Glenn Greenwald warns 'democracy is in peril'

big tech continues its mission to silence dissenting voices one by one this week liberal journalist naomi wolf was the latest victim suspended on twitter for sharing controversial opinions about the coronavirus journalist glenn greenwald called out the tech giant's free speech crackdown tweeting quote there is a virtual industry of operatives funded by the atlantic council which in turn is funded by gulf state despots and u.s intel agencies and nato governments whose purpose is to demand the internet be purged of anyone dissenting from their orthodoxies joining me now is pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author of security democracy glenn greenwald uh glenn thank you very much for coming on you are very much in demand because you tell it like it is and i and your experience speaks for itself but when we deal with people like the president of the united states donald trump being banned from social media to naomi wolf who gets bumped and youtube videos are disappeared go into the memory hall i contend that in fact it's not really even about them that that is a message to everyone else that if we can do it to them and it's convenient to do it to them because they're they might be irritating to people but it's also a message to the average person that you had better in everything you do watch what you're doing because the new rules mean that you're going to be canceled if you say something that is unapproved of what do you think of that what's your take yeah absolutely agree i think that sometimes this gets cast as an ideological war against the right and i don't really think that's quite correct obviously conservatives do bear the brunt the united states of online censorship but i think it's much more about barring anybody from questioning the pieties of the ruling class elite there are a lot of people on the left who are anti-establishment who also get banned naomi wolf is no conservative at all and the really interesting thing to me that i think is worth noting is that when donald trump was banned by facebook and twitter a lot of world leaders including ones who don't feel very positive about trump like angela merkel and emanuel macron and the left-wing president of of mexico condemned that banning and warned that if tech giants work with the government to ban whoever they want democracy is imperiled and i think that's the right message that lots of people around the world see except for journalists in the united states you know it's interesting with your tweet going through right the establi the global establishment and having an interest in this uh foundation this platform several platforms that give average people a voi a voice which of course is irritating for them and and yet we had uh i think was nigeria where twitter had taken off its leaders a tweet by its leader and they banned twitter from their country it's as though twitter is being treated like a separate sovereign nation because of its impact across so many boards and governments having to respond to what is an american company a publicly held american company but needing to deal with it like it's a country uh do you see it that way because there's a point where this the only solution seems to be to make this a a utility in a way here in america to stop the nature of this octopus from developing from enveloping everything yeah that's exactly right you know i'm against censorship in all cases but if you have a government that's censoring that's democratically accountable you can vote those people out of office you can influence what it is that they're doing with tech corporations they have no democratic accountability at all they can do whatever they want and because they're monopolistic entities they're starting to control and police our public discourse and the other aspect that i think is very alarming is that it's oftentimes not even these corporations like facebook and twitter and google that are doing it they're doing it at the behest of governments they're now democratic party hearings all the time demanding they censor more other governments around the world insisting that dissidents and their countries be silenced it's really like a union between state and corporate power trying to police and control the internet which was supposed to be this innovation that liberated us all from centralized control right and of course that was the threat in and of itself and it worked and it worked so this is uh clearly uh when we talk about threats to not just the united states but the world this is one of them we don't have an administration now i think it's safe to say that has the courage to stand up to it but but we will soon thank you glenn thanks for joining me i appreciate it great stuff

Channel: Fox News

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Keywords: Amazon, Atlantic Council, Big Tech censorship, Donald Trump ban from social media, Free speech, Glenn Greenwald, Global establishment, Google, NATO governments, Tech giants, The Ruling Class, Twitter, US intel agencies, cancel culture, censor dissenting opinion, democracy, elites, free speech crackdown, purge the internet, fox news, fox news channel, fox news media, fox news network, fox news prime time, fox news primetime, fox news primetime today, primetime, primetime fox news

Id: ZVypdSod6Bc

Length: 4min 23sec (263 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021