Actual history is pretty good thank you. The meme arguments your uncle repeats isn't history. It's a random recieved narrative.
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Why isnt Snowden viewed as a hero
- Thread starter fireflame
- Start date
Actual history is pretty good thank you. The meme arguments your uncle repeats isn't history. It's a random recieved narrative.
It is Russia vs the USA. Lol. Snowden is now a defector and probably feeding information to the FSB. He is a stooge of our adversary.
Sorry next time I'll recommend you read The Bew Tsar. I'm sure you'll find some degrading information about the author.
If the consequences for doing something good are so extreme that most people wouldn't dare to do it, then the person who does is very brave and the law must be changed.
I don't think we should set the hero bar at 'executed or imprisoned for life by his gov't'.
Most people, no. But people have done it. And people have accepted the consequences. And also been pardoned.
Oh please. Russia is really irrelevant here. They are just doing what that always do, stand in front of something the US wants.
I mean I don't have to provide evidence. A KGB general saying yes the FSB likely has their claws in him is good enough for me. And multiple US officials have said that they will likely extract data from Snowden. I don't care how many times you stick your head in the sand and repeat yourself.
Where care I find your other work? The Federalist? The Washington Examiner? The New York Times?
"Likely".
If you want to claim something as fact there has to be evidence for it.
It's how the spy game has worked for decades. You get one of theirs they tell you everything they know and vice versa. You think they'd suddenly become wholesome with Snowden? When the Russian President is a former KGB officer? Seriously?
Oh and Eddie stayed in the Russian Consulate for a few days in Hong Kong
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...37cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html
I guess he accidentally stayed there too, totally didn't mean to.
I've never said that it was fact. Its a consensus at this point. Maybe he should come back and clear his name?
If you get a former intelligence operative of your enemy you pump him dry of everything he knows. It's been that way forever.
It's common sense, like not putting your hand on a hot stove.
If it wasn't about suffering people here, including yourself, wouldn't have mentioned it. Obviously to some extent it is.
He already broke the law in releasing these documents did he not? So what you're saying is that you can't break the law ever so he just shouldn't have gotten into this situation.
Liberalism, and all political theories since the 17th century, have been based on resistance theory. Liberalism was created by an intellectual in exile. The state you're in was created because some rich guys were upset that they weren't considered full gentry and fought against that with arms against their legitimate state.
Bad laws should be ignored. Liberals only pretend to not think this because most of the laws they think are bad have already been dealt with.
I'll take the state treating its people better over games of geopolitics thanks.
How is this relevant at all? Meanwhile, I'm not too interested for sacrificing, again you're bringing up suffering, for a country. I think helping people is more important than helping a state.
I should have clarified. The generally accepted narrative is indeed what i meant. The utter destruction of Native American legacy and way of life is a clear and present example of what history written by only one of the parts involved looks like. There is a plethora of documentation showing the struggles of the native peoples, but what good does it serve outside of the historian circles? For all effects and purposes, their voices and historical perspective have been mostly erased.
Alright, so you're incapable of viewing the world outside of the most narrow Hegelian lens. The fact that the American and Russian states are involved does not mean we should reduce this to the epic dialectic struggle of....... uhhhhh who knows vs used to be communist.
But, he wouldn't. He's a White College educated probably Rich Male. A few years in a cushy White Collar Prison. Manning was tortured because she was in the Military. The US doesn't execute spies.
So there are no established facts and you've just decided to peddle the propagandised version because "consensus". Great stuff.
He handed all documents to journalists. He didn't take anything with him when he left Hong Kong.
Was he interviewed by Russian authorities? No doubt. Is he working with them and/or did he hand over files? There is zero evidence to suggest that he has done.
Saying lol history is written by the victors actually exacerbates the anti-intellectualism in the popular reception of the past.
History proper is written by skilled and philosophically oriented scholars doing good work. We should be telling people to listen to the field, not lumping historians in with Bill O'Riley.
And I've been on this site and GAF long enough to know that is more or less how people think here.
Meanwhile, if you don't think popular narratives about native peoples pretty much everywhere in the West have gotten better in the last 30 years or so I don't know what to tell you. And that's all percolated down from Anthropologists and Historians.
Uh, did you understand what I wrote? It had nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with popular framings and how Americans think about things. Russia itself doesn't matter.
Regardless of what you're aware of doing, that's basically what you, and most Americans, do. I kept on telling you that you can't reduce this down to Russia Vs America and all you could do was respond with that's all it is.
Yeah Snowden's case is beyond high profile and he has a good amount of support. This notion that something is destined to happen to him within the US prison system is unfounded.
No, I'm saying there's good reason to believe he has had info extracted from him because most relevant minds on the topic agree that he has likely had info extracted from him.
More conjecture based on hindsight bias. That's doubly nonsensical.
However you feel about the guy personally, staying would have been dumb.
What? He's able to turn himself in literally at any time. There's no hindsight bias. It has nothing to do with staying there then. What about now?
There are certain topics here on Era where the liberal atmosphere of this place goes out the windows and nationalist colours start shining through, those threads where you can tell who's American and who isn't with precise accuracy of 90% or more. And usually I avoid those threads.
But in the case of Snowden, it's just disheartening to read these comments about someone who sacrificed his freedom to pull the wool from American eyes, yet people who should better now would rather retreat back into their blissful ignorance and cling to the warm comfort of the surveillance state that was proven to violate their rights in unthinkable ways.
Baffling, but sadly not without historical precedence.
But in the case of Snowden, it's just disheartening to read these comments about someone who sacrificed his freedom to pull the wool from American eyes, yet people who should better now would rather retreat back into their blissful ignorance and cling to the warm comfort of the surveillance state that was proven to violate their rights in unthinkable ways.
Baffling, but sadly not without historical precedence.
The hindsight bias is in your understanding of what he could have done at the time. It's absolutely there, because your argument about what he should have done hinges on what you think would have happened to him based on how other things have played out since then. Obviously what has transpired since, see the incredibly hostile attitude in this thread, just makes it clear that he really can't go back now. Can you imagine reading this thread and returning. People are calling him a terrorist.
I'm absolutely sure there are plenty of Americans who don't support this. The issue is that Americans will be near 100% of those that do support it.
Snowden fly on the knowledge that He won't have a fair trial, because the ones which were willfully breaking the law as He expose were the same people which controls the "justice". He made the right decission, both revealing and leaving.
You really are reading a lot of things i'm not saying.
I agree that history proper is doing great work. But the vast majority of people does not care or has access to it. I agree that more people should be reading it and learning from it. But proper history is not what's being sold to people. Facile, misinformed tv 'history' and whitewashed, romanticized school books are.
And history is, to a certain extent, written by the victors. As far as the collective narrative is concerned.
And you're most probably right on your last point, which doesn't negate entire centuries of whitewashing and erasure.
I mentioned it because you mentioned it. Suffering is a strange term. Your words. I do not want Edward Snowden to suffer.
I'm saying this is a complicated situation and requires a lot of nuance. It's possible to break the law to do something good. But the part of the law that should be indisputable is that you answer for what you did, at the end of the day. You don't turn your back on it, especially if you hold firm to the righteousness of your actions. Is it not possible both break and follow the law? Like you said, follow the good parts, fight the bad.
I think you're misinterpreting this part. I put liberty in quotations because he avoided consequences in the US to have some relative "liberty" or non-consequence within Russia. I wasn't putting down America's liberties as an acceptable write-off. I'm pondering why he found it acceptable to potentially be a pawn in a state with contradictorial values towards those same civil liberties he wanted to protect; rather than face the American justice system.
What are you on about? No, I'm not talking about what he should have done then. I'm talking about what he can do now. Again this is not as black and white as you want to make it seem. Hell I'm not even sure a grand jury would convict him unanimously for his crimes.
Snowden has support from all over the world. He could still get the book thrown at him but there wouldn't be any state killings or any of that other nonsense you all keep trying to convince people of.
And yet, as I pointed out you again refer to some need for him to be pained by the process for it to be legitimate. It's been throughout the thread, I'm putting it that way because that's exactly the sentiment here.
He needs to suffer for the cause to be legitimate is clearly what a lot of people, including yourself in that post, have advocated for in one way or another. You may not want him to suffer, but whether or not he suffers clearly is important for how you're thinking about this.
I agree, subject yourself immediately to the state and always accept what it does really doesn't smack of nuance to me.
Which is why all the founding fathers were hunt for high treason correct?
Why not turn your back on it. The law isn't good because it's the law. The law is good when it's good because it's good. It has no intrinsic value. Every modern ideological system accepts this at some level.
Again all of liberalism is based on this. It was essentially made by revolutionaries that overthrew states because they knew the laws were bad and thus should not be accepted. Mindless kowtowing to the authority of the state is one of the bad laws.
Did he pick to go to Russia? Even then it's a question of one man's personal life vs the possible benefit for millions.
I agree it's unfortunate but America controls the state system made up of states that aren't as bad as the others. He wasn't safe there. Just because one state system is better than the others doesn't make it good.
I'm not giving you any sort of intentionality. I'm pointing out what the effects of this kind of rhetoric are.
And most people have some access to academic history, and could have more access if the general approach to it and academics wasn't dismissive. It's the culture that's the key problem.
And obviously received narratives are from who wants to tell the story, as distinct from the victors see the Lost Cause, but conflating that with History proper is exactly what I think is a problem.
Meanwhile I'm not saying it negates anything, but it's only going to get better through academic means.
I'm kind of surprised Trump hasn't pardoned him simply to go against the Obama administration's stance. As for Snowden himself, I'm glad he exposed the program, but also it's too bad he ended up going with another violent, oppresive, and even more authoritarian regime for protection.
Also, it's entirely possible to do something heroic, and turn around and do something destructive, or being a complete scumbag in other ways.
Also, it's entirely possible to do something heroic, and turn around and do something destructive, or being a complete scumbag in other ways.
Why isn't he viewed as a hero? Because Obama all but publicly branded him a traitor. Thanks, Obama.
I agree with pretty much everything here but i take issue with the bolded. While it's technically correct, as in most people do have access to the internet where all this information is located, illiteracy is widespread and takes many forms. Most people, on the other hand, do not have access to the educational and finantial means that would permit them to actually learn history (or anything else really) in a more formative way. And there's also the problem of people just not caring to learn. There's little incentive for people who are absolutely stuck in the lower classes to learn any of this, though a lot of the historical knowledge that people scoff at would serve them well when dealing with politics and economics, for example. Context is everything.
But this is way off topic.
This is fascinating to me. My understanding was you don't need to spy when you can just arrest them and plant the evidence afterward. Like bringing a knife to a checkers match
Its par for the course really. Frankly you're going up against a wall when trying to reason with people on this subject. China and Russia, and by some extension their people, are considered 'enemies' of the West. It's like that line in George Orwell's book, "Oceania was always at war with Eurasia." So if Snowden sought refuge (asylum which is a basic human right) with said countries then he must be an 'enemy' and traitor as well since Autocrats rule there - that is literally the logic. You can see the drastic opinions on this too in thread but outside examples are (Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-Founder called him a hero; Al Gore says Snowden revealed crimes way more serious than Snowden committed; both the Washington Post and the Guardian were awarded Public Service awards by Pulitzer for information obtained by Snowden; in contrast former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden and Mike Rogers joked about putting snowden on a kill list, the NYT times called him a "thief", etc.).
As someone who considers myself 'leftist,' anti-war and believe in peace, decency, and human rights above all things, the current times and people's views on this subject I find pretty astonishing. One could extend this topic to Assange as well, since if he is extradited to the U.S. and prosecuted, it will send a message around the world that any journalist being handed information from organizations like WikiLeaks exposing state secrets will be on watch which has already become alarmingly common. (Trump's admin accidentally revealed charges against Assange, and his attorney's believe the charges are not about the 2016 election, but instead when WikiLeak's exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq from information obtained famously by Chelsea Manning - more on that from this show by Abby Martin). Even Trump commented that the "death penalty" should be involved in regards to Wikileaks, which is pretty horrifying.
Also for anyone else on this subject, I recommend the documentary "Citizenfour" over the made up silly stuff in the Hollywood film "Snowden."
He ran off to China then Russian and became a Russian stooge, he's just more indirect than Assange is.
What if it is a complicated situation where there is no clear right or wrong? Just a lot of actors all trying to manipulate world events? That is actually what historical precedence would suggest.
The main problem I have with the people who 100% defend Snowden is that they are simplifying things in a way that I see as extremely dangerous.
His passport was revoked on his way to Ecuador so he was stuck in Russia which doesn't have a extradition treaty with the us. In my opinion i see Snowden as a hero but the messeger isn't important what is important is the message.
Interesting. So maybe it wasn't so much of an accident that he ended up in Russia after all, he was already comfy at their consulate in China. Yeah, I'm not buying into the hero narrative at all. Dude was an asshole. I knew Wikileaks and Assange were doing some bs from the getgo, and I have the same sense for this guy.
