Tucker interviews Glenn Greenwald on the decline of free speech on Israel and Jews.
I thought I was quite well informed about the role of Jewish activism in suppressing speech Jews don’t like, but lots of information that I was only dimly aware of. In the wake of the Bondi Beach murders in Australia, people are being imprisoned for wearing t-shirts supporting Palestine. It’s not so bad in the U.S. yet, but the Jewish activists would like to accomplish the same thing here even against the highly entrenched First Amendment protections. The power of this interview is the sheer number of examples showing the power of the Jewish community in the U.S. and their status as a special, privileged group — in particular in the Trump administration, although it was certainaly also apparent in previous administrations. For example:
The Trump administration came in promising to dismantle DEI, they did dismantle a lot of so-called DEI programs for black people for months recognizing this group or that group. But in many of these agreements, Tucker, with some of the biggest universities, they included classic DEI requirements. But not for black people, not for women, not for trans or gay people, but for Jews. And there’s a lot of these programs that say, once a year you have to have an event recognizing the importance of Jewish life on campus. You have to go recruit at Jewish day schools to try and get people who are Jewish to go to the school. You have the create a whole office where people feel offended. And it’s a series of rights and agencies available only for Jews, it is classic DEI. So they dismantled DEI for some of the unfavored groups, but created new DEI programs for the ones that are most favored.
The organized Jewish community has also thwarted the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement:
Another thing that never got a lot of attention, and it drives me very crazy to this day because it’s so preposterous, and what it really predates October 7th, I would say it’s now up to 35 or 36 states in the United States, the vast majority of which are red states, but not all, that have enacted laws that make it a requirement if you want a government contract that you certify that you do not support a boycott of Israel. And a lot of people who had contracts before this law was passed ended up getting fired because they refused. There had been hurricane relief aid that cities have conditioned on signing a form that says you don’t support a boycott of Israel. There have been all kinds of firings in universities for people who criticize Israel. So it’s been developing for quite a while. It’s not like it just started.
And quite a bit of attention on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which is extremely broad and, e.g., would classify as anti-Semitism any statement that an American Jew is more loyal to Israel than America.
Tucker [00:00:04] So for the last two weeks, you’ve probably been watching very carefully what’s happening in the conflict with Iran. The United States and Israel are engaged in a joint war against Iran. And all of us are trying to figure out what’s happened there. But as our attention is diverted outside of our borders, it’s also worth paying attention to what’s happening here and in the rest of the West that is not directly connected to this conflict, but still affected by it. And one of the things you notice is that our country. And certainly Europe and Australia and New Zealand and Canada have all clamped down on their own populations in very unusual, unprecedented ways over the past year, but particularly since this war started two weeks ago. And that’s a familiar phenomenon. Countries at war tend to become more authoritarian. It always happens. But we should be on guard against it. And one of the ways it is happening in the United States is that free speech is being curtailed, your inherent God-given right to say what you believe in public. That’s the basis of the United States. It’s the very core of our Bill of Rights, of our founding documents. It’s reason that we are exceptional in the world. It’s that one thing, our ability to say, what we think, because that right comes from God, not the government. That’s what our documents say. And so of all rights that we should be resistant to losing, that would be at the very top of the list. And yet there is a concerted effort as our next guest is about to explain, to strip that right from Americans using both the pretext of war and the cover of war. And again, we should be on guard against it. Glenn Greenwald has spent his entire professional life advocating for the freedom of speech, has been punished for it. He has been analyzing carefully what’s going on right now. He joins us now. Glenn, thanks a lot for doing this. How would you assess the state of free speech in the West right now?
Glenn Greenwald [00:02:01] It is seriously in peril. It’s often in peril, but it’s more in peril than ever before. And there are a couple of different reasons. Obviously, there’s been an attempt on the part of the EU to undermine the ability for people on this populist right to express certain views. And there’s a lot of attention paid to that, but the far more significant threat to free speech, and you and I have been talking about this Tucker since all the way back in 2023 after October 7th. Is the very concerted effort on the part of the Israeli government. And in each of these democratic countries, they have pro-Israel lobbying groups, not as strong as the United States, but still very strong, that have overtly said that there’s too much permissive language under the laws of these countries for what you can say about Israel. Netanyahu himself just a couple of months ago said that. We’re warning Western states you better do more to protect the Jews in your country and you better heed that warning and ever since, and even, you know, there’s been a spate of these kinds of things before that, but ever since there’s a lot of draconian changes to just obliterating free speech in the name of protecting this foreign country. The most brazen of which was, I don’t know if you saw, but the Australians after on the beach at the insistence of the Israelis. Passed a law banning a whole bunch of common political slogans that offend Israel, like from the river to the sea and things of that nature. And a bunch of Australian citizens were angry that they’re not allowed to express this political view any longer or else they’ll be arrested. And they went as kind of civil disobedience wearing a t-shirt that said from the River to the Sea. And each and every one of them was arrested and processed through the court system. So when you see these sorts of things these kinds of new speech codes that have been promulgated, including in the United States, a whole bunch of legislative frameworks that really have no purpose other than to expand the definition of anti-Semitism that’s existed for decades to include a wider range of common criticisms of Israel or even of Jewish individuals. That is an extremely serious attack on free speech, not in the name of marginalized groups in our own country, but in the this foreign country.
Tucker [00:04:15] I just, the Australia story is so shocking that I didn’t think it was real at first. I talked to a friend in Australia who confirmed that it was, but it leaves so many questions. The first of which is, how does a foreign prime minister have the power to tell citizens many thousands of miles away that they’re not allowed to criticize him.
Glenn Greenwald [00:04:36] I think if you had asked me this three years ago, I would have had to have been delicate because the answer is something a lot of people were unaware of or even thought was taboo. But I think a lot people understand now that these countries have very strong organizations, activist groups, well-funded lobbies that are not loyal to the interests of ordinary Australians or British people or Canadians or Americans, but instead are coordinating. What these laws need to be in the West in order to most effectively and aggressively shield Israel. And Bondi Beach was, you know, in fairness, a pretty horrific attack. There was, you know two gunmen and Hanukkah celebration and gun down people. But since when in the West do we believe that the solution to massacres or to mass shootings which happen all the time is to immediately curb free speech and not only curb it but make it illegal to express a whole wide range of views. And it’s not just Australia Tucker, it’s happening and I can go through every single example of which there are many over the past two years and especially recently where very similar things are happening in Canada, in- South America, all throughout Europe, and even increasingly in the United States. I can just give one example. One of the most disturbing things I think, and I got very little attention, was that when President Trump got into office, he made combating anti-Semitism, a major priority across all agencies of his administration, they even have a. Anti-Semitism czar, who’s very, very aggressive. And a bunch of regulations got passed saying that if you criticize Israel, you’re not eligible for these kinds of programs. And what Israel did about 10 years ago was promulgated this very new, radically expanded hate speech code called the IHRA, which is the International Holocaust Remembrance Act. And it takes very benign and common views about Israel or about Jews, such as Israel is a racist society, or you can compare Israel to the Nazis, or the Jews played a role in killing Jesus, a whole bunch of other kind of criticism of either Israelis or Jews or Israel, and they banned it as hate speech. Which is, I thought what the American right was so angry about for so long, and when Trump negotiated when he withdrew funding from a bunch of colleges on the grounds that they were allowing too much anti-Semitism, every one of the negotiations required them to implement this aggressively expanded definition of anti-semitism so that even at professors of genocide and holocaust studies who have been teaching for decades decided that they had to change their reading because it was now prohibited in the name of Israel, this is America, where the First Amendment is still in place, and yet this is all over our academic institutions.
Tucker [00:07:36] And this all happened under the cover of combating wokeness, combating the left-wing death grip on American higher education, which is real. I mean, it’s the most real thing of all. But rather than break that grip, it hasn’t been broken. It’s still in place completely. This was used as like an opportunity to restrict the inherent free speech rights of Americans. And very few people noticed this. I didn’t understand it was happening.
Glenn Greenwald [00:08:06] Because the problem here is that it’s happening in our most elite institutions of higher learning, our universities, our colleges, which going back to the enlightenment, everybody agreed was the one place where you needed completely unfettered speech and debate, including offensive ideas to test things that had been declared taboo, to even dissect the most sacred orthodoxies. The fact that these speech restrictions are happening on college campuses, I think is extra disturbing and destructive to free speech. And there’s also, you know, it’s not, it is very hard to pinpoint because there’s been so many, you mentioned DEI. The Trump administration came in promising to dismantle DEI, they did dismantle a lot of so-called DEI programs for black people for months recognizing this group or that group. But in many of these agreements, Tucker, with some of the biggest universities, they included classic DEI requirements. But not for black people, not for women, not for trans or gay people, but for Jews. And there’s a lot of these programs that say, once a year you have to have an event recognizing the importance of Jewish life on campus. You have to go recruit at Jewish day schools to try and get people who are Jewish to go to the school. You have the create a whole office where people feel offended. And it’s a series of rights and agencies available only for Jews, it is classic DEI. So they dismantled DEI for some of the unfavored groups, but created new DEI programs for the ones that are most favored.
Tucker [00:09:43] Well, and that actually happened? Why did no one on the right say anything about it? Well, I didn’t say anything about it again, I wasn’t aware. And I should have been aware, it’s my fault. But I didn’t know what was happening. I mean, why did no-one mention it?
Glenn Greenwald [00:09:57] I’ve been mentioning it a lot, and there’s some university associations very worried about free speech and scholarship that have been active on it. But one of the things that happened is at the beginning of the Trump administration, there was a zillion different initiatives, they really came in prepared to their credit. And it was just one after the next. And I always felt like one of most dangerous ones was that they cut off university funding for all of our most important institutions. And these this government funding, you know, doesn’t go delay. Trans people in Armenia in the 17th century. The reason our universities get government funding is because that’s where the most important advances in technology and in science are developed. That’s where internet came from, was government funding of the internet research at universities. And they cut it all off, and they said, you’re not getting it back unless you agree to all of our conditions. And one of the main conditions was the installation of these heightened speech codes, hate speech codes that ban the airing and expression, not just by students, but by faculty of all sorts of ideas, had nothing to do with the protest. They also forced the firing of Middle East professors and chairs of departments who they deemed to be too friendly to criticism of Israel. It was a remarkable assault on academic freedom at our highest and most well-regarded educational institutions, and it was kind of done, as you said, with very little attention because there was this flurry of other stuff going on at the beginning of the Trump administration. But if you go back and look at what those agreements were, or what the DEI clauses were are, or what that IHRA hate speech code is, you will be shocked at the kinds of ideas that are no longer permitted to be expressed in classes, by faculty, in reading, in student debates, upon pain of being expelled or suspended or I’m tired.
Tucker [00:11:50] It’s shocking to me that that happened. And again, I just want to apologize for not understanding what was happening as it was. But I have to ask about the pretext for it. I mean, I hate seeing anybody hassled for his religion or ethnicity, Jews, Christians, Hindus. I just don’t like it, okay? And I hate what a lot of… Agents of neocon politics are now doing with Muslims, hate all the Muslims. I don’t like that any more than I like hate all Jews. But I wonder, was there massive harassment of Jewish students in the Ivy League? Are Jewish students underrepresented in Ivy League schools? Was there evidence that they were systematically discriminated against?
Glenn Greenwald [00:12:35] The ADL about a year ago issued this statement complaining that Hollywood had adopted all these diversity rules for how many actors you have to have and directors and whatever. And they complained that Jewish people were not among the minority groups that were part of the diversity count. And they basically argued not just implicitly but explicitly that Hollywood has long been known for discriminating against or creating barriers for the participation of Jews in various. Power sectors in Hollywood, which I think would come as a gigantic surprise to anybody who has ever had any remote familiarity with Hollywood. And the same is true at educational institutions. Go and look who the last seven of eight Harvard professors were. They were all Jewish. John Mearsheimer talked about this. He’s been in academia for 50 years and he said, I keep hearing that there’s this like. Problem with not enough Jews or Jews being attacked, I’ve been in academia for 50 years. The idea that Jews are underrepresented is so insultingly false, but the attempt to turn these educational institutions into somehow bastions of anti-Semitism, even though they’re filled with Jews at every crucial level, including donors and administrators and professors and students, you know, you always need a reason to censor. You always have to cite some sort of crisis. But I think the key thing here, Tucker, is that even if you believe those protests were anti-Semitic and harassing Jews, and it was wildly exaggerated for so many reasons, we don’t need to get into that. But these speech codes I’m talking about, that Trump forced the universities to adopt, our IHRA hate speech codes, they have nothing to do with protests. They’re not about conduct. They’re solely about ideas. I mean, I can just give you a couple. You’re not allowed to say that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor. You’re allowed to say the United States is a racist endeavor. You can say that about China or Japan or Iran, Norway, Indonesia, any other country on the planet. In our schools, you’re not allowed to say it’s a racist endeavor. You’re not allowed to claim that Jews participated in the killing of Jesus. You can’t draw comparisons between Israeli policy today and that of the Nazis. You can compare American wars to Nazis, any other country. It’s all special protections of the kinds that we told we were going to be done by. And there are so many more of these that are amazing, that are just so obviously protective speech, but no longer safely expressed in the college or university setting.
Tucker [00:15:08] But it leaves America, just like this war, it leaves American unprotected. So, I mean, not that these are protections and I would never, of course, support a law banning criticism of the country that I own, you know, America, we all own this country as citizens. So I would ever support those, but it’s just interesting that there’s no criticism of the United States, our country, that is banned or even discouraged. Only of a foreign country. Is that, is that correct?
Glenn Greenwald [00:15:42] There are no bans on your ability to criticize the American government, American wars, the American founding, you know, and that’s what’s remarkable. I was obviously vehemently opposed to the kind of tsunami of left-wing censorship that happened in our elite university. I was on your show many times to talk about why that was so dangerous. And I don’t want to in any way justify it. But what I will say is, at the very least, The ostensible pretextual argument for why we needed censorship, anti-black. Speech or anti-trans speech, whatever, is because we were protecting marginalized American citizens who belong to groups that were endangered. Totally false, totally dangerous, but at least they were trying to ostensibly protect American citizens in the United States. What’s so remarkable about these new codes is they’re only to protect Israel. Like imagine you go in and you’re a citizen of Australia and you wear a shirt criticizing or advocating for something with and you get arrested in your own democratic country of Australia it is bizarre Tucker there’s no other laws that would be applicable to any other countries. It’s only for this one country over and over and oh.
Tucker [00:16:58] And it also sends a very unsettling message because censorship, you know, is always levied on behalf of the people in charge, of course. The people with the power are the only ones who ever pass laws telling you can’t criticize them. I mean, of, course. And so what does this tell? I mean what does, it’s spooky. I’ve never been the guy who runs around saying, Israel runs the United States. Overstatement, you, know, but I don’t, I certainly don’t want to think that. But like if you can’t criticize a foreign country, then that country is in charge, right? I mean, what other conclusions should I draw?
Glenn Greenwald [00:17:32] I can’t really provide you with the cogent one. I will say, I think, and it doesn’t in any way justify or change anything you said, but I nonetheless think it’s important to note that I think one of the reasons this is happening, and Mearsheimer and Wald, who wrote the Israel Abbey book back in 2007, the pioneering first ever real book about the influence of the Israel abbey. They’ve recently talked about how, especially Mears Chamber, how… Back over the last several decades, it was very important for the Israel lobby to act kind of in the shadows. I don’t mean that nefarious. I mean, they just didn’t want it obvious if there was this force that, like most lobbyist groups, operate in the sewers and shadows of the Capitol. But over the past three years, the pro-Israel lobby has had to come out into the open. So much more than ever before, and really just be so explicit in calling everyone anti-Semitism, and advocating for speech restrictions. And the reason is, is because there has been a very radical, and from an Israeli perspective, an extremely alarming collapse in support for Israel among Americans in basically every demographic group other than conservatives over 50. So basically like decades on box watchers, but even conservatives under 50. Have all basically now have majority opinions that are disfavorable to Israel. And you see some of what they’ve been trying to do in response, Larry Ellison tried to buy TikTok, which was one of the perceived sources where so many people were hearing about anti-Israel criticisms. So they pried it out of the hands of the owners and put it into Larry Ellisons hand. You see the Ellison family buying CBS and news and putting Barry Weiss there. There’s an IDF soldier at TikTok. So these are all desperate moves. And I think the same is true with this very brazen attempt that they wouldn’t have done before. So out in the open trying to censor American speech for Israel, but it’s because they feel panic. They’re in panic. It’s kind of a desperation. That spiral of support for Israel among Americans, which had been utterly unthreatened for decades, is very rapid, and I don’t think it’s ever going back. And I think a lot of these efforts as kind of. Just obvious and with such a high potential for backlash are being pursued anyway because they’re just desperate about trying to find some way to reverse that public opinion trend in the United States.
Tucker [00:19:54] Either I’m misreading the goal or this is the dumbest campaign ever waged, because if the goal is to make people like Israel, this is having the opposite effect, of course. So maybe, and it’s, I mean, really having the opposite effect. It’s changing people’s minds against Israel. Israel is doing that. And so you have to wonder, like, maybe that is the goal.
Glenn Greenwald [00:20:22] We saw the exact same thing many times, but most recently with the left and you know in the wake of George Floyd and Me too. They just started kind of frantically accusing everybody of being a racist and a white supremacist and a misogynist and people are really tight You know that was peak woke and people got really tired of it and and so many people were being accused that at some Point it just lost its meaning and people not angry about it. Nobody appreciates those who are trying to stifle debate there was a huge backlash in terms of people no longer caring about being called racist because they drained it of all its meaning. Exactly the same thing is so clearly happening here. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of resentment the more people see how much of a speech crack town in the West generally and in the United States in particular there is in defense of this foreign country. But again, I would just go back to the obliteration of Gaza, all the inhumane atrocities that we saw that accompanied it, that we saw literally every day that we realized the United States was paying for under Joe Biden and arming and funding. It really radically transformed how people think of their own government and how they think of Israel. And I just think that this is all an effort to put the cat in the bag because there’s always been a perception that Israel’s existence depends on widespread support of the United States, and that is crumbling.
Tucker [00:21:46] I hesitate even to say this because it pains me so, so much, but we’ve been doing shows together for a long time, 10 years, and the basis of most of them has been free speech. It’s the most American idea there is, and it’s the one worth dying for, and we both have always agreed on that. And you’re a lifelong figure on the left, I’m a lifelong on the right, and, we both agreed that the left was the real threat to free speech, because it was. Over the last year… The right seems every bit as the right, whatever that means, like the Republican Party, I guess, seems every but as threatening to free speech, maybe even more so, maybe more effective in this attack on free speech than the left. I really don’t want to think that. It pains me to admit it, but I want to be honest, and I’m starting to believe that.
Glenn Greenwald [00:22:35] Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s because the left suddenly had an awakening about the importance and virtues of free speech and the need to protect it. It’s really because they’re out of power and the right is in power. And that, of course, is something very common when people claim to believe in certain liberties and certain civil rights and they get into office and suddenly they find reasons to unravel it. But this has been going on for a while. I think you mentioned how the hate speech codes at universities didn’t a lot of attention. Another thing that never got a lot of attention, and it drives me very crazy to this day because it’s so preposterous, and what it really predates October 7th, I would say it’s now up to 35 or 36 states in the United States, the vast majority of which are red states, but not all, that have enacted laws that make it a requirement if you want a government contract that you certify that you do not support a boycott of Israel. And a lot of people who had contracts before this law was passed ended up getting fired because they refused. There had been hurricane relief aid that cities have conditioned on signing a form that says you don’t support a boycott of Israel. There have been all kinds of firings in universities for people who criticize Israel. So it’s been developing for quite a while. It’s not like it just started.
Tucker [00:23:58] Hurricane relief was predicated on a signed statement that you don’t support a boycott for Israel. In other words, you don’t even have to be actively boycotting Israel, but if you conceptually support it, you can’t get hurricane relief, emergency disaster aid.
Glenn Greenwald [00:24:16] First of all, this is the kind of thing that I know people don’t believe unless they go look it up. I mean, it’s so shocking. I know. If I didn’t see it myself, I also wouldn’t believe it. I think if I heard that, I’d be like, that’s a conspiracy theorist saying crazy stuff. No, that actually is something that was instituted in many places. Different kinds of language, but mostly it requires that you certify that you don’t participate in a boycott of Israel in order to get a state contract or in order to get. Hurricane relief. There were HS regulations once RFK took over that were forced on by the administration that said certain grants you can’t get unless you certify that you’re not supporting a boycott of Israel. Talking about grants for research that would help Americans’ health that would then got conditioned on this sort of thing. So this has been something that has been going on for a while. Let me just say one of the Supported that that ban on people getting state contracts unless they certified they won’t support a boycott of Israel was Andrew Cuomo when he was governor of New York. When he was Governor of New york, Andrew Cuomoo ordered the state to boycott the state of North Carolina and the state of Indiana over anger due to because of their bathroom bills, their trans bathroom.
Tucker [00:25:35] I remember that.
Glenn Greenwald [00:25:37] Cuomo ordered a boycott of American states. Once these laws started proliferating, Andrew Cuomo embraced this and said, if you boycott Israel, New York State will boycott you, meaning we won’t do business with you. This is someone who said, it’s totally fine to boycott your fellow countrymen, your states in the United States. Not only is it fine, I’m ordering those boycotts. You can boycott any other country on the planet as well, any other state, any city. You just can’t boycott Israel. So many American laws in place that impose draconian deprivations in the event that you’re not able to certify that truthfully.
Tucker [00:26:21] It’s, it’s beyond belief that there, uh, not only states that did this, the majority of states, but you’re telling, but that there’s been no protest against it, I mean, cause of course there’s no ban on boycotting the United States. I mean our country doesn’t play a role in any of this. It’s like a foreign country of 9 million people. Their interests determine whether you get a hurricane relief or a federal contract, like why has no one protested this?
Glenn Greenwald [00:26:48] It’s just, you know, for a long time before October 7th, especially, there was just kind of a, Israel was sort of on the back burner, but also you know this very well. There was really a taboo. There was a high career and reputational costs if you were gonna talk about Israel and anything other than the reverent, you know bipartisan script that we always have to finance and arm and support Israel and go to war for Israel. If you deviated at all, a lot of people. Know, paid a big price for that. So I think there was just always, you know, I’ve been writing about Israel and this sort of stuff and its influence in the United States for 20 years. And there are many times when I saw things that I just couldn’t believe were real, and they were real. And as you say, they got very little attention because there was a climate That’s convince people, impulsively or otherwise, you’re better off just not talking about Israel. There’s a million other things you can go talk about. Leave the Israel topic alone. And a lot of people did it. And after October 7th, it just became unsustainable.
Tucker [00:27:49] And I think after this war, it will become unsustainable. I don’t think that any of this can remain unchallenged and some of it will be overturned. And actually, let me just take a quick side detour here and ask you, this war is not popular. I just want to say on the record, I’m hoping for the best resolution for the United States because this is my country, but it’s not popular and it hasn’t been from the very first day. In fact, the majority of Americans are against it. But there have been no protests, no meaningful protests against it, what is that?
Glenn Greenwald [00:28:29] One of the problems is that there’s a constitutional framework that was created by the founders that everyone go read the Constitution Article 1 says that Congress has the exclusive right to declare war and not just to declare a war, but other aspects of how those wars are conducted. And there was a reason for it. If you go read The Federalist Papers, if you go, read a bunch of other stuff that was written about it at the time. The reason is, is because wars are the singular most potentially dangerous thing, the worst thing, the most destructive thing that a country can embark upon. And the people who end up having their lives risked for it are the citizens of the country fighting the war. At least that used to be true. That’s no longer true, but it was true back then. And the theory was, if you’re gonna start a war, you have to have the consent of the people who are gonna actually be fighting in the war or paying for the war or otherwise burdening themselves. And the way to do that is you have… The branch that’s closest to the American people is the Congress because they’re elected, they’re electing every two years. And that was why it was so important to approve those wars. We’ve completely gotten away from that. Presidents believe in both parties. They can start wars and they frequently do without any kind of attempt to gain congressional approval Obama started the war in Libya with no congressional approval a couple days later The house actually voted on whether to authorize it the house voted. No, we’re not authorizing it and Obama Just went ahead and did it anyway So we’ve lost this idea that we’re supposed to have a debate that it’s in the hands of anybody other than the president I think beyond that though. I Traditionally, people have gotten really angry about wars, have started protesting wars, when there’s a lot of Americans deployed in Vietnam by a draft, but even in Iraq when there’s lot of troops coming home in body bags or dying. And I think the idea is if we’re just air bombing, just air-bombing, if that’s all we’re doing, it just doesn’t provide the impetus for Americans to go out and protest. And also… The big difference between the Iraq war and the Iran war, for all the valid criticisms of Bush and Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and that whole crew, at least they had a nationwide campaign for more than a year to convince Americans that they should support the war and laying out the case. It was filled with lies and falsehoods and all kinds of wrong and ignorant predictions, but at least, they did it. This war was just like- Here it is, and there was no public debate, meaningful debate about whether we should have a second war. It wasn’t part of the 2024 campaign. So I think it just happened so quickly. There was never really any consistent rationale or motive as to what we were doing or what the goals were. And I just don’t think that gave Americans the fuel to protest. I think you will see that if this gets further out of control.
Tucker [00:31:27] In the modern age though, protests are organized and they’re organized over social media or by text message and they are organized by groups with a stake in, you know, politically whatever the outcome of the debate is. So, you know the Iraq war protests were organized by groups and the George Floyd protests were organized by group so we could identify and paid for by companies. Whose names we know, it wasn’t just random Americans showing up on the national mall to express their opinions, they were bussed in. And I’m not criticizing that at all. That’s not happening now. So it’s not just that Americans aren’t engaged like they’re opposed to it, but there’s no group on the left that seems interested in making a big deal out of this. I just find that so weird.
Glenn Greenwald [00:32:17] Well, I think the other problem with it is that although there are a lot of Democrats posturing as being opposed, when they go on like MSNBC or whatever. There’s no real effort on the part of the Democrats in Congress to take any steps that would actually impede the war. I mean, there was a vote about whether they need authorization and they lost that vote. But the reality is that the Democratic leadership, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries. They support this war, especially Chuck Schumer. They have no interest in doing anything like having votes on funding, because they don’t think it’s politically wise. And when you have no leadership from the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be the opposition party, I think that also contributes to a reason why there’s not a lot of nationwide protest. You need leaders to do it. But again, I think the big issue was it just came out of nowhere. It wasn’t like the Iraq war, other words where you had time to protest. You just woke up one day and there was a true social post from Trump in the middle of the night announcing the war. And then there was the war
Tucker [00:33:23] No, that’s a really good point. And so like so many of these changes, it was unheralded, it just happened. So, and so just back to the speech question. I know there was a not famous enough moment where the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who’s I think been a pretty good governor in some ways, but traveled to Israel to sign what looked like hate speech laws that are applicable in Florida. Is that a mischaracterization some of his supporters denied that actually happened? Did it actually happen and what does it mean?
Glenn Greenwald [00:33:57] It did actually happen. He actually went to Israel twice to sign laws in Israel that apply to people in Florida. The first one was kind of benign and had some connection to Israel. The second one though, which was in I believe 2022 when he was gearing up to run for the Republican primary nomination. A big part of what the strategy was, was they were gonna get and they did get most of the hardcore fanatical Zionist groups and pro-Israel activist types and pundit types. They lined up not behind Trump, behind Ron DeSantis. And that was very much a part of his strategy was currying favor with this crowd, which okay, that’s what people do in politics. To go to, and I don’t wanna completely mischaracterize the law because there is some, you don’t want you can overstate it, But it absolutely was a law that took certain speech and prescribed it, not for the people in Israel, but for the people in Florida. And it was about funding hate speech programs, and again, only about anti-Semitism in Israel. And he went to Israel in order to sign it. That was just true. I can’t, I don’t understand that either, you know, that that was not something that provoked a lot of outrage. Why is he signing bills for the people in Florida. In Israel when it actually can have the effect of confining or restricting the speech of the people in Florida in relation to Israel. It seems like he was siding with this foreign country over the citizens of the state that elected him.
Tucker [00:35:35] It’s, if nothing else, it’s so humiliating. It’s so obviously humiliating, I mean, I’m going to a foreign country to sign a law, any law that affects you in my state. I mean what, I’m just trying to understand the psychology here. I mean again, like a lot of things you’ve just mentioned, I didn’t really believe that could actually have happened so I wasn’t as focused on it. When it did happen, I should have been. My mistake, but I’m wondering the thinking of like these Rayleigh government officials who pushed this, there were some, how do they think that helped them? Didn’t they think it would engender resentment? How could it not engender resentments?
Glenn Greenwald [00:36:16] I mean, did it though, because, you know, again, I think that there wasn’t that much attention paid to how many people really know that Ron DeSantis did it. Every time I mention it, people who don’t know are shocked and angry for obvious reasons. But if this were something that were done in isolation, you could create some kind of rationale. You know, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Ron DeSantis was trying to be a pro-Israel, you know, candidate. Going there kind of does that. There’s a lot of money there. You know, you have Miriam Adelson It’s it can be a campaign strategy But the problem is is that I can point you to every institution laws and hate speech codes Do you know how many people got fired after October 7th for expressing? Criticism of Israel or dissenting from the narrative about Israel Bill Ackman Assembled blacklist for students who signed a petition Blaming Israel for the conflict in general this was a huge crackdown on speech after October 7th. People and media and journalism and art and everywhere got fired, including again in academia, for the crime of expressing views about Israel that were deemed off limits. And it is pervading our country. You can see it in every sector all the time. I mean, I chronicle it all the time, so it’s like most of them aren’t available off my head because there’s so many.
Tucker [00:37:38] It’s, where does this go? Like, is this is totally incompatible with our founding documents, with the history of the United States and with American culture itself. It’s too much. And so it either becomes much, much worse or it goes away. I don’t think we can stay where we are. That’s my instinct. What’s yours?
Glenn Greenwald [00:37:57] Well, I’m Jewish. So when people talk about anti-Semitism and the Christ of anti-semitism, that is something that I don’t dismiss lightly. Like anti-semitism is real. It’s been dangerous in history. You know, like anti-black racism, lots of other things. And for a long time, there was this kind of victimhood mentality after October 7, that Jews were uniquely endangered in the United States that I found very I’m persuasive to put it generously, but I do now think. That when you have all these people who are loyal to Israel buying up our media and putting IDF soldiers in charge of TikTok censorship and Barry Weiss here at CBS News to kind of control the moderation. And on top of that, you have this war now that was for Israel, or at least in large part Israel played a very big role. I mean, even government officials mentioned that, obviously it was Israel’s main adversary. There’s no denying that. That’s when I really start to think that the more they try and view this anti-Semitism accusation at everybody, the more, they get more desperate as we were talking about before and interfere in our American politics to try and have lockdowns and crackdowns on our speech. The more Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and all these politicians constantly are talking about how often they’re in Israel and saying that their main issue when they ran for Congress was defending Israel. I do think that has a very high potential of producing anti-Semitism because at some point people are going to be asking what is going on here? Why is there so much external influence on behalf of this foreign country and who’s doing it? That is something that worries me.
Tucker [00:39:42] Well, I think all of us have every reason to be worried, and it’s absolutely producing actual anti-Semitism. I see it every single day when I go on the internet, which I try not to do too much, but you can’t avoid it. And it’s real, too. It’s not just like, I don’t like what Israel’s doing, APEC is bad, which I vehemently agree with. It’s like, Jews are bad. And it not clear to me exactly where all of it’s coming from. I think some of it inorganic, clearly. These are basically ideological false flags But I do think some of it is organic. I think some it is absolutely real. And I hate to agree with the ADL, but on this specific point, is anti-Semitism rising in the United States? Oh, no doubt. And it’s bad, it’s totally bad. So that kind of gets to my deeper concern, which is not about Jews specifically, it’s about all Americans. I feel like ethnic conflict is being encouraged in this country.
Glenn Greenwald [00:40:43] Yes. I mean, we have had ethnic conflict before, and part of what we hated so much about the left-wing ideology and the way it expressed itself over the last decade was the fact that it just seemed so maliciously designed to defy people based on these very primal, crude demographic groups, and to separate them and tell them to all go into their corners and to blame the others, which is incredibly volatile and dangerous to do. And I think that, you know, if, if you turn on, I don’t know how often you do this, but you know, there’s this whole, like, as you get older, there is like these different sectors of media and entertainment that you know nothing about because it’s not for you. But I try and make an effort to pay attention to them. You know, I, there are all these like huge celebrities, but because you’re over 30, you have no idea who it is. Oh yes. I’m familiar. They’re super famous and you’re like, who’s that? But I try hard, especially when it comes to political stuff, to pay attention to big streamers and that whole culture where Gen Z does politics. And you will be shocked if you go in and listen to it or watch it for any amount of time how common, how overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment is in a very aggressive way and how often it does kind of morph into, sometimes ironically, sometimes transgressively. But it’s very linked to how people feel about Jews. And let me just say one quick thing on this Tucker, because this is such an important point that is hard to express like on social media or whatever. One of the, in that IHRA hate speech definition that Israel promulgated, it ended up in the criminal law and the EU, it’s now in Australia, it’s on our campuses. One of things that bans is conflating Jews and Israel. Meaning, if Israel does something bad, you’re not allowed to say, oh, this was done by Jews because that is a conflation that is considered anti-Semitic because you’re blaming a bunch of Jews who had nothing to do with Israel for what you’re criticizing. Right. Yet, look how often the people who are on the other side of that debate who love Israel, who constantly say they worry about anti-semitism, they conflate Israel and Jews all the time. And I think this is the problem. So if you say, you know, Israel killed. Know, 10,000 children, they’ll immediately say, oh, look, blood libel, he’s accusing Jews of killing, you know, 10000 people or having, you know raped soldiers. And no, you didn’t accuse Jews, you accused Israel. But when they conflate it in order to place criticism of Israel off limits to make it seem like you’re attacking Jews, even though you’re not, that too is a very dangerous conflation that they themselves are promoting. So that when people now think about Israel in their minds, because they’re constantly hearing it, that means Jews. So if they’re angry at Israel, they think Israel did something disgusting, if they don’t want the US funding Israel or Israel interfering, that quickly becomes Jews. And it’s their fault, the fault of the people who are Israel supporters in managing this discourse.
Tucker [00:43:43] I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s the original sin here. I think it’s very short-sighted and dangerous. If there were a self-identified Christian nation that was just for Christians, there isn’t one, but if there was, I’d be like, yeah, go Christian country, I’m Christian. And then if that country started behaving in ways that were brutal and outrageous and deceptive and started killing people because of their bloodline, really behaving in way that were impossible to defend, and they started filling my airwaves with propaganda about how every Christian has to be loyal to this country doing things that are nauseating to me. I would feel, first of all, I’d be outraged by that. Don’t do that in my name, would be number one. And number two, I would fell threatened. I would felt physically endangered by that, why are you tying me to this? I’ve got nothing to do with this. I mean.
Glenn Greenwald [00:44:32] I would, I think. Well, and that was very much what happened after September 11th, there was this huge danger that because some Islamic groups or Islamic countries had participated in this horrific attack that all Muslims were gonna be blamed and so many Muslims had all sorts of different views. You’re talking about hundreds of millions of them or a billion. And one of the things George W Bush did to his credit was work very hard from the start to say, no, we’re not at war with Islam. This isn’t Islam that did this, this is this. Distorted version of Islam. And that I think is exactly what we’re seeing now is it’s such an important rhetorical tool to say Israel is the state of the Jews. Oh, look, Tucker Carlson said this horrible thing, even though you said it about Israel, about the Jews, and this constant conflation for the reasons you just said is exactly what if you’re in that group being tied up to this nation state, you should fear more than anything and combat as passionately as you can.
Tucker [00:45:29] I mean, you must feel that. Well, I guess you’re maybe in a separate category because you are Jewish, but you had the same views for your entire professional life and you’ve been very vocal about it. But I mean this must be like a real concern for a lot of people who aren’t against Israel but are not on board with the Netanyahu government and they’re somehow tied to this against their will. Like, ugh.
Glenn Greenwald [00:45:55] Yeah. I mean, you know, if you’re going to have this foreign country, and this is what I was getting up before, exerting massive amounts of influence inside another country, you better make sure that you’re doing it in a way that’s very subtle, that’s fairly visible. You know, and that they were always doing that. And that’s why they were so angry at Edmure Shimer and Wald’s book. You go back and if you don’t remember, Look at that They’re just the absolute attacks on them. People lost their minds about that book because it dragged into the light something that was always supposed to be secret. The problem now is it’s not secret. The desperation and panic have made them have to come out into the night and be very open about what they’re doing and people see it and If you’re going to just sit there and be very visible and vocal and all over the place about how we have to change our laws or restrict speech and everything else, fire people to defend this foreign country or protect this foreign county, the outcome is going to be very predictable. And I think you’re seeing a lot of that.
Tucker [00:46:57] So just back to the previous question, cause you don’t just cover principles and ideas, but politics and have for a long time. Where do you think this goes politically? Like, what does the country look like? We’ve got midterms this fall, two years from then we have a presidential election. Clearly there’s gonna be a realignment. The neocons have intentionally blown up the Trump coalition. They hated it from day one cause it was quote America first, which obviously precludes putting Israel first. So they wanted to destroy the coalition, they have. Where do things land, given those facts?
Glenn Greenwald [00:47:31] You’re already seeing this major transformation actually well on its way, if not coming soon to its conclusion in the Democratic party, where it’s becoming almost untenable for candidates in the democratic party, including incumbents to run, especially in primaries, if they’re too supportive of Israel, if the accept AIPAC money. This transformation… Close to complete, that is not gonna be reversed. And what made the Israel lobby so powerful for so long was that it was more than anything else, bipartisan, unfailingly bipartisan. It wasn’t one party or the other. Netanyahu kind of destroyed that, but there was still a lot of pro-Israel support in the Democratic Party, that’s gone. And I think if I were Israel, and I were, you know, a Israel first-er in the United States, primarily concerned with the standing of that country in the United States. The thing that would alarm me the most that this is now happening on the right. I can’t imagine a 2028 primary campaign in the Republican Party that does not prominently feature this question. And I also can’t image that there’s not going to be somebody like a major candidate who’s not purposely occupying that lane of saying. We were told that we weren’t gonna have any more foreign wars or foreign attachments. One of the major problems is Israel. We don’t hate Israel. You know, we don’t have anything against it. We just need to stop being responsible for funding it and fighting wars for it. And I think that’s gonna have a lot of appeal. So it’s always gonna take the DC establishment very long. I don’t know if Susan Collins is like walking around. She promised she was gonna only serve two terms. I think she’s getting like seeking her seventh. And somebody went up to her and said, what about all these dead people in Gaza that you paid for and she kind of like just stumbled into her car very dazed because of her age and she just like uttered this cliche, I’m pro Israel. And so you have this like older establishment generation that’s never going to change. It’s programmed in their brain, but you see the trend so clearly, not just in the Democratic Party, but in the Republican Party, where this issue is is is transforming and not solely but rapidly.
Tucker [00:49:37] Well, this is why the neocons so hated Charlie Kirk, because he saw this happening. And I remember you and I did an interview at my house this summer, and you explained a lot of your views on this topic on Israel, and were immediately, you know, they leaked a tape to try to embarrass you. And one of the very first people to defend you in a heartfelt way was Charlie Kirk. And I was actually made emotional watching it because it was just so principled. And it was so not what you expect. And he did it at actual personal cost to do this. But he really meant it because he could see that you and he, while you have differences, were basically seeing the same picture of the future of America, which is like, let’s help the country. And they hated that. I never forget that as long as I live.
Glenn Greenwald [00:50:26] Yeah, I mean, you know, Charlie and I have had a lot. Charlie was a super interesting.
Tucker [00:50:30] Yes.
Glenn Greenwald [00:50:32] Independent, subtle thinker. And I know everybody on the left, if you say anything good about Charlie Kirk, they’re maybe going to get enraged. I don’t really care at all. I think we are missing, like not just emotionally, but very substantively and in a very compelling way, the presence of Charlie Kirk when it comes to this war and related issues. And, you know, we, I mean, he was very supportive of the Snowden reporting and free speech. We had a lot of that in common, but also this question, and I talked to him as he evolving. And, you know, one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen Tucker was, you know, for a long time, Charlie Kirk was very pro-Israel, and he obviously started questioning that in all sorts of ways, to the point that he was refusing to de-platform you, even if it meant the loss of donors in the millions of dollars who didn’t want anybody questioning Israel or criticizing Israel on the stage. And he went out in interviews, including on his own show and a big one with Megyn Kelly, where they both said, Um, you know, what is going on here? Like we need to start questioning this, but They try and make it so that you can’t because you’ll have your reputation destroyed because they will call you anti-Semites. And one of the things Megan said that I really think was observant and perceptive was that Charlie represented younger conservatives, 18 to 32 or whatever the age group was. And overwhelmingly, they are turned against Israel. And he couldn’t just be this hardcore Fanatical Pro Israel. A champion, he had to acknowledge that the debate was opening and had to open that debate. And when he did, he himself started not abandoning Israel, not becoming anti-Israel at all, but clearly being skeptical of US support for it. And I will never forget that within seconds or minutes after he died, Benjamin Netanyahu was all over American media for You know that day for hours and then for days after on every network you could find Talking about how charlie was the most stalwart devoted israel loyalists that the united states has ever produced and That was a very strange, uh development But it was also a very propagandistic one to try and prevent people from remembering that even charlie kirk Was having serious second thoughts about the whole israel issue
Tucker [00:52:47] Well, he defended you really at a moment where he did not need to say a word about that. You’re traditionally a very famous man of the left. So it’s not like he was, he was not pandering to his own audience. Obviously he was enraging his donors. They were already enraged with him. But there was just no reason for him to do that other than heartfelt conviction. Principal, yeah. And principle. I felt that was one of the bravest things I have ever seen in American politics. It was basically ignored. But I just want to say that out loud because that that revealed who he was. Like in a moment, you can just stay silent and just not say anything. He like stopped and said, I just wanna say. Glenn Greenwald, well, we disagree on some things. We have different orientations. He is a good man. And this is a political hit on him. And that was about Israel. I mean, you had just, I mean I think that’s why that hit happens, because of Israel. But whatever the cause, he did that. And that tells you everything about what he was thinking at the time and why he was so hated by the neocons and to see them get up and be like, oh, here’s my best friend.
Glenn Greenwald [00:53:49] Yeah. You know, this topic for so long, Tucker, has relied on a climate of intimidation and bullying and coercion. And it’s not just that you get criticized. I can show you hundreds of cases of people being fired before October 7th in the United States for stepping out of line in Israel or losing funding or all sorts of other ramifications. And most people, if they’re being, I guess, self-interested or pragmatic, may be well-advised to avoid it, you know, because they just figure, oh, I have a lot of other issues and problems. I don’t need this one. And the fact that Charlie not only was doing it with Israel before that happened with me, but on the day that it happened, stood up and so emphatically defended me and implied some of the problems or the causes that probably led to it. Yeah, I remember seeing that. I was really moved as well. Oh, it made me emotional. I’m not even connected to it! Okay.
Tucker [00:54:47] Was friends with both of you. So do you think that, I mean, we’re guessing now, but we’re also extrapolating forward based on what we’re seeing right now. Do you think what’s this conflict with Iran, which has revealed so much, and we pray it goes well, but if it continues on its current course, does it? Does it kind of reorient the two parties? Does it shake up the system? People keep saying, you know, no matter who you vote for, you get President Netanyahu, and there’s some truth in that. I mean, let’s stop lying. There’s some truths in that the big decisions are influenced if not made by a foreign leader. Does that end after this? And if so, how?
Glenn Greenwald [00:55:28] There have been presidential debates in the past 30 years, most recently probably, or vice president’s ones as well, where the two party candidates, when it came to Israel, started arguing about who was more pro-Israel. That’s typically the limits of the debate that we’ve been permitted to have. One of the things that I’m so amazed by, maybe I’m being naive here, but it’s very frustrating and shocking at the same time. The Iraq war was one of the worst debacles, probably the worst American debacle in our lifetime. You had the 2008 financial crisis and all the other things, but that was what led to this whole unraveling of trust and faith in the integrity and reliability of American institutions that has caused so many things after that, but also just what it did to that region itself. All the lies that the credibility of the United States with those lies, everything that we were told would happen. None of it happened. It gave rise to ISIS. It was, you know, everybody acknowledges it was one of the worst actions in American history. And yet here we are 20 years later. And the thing that has really amazed me was to the extent there was any kind of attempt to have a debate about the Iran war to justify it. It was based on exactly exactly the same tactics the same script the same rhetoric The same jargon, the same twisted rationale, and often the same people who sold the war in Iraq back in 2002 and 2003. I saw a Fox News clip, they excavated Condoleezza Rice from some underground lair or bunker or whatever in which she works these days. And they put her on, Brett Baer did, and she gave like this five minute speech about how we have to go to war in Iran to, you know, make sure they don’t have weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, and they fund terrorist states and will bring freedom and democracy exactly verbatim what she was saying. And the debate has almost been identical. So I want to say, yeah, if this war goes really bad, it’ll create this gigantic realignment. And maybe it will as part of… You know, these developments that these events that led up into the Iran war, including the Israel stuff we were talking about, could create a realignment. But I don’t know, I thought that we would never live through, you know, a very similar, if not identical, new war to the Iraq war. And yet here we are doing exactly that in ways that aren’t even pretextually different. Like they’re not even changing the script or the cast of characters.
Tucker [00:57:59] Literally. And I guess one of the lessons I learned from the Iraq War is that, you know, the groundwork is always laid for big changes and you sort of see it being built, but you don’t really believe it’s going to happen. I remember being at the White House right before the start, you know like in February of 2003. And someone told me, yeah, we’re about to invade Iraq. And of course, I’d been advocating for it, shamefully, but. I didn’t really believe it was gonna happen even though I was like on the side of it I thought that’s too crazy like that can’t actually they had nothing to do with 9-eleven like so why are we doing this? And this person single of course, we’re doing what do you think this is? And so with that lesson in mind when the ship started steaming toward the Persian Gulf I was I got looks like we’re gonna have a war to take that same principle and apply it to the IHRA effort, you know the effort to constrain free speech and to to ban and to make illegal certain expressions of conscience and opinion. Like, do you feel like we’re getting to a place where people are gonna be arrested in the United States for their opinions?
Glenn Greenwald [00:59:12] The one thing we have is the First Amendment, which we should be very grateful for because if it were time to create a constitution now, we would not have that. And one of the ways I know that is that, you know, I’m very familiar with a lot of other countries, including one I live in, where that doesn’t exist. The UK doesn’t have it. Obviously, all throughout Europe doesn’t it. But it is already happening in other countries. Uh, you know, there was, uh, there were two bands in, in the UK. That did a concert, and one of them said, death, death to the IDF. Not death to Jews, not even death to Israel, death death to IDF, the military of Israel that was fighting a war. And another one sang a song about Hezbollah and Hamas. They were criminally charged with terrorism. The courts ultimately just in the last week threw it out. We just saw the woman being arrested in Australia. This is absolutely the trend in the West. Over the past, I think the galvanizing event was the dual traumas of Brexit and then Trump’s victory in 2016 over Hillary that made Western elites think we cannot tolerate any longer. Free exchange of ideas on the internet and dissemination of news. And it’s just too unpredictable and it causes too many dangerous outcomes that are out of our control. But for sure, this is the trend in so many ways. And yeah, the West is abandoning very aggressively their belief in free speech, not as some absolutist. That concept in the way that I might affirm it, but just the basic notion that you can’t be punished by the state for the expression of political views.
Tucker [01:01:01] I mean, that is the rule everywhere in the world. I think, I don’t know that there is a country in which free speech exists, except the United States. And I, and it’s, as we’ve been talking about for an hour, it’s definitely under attack. But do you, despite the fact we have a first amendment, we have all kinds of, we have fourth amendment too, and it is routinely ignored. I’ve been, the subject of, you know, it’s violation. And you have too. So like amendments to the constitution, the bill of rights is ignored routinely. Do you think it’s possible that the First Amendment will be overridden by the state to punish people for having opinions the state doesn’t like?
Glenn Greenwald [01:01:40] Again, this is going to sound probably naive, but this is actually what my immediate reaction to it is. If you go to law school, which of course, every judge in the federal judiciary does and has done, and you study the history of jurisprudence or whatever, the idea that The First Amendment is the kind of crown jewel of American rights and constitutional liberties. Is so indoctrinated into your brain. And it is before that as well. Like one of the things we were taught is that the reason America is exceptional, the reason American is different is because we have the right to say things without being punished and other countries don’t. This is something that’s, you know, inculcated in our culture for so long. So I’m sure there will come a day when judges will start to retreat from that. But for the moment, and you’ve seen some actually good cases where judges draw a line pretty rigorously. No, the state can’t do this. The problem is, is that so much of the censorship now is through big tech companies, is through online, and there are ways to circumvent it increasingly. And I do also think that, you know, if these Western liberal democracies start embracing a true aggressive form of a framework of censorship. You have political changes in the United States and I could easily see them starting to find ways to circumvent it too. None of these things are permanent. None of them are guaranteed. You know, you have rights that you think are guaranteed on a parchment and I’ve seen it many times. So as everybody who studies history, it’s gone the next month or the next year, even though none of the processes to get rid of it were in vogue.
Tucker [01:03:20] That’s right, and you see this also in a lot of countries where the husk of the old system remains in place. The Roman Senate is still gathering, but it’s not a legislative body anymore. It’s a symbolic body or whatever. Its existence is designed to bolster authoritarian power. It’s not counterbalance against authoritarian power, like you see that. I mean, judges in Zimbabwe still wear wigs.
Glenn Greenwald [01:03:47] Yeah, and in the UK too. Let me just add one thing is that even though I came kind of gave a rosy eyed optimistic answer, but I wanted to advance it was it might have been naive. When it comes time for war, all bets are off and we’ve seen that in a lot of wars. In the middle of the war on terror, Newt Gingrich wrote this article saying it’s time to to repeal and limit the First Amendment. There have been all kinds of measures designed to, you know, accepted by court. I mean, you can go find it. It’s online. It’s like 2006. We’re fighting for the American way of life and our rights and liberties. And he’s like, appeal, repeal the first amendment. But I war is when things get really scary because people, you know all of war propaganda is so effective. If you look at it rationally, you can deconstruct it transparently. But you don’t really react to war propaganda. Rationally, it’s designed to trigger our like most primal influence instincts of tribalism and you know, patriotism and getting bad guys and feeling noble and When that happens people do start to think that if you’re criticizing the war a little bit too excessively If you’re questioning the real reasons for the war that this is somehow not just a irresponsible or destructive opinion but it starts to ease into sedition or treason. We’ve seen this a lot in many different American wars. And I do think there’s kind of a sense of seeing that now. I mean, not so much that I can point to somebody convicted or charged with sedition, but there’s a lot of sentiment going around, not just from random accounts, but in mainstream ones, that this needs to happen.
Tucker [01:05:27] Well, as you said earlier, when things change is the moment at which like lots of Americans die. And that’s why 9-11 was the most profound thing to happen in our lifetimes because 3,000 Americans died on camera. And it was just like the worst thing anyone, still the worst I’ve ever seen. And I think every American felt that way. And so at that point, it gives the people in charge license to do things they would not be allowed to do like create TSA or whatever, invade Iraq. Back. And so, are you concerned? That, you know, there could be attacks here in the United States and like, what then?
Glenn Greenwald [01:06:06] I feel like there was already an attack in the United States at Austin shooting. We haven’t heard much about it, but it seemed pretty clearly linked to the Iran war. And if it goes on, I would be very, very surprised if there aren’t others, which again, I think means that not only are we fighting a war for the benefit of citizens in another country, we’re doing it by endangering the citizens of our own country. For so many different reasons. And I do think if it gets to the point where, you know, this really gets out of hand and you start to see mass casualty attacks in the United States, you know the history of United States and other countries leaves no doubt that emergency measures will be instantly imposed and those emergency measures. Don’t go anywhere when there are emergencies. That was the history of the Patriot Act. The Patriot act was this radical, extremist, un-American law that we needed, supposedly, in the wake of 9-11. They assured us, oh, don’t worry, it’s going to be temporary. Here we are, 2026 is part of our woodwork, and nobody ever talks about it anymore. That’s how quickly these things can get normalized.
Tucker [01:07:21] Well, I hope you never go off the air because I hope this isn’t our last conversation. Glenn Greenwald, thank you for all your time and your wisdom.
Glenn Greenwald [01:07:31] Keep up the great work. Tucker, always great to see you.
