocide, etc.

Opponents of Israel's war on Gaza are calling for genocide and must be censored, etc. etc.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 4
During the Dem primary campaign, one of RFK Jr.'s core issues was free speech and opposing censorship. Then he became known for wanting to combat chronic disease.

So what does he use his first month for? Threatening universities which allow protests against Israel on campus:
Note: you're free to protest the US on campus. You can protest any country or group: just not Israel.

And of course this censorship - like all censorship - is justified the name of stopping hate speech and keeping one group "safe": as if they're being relentlessly attacked.
Every government in the world -- including the most repressive and tyrannical -- "protects free speech" for the views they like.

It's the views they most hate that are targeted. And the most sacred issue for many in the Trump Admin is Israel: that is what's therefore shielded. Image
Read 4 tweets
Mar 1
There's nothing stopping Germany or the EU from funding war in Ukraine until the end of eternity if they wish, or sending their citizens to Ukraine to fight Russia.

But the German Greens -- the worst of the worst -- are emblematic of European liberals: all posturing, no action.
British pundits prance around as if they're Churchill, and Macron walks around like he's a tough guy, and German Greens and other vague Berlin liberals posture as if they're the paragon of compassion: all while they rely on the US to finance wars, fight and protect them.
Zelensky begged and begged Westerners to get off line and stop tweeting with their blue-yellow emojis and instead go to Ukraine to help them fight the Russian Army, knowing he couldn't win without non-Ukrainians volunteering to fight. Very, very few did.

theguardian.com/world/2022/feb…
Read 4 tweets
Feb 21
Critique of the US Security State is not part of the mainstream DNC left's agenda.

Bernie and AOC rarely condemn the CIA, NSA, FBI, NED because they (correctly) see them as political allies.

Also, it's usually good in politics when a faction adopts one's long-standing beliefs. Image
You can read the NYT's hilarious article for free, as a gift from me.

The long-time US foreign policy and CIA/NSA critique of, say, Chomsky isn't found in the mainstream DNC left: only on the populist right.

nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/…
For a long-time, harsh critiques of US foreign policy and interventionism were found on the populist right. Listen to Pat Buchanan (who worked for Nixon and Reagan) as well as Ron Paul on US policy toward Israel. Very, very few Dems now speak this way:

Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(