Naomi Wolf is taking a lot of flak this week from supporters of alleged NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for her suggestion (via Facebook post) that Snowden may “not be who he purports to be” and that his “emphases seem to serve an intelligence/police state objective, rather than to challenge them.” The upshot, of course, being that perhaps Snowden isn’t blowing a real whistle against the state, but instead disseminating disinformation on the state’s behalf.
One particularly nasty response, from David Lindorff at Counterpunch, charges Wolf with “wild-eyed speculation,” “baseless and libelous accusations” and — oh, the humanity! — “self-promotion and grandstanding.”
On the one hand, I’m not sure that Wolf is really on to anything here. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a whistleblower really is someone who’s seen too much and thinks the world needs to see it too.
On the other hand, I don’t find Wolf’s musings outrageous. A bit paranoid, perhaps, but who can blame her? We’re well past the point where it’s become obvious that yes, they really ARE out to get us.
What’s behind the vitriolic responses to Wolf? In my opinion, two things: Confirmation bias and tunnel vision.
Most of us out here in the wilderness of political dissent have long suspected that the US government’s intelligence collection activities are closer to all-encompassing than the government itself usually admits to. That suspicion isn’t wild speculation — long before Snowden revealed the alleged details of the NSA’s phone and Internet spying, politicians and bureaucratic lobbyists had publicly advocated for and requested exactly those capabilities. Yes, they were shouted down and censured in public … but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get what they wanted in the government’s hidden “black” budget lines.
Snowden is telling us the one thing everyone loves to hear: That we’ve been right all along. Naturally, we want very much to believe him. That’s called confirmation bias. It doesn’t mean he’s lying. It just means we’re prone to believe him because we want to, rather than because we should.
Most of us out here in the wilderness of political dissent — and yes, this includes me — also often miss the forest for the trees when considering the intent and impact of government statements and admissions. The trees are us activists on the political margins. Our relationship to the state is adversarial, and we naively (and perhaps a bit grandiosely) assume that when the US government addresses matters we care about, it is talking to us. But that’s usually not the case.
Usually, when government addresses matters we care about, it is talking to the forest: The hundreds of millions of Americans who fall into the “mainstream” or “apolitical” (or as we special, beautiful, dissident trees like to sneer, “apathetic”) categories of civic involvement.
How does this tunnel vision affect our assessment of Snowden’s revelations?
Well, the way we trees see it, the government has been “forced” to “admit” that it’s doing nasty, illegal things that concern us and that all right-thinking people (i.e. people who think like us trees) will find outrageous.
But how does “the forest” see it? Being a tree myself, I can only guess, but my guess is that they see it the way they see most displays — even allegedly accidental ones — of government power. That is, they see it as a warning not to step out of line. A warning against discussing things on the Internet or over the phone that Uncle Sugar might not approve of. A warning, to put as fine a point as possible on it, that Big Brother is watching them.
At some point, an emerging police state stops trying to hide or justify its nastiness and starts emphasizing and flaunting that nastiness — although it may do so subtly or indirectly instead of openly. Its minions no longer worry about convincing you they’re right. They’re content to just bully, threaten and scare you into submission.
Wolf’s hypothesis is that the Snowden revelations may be an intentional instance of the latter — perhaps timed to distract attention from the trial of real whistleblower Bradley Manning — rather than an accidental failure of the former. Is she right? I don’t know. But the idea is far from outrageous, and should be taken seriously.
Citations to this article:
- John Nery, Doubting Edward, or Wolf cries boy, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 06/24/13
If this was the case how does it explain the behavior of certain members of the conservative "opposition" to "Obama's" NSA?
Wouldn't they try to get mileage out of Snowden, in this scenario a harmless government puppet, by actually addressing his concerns and hailing him as a courageous hero rather than condemning him as a traitor?
Things like that indicate to me that what is really going on is what we are told is really going on. In other words, if this was a sham, much more evidence than the speculative possibility of it being a sham would be required to even raise it as a concern. And less evidence that it was not a sham would have to be present.
The entire notion that this was all set up rests on Wolf's perception of a lack of passion, on Snowden's part, for outright discrediting and/or abolishing the police state, as shown by his deliberate redacting of some information, and perhaps the guarded way in which he phrases things (like in the recent reader-participatory Guardian interview).
Could it be that Snowden, though he has a conscience, is simply not as initiated into opposition to the police state as people like Wolf are?
Why is his lack of clarity or emphasis on certain things, or the fact that he personally redcated some of which he leaked, proof of him being a puppet rather than simply proof of him being an average person with average concerns, just saddled with information that he could no longer bear to be hidden from those whose rights it violated?
Why does Wolf assume that in order for someone to be a legitimate whistleblower they must share the same thoughts and concerns as her? Not everyone is so hardcore and so pure. If they were, they wouldn't be working in the NSA or (in Manning's case) the Army to begin with.
I contend that no whistleblower will likely ever satisfy all of the requirements of the purists (myself included), simply because they would have to be purists themselves, in which case they would never be in the position to blow the whistle, and if they were, they would ruin their chances of ever disclosing substantial amounts of information to the public because they would be found out and preemptively removed from that position.
My recent post Libertarian Countries and Libertarian Societies
No, this should not be taken seriously. Yes, she is being paranoid. It would have been much more sensible to suggest that the government might be able to turn this to its advantage, and far more practical too; practical because we can't just jump around claiming victory, we need to be hammering home that this is unacceptable before they succeed in convincing people that it's all necessary and harmless.
The endgame will suggest the answer. Here are what I see as the eight possible outcomes, and which of three views each supports:
Suggests Snowden is a govt plant: (Naomi Wolf view)
Disappears
Found dead
Killed during capture or imprisonment
Trial: recants, admits exaggeration of claims
Suggests not a plant but govt is corrupt (tree view)
Holes up like Assange & snipes at govt.
Lives well, protected, snipes at govt. (from Russia?)
Trial: stands firm: harsh sentence
Suggests not a plant and govt is uncorrupted (forest view)
Trial: innocent , plea bargain or "reasonable" sentence
Don't think it's distracting from the Manning trial, we all know how that trial will end and so there's no need to distract from it.
More likely it's distracting from a handful of SCOTUS decisions in the past 3 weeks, each of which has dealt a vicious blow to civil liberties; and from Congressional votes regarding Israel and regarding civil liberties.
Wolf's essay on Snowden is the best she's done since the one several years back where she detailed our transition to soft fascism.
Snowden's "revelations" are not news to anyone who kept abreast of Mark Klein's revelations in 2006, or the fallout work by EFF in Hepting vs ATT. On that background, Snowden's story is 7 years old, hoary and well-bearded with grey hairs.
Funny how in those intervening 7 years, a lot of the writers now praising Snowden were dead silent on Klein's story and on Hepting vs ATT. Including Greenwald.
She IS suggesting the Govt has turned this to its advantage. That's her point.
No, her point is the government planned this and Snowden is more of a sucker than a blower. They might turn this to their advantage, but she thinks they orchestrated it for their advantage: unlikely.
I'm not sure how you imagine you've just contradicted me. You haven't.
You're doing a poor job of trying to fragment people's discussion/reading of this subject. Each of your posts has contradicted itself, and contained tail-chasing and/or ghost-blaming. Directly above you contradict yourself 3x. In your first comment you contradict yourself 2x.
Your posts read like those of someone who wishes he was on NSA's payroll… someone with an "I'm a secret agent" kind of Walter Mitty fantasy. Only thing they're missing is real satirical value, so they tend to fail all around.
I've just had this mindless sh*t over at the Guardian: get a grip.