Matt Taibbi And Glenn Greenwald Are Suspiciously Silent On Putin's Invasion Of Ukraine
Taibbi and Greenwald aren’t Russian stooges, Putin propagandists, or paid by the Kremlin. It is far sadder than that.
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by Ben Cohen
The world has watched in real time as Vladimir Putin amassed hundreds of thousands of troops on the Ukraine border, then invaded under the pretext of protecting two separatist enclaves.
Anyone familiar with Putin’s storied history of foreign aggression knew that there was no “alternative” narrative. The wily dictator was simply following through on his ambitious agenda to reassert Russian dominance in Eastern Europe and reclaim land he always believed was Russia’s. If you doubted Putin was doing this, you simply had to look at the satellite images that were being broadcasted around the world.
Pundits on the ideological fringes however, have been desperately scrambling to construct an alternative narrative that claims that what we are seeing is not actually what we are seeing.
The Alt Left perspective
If you follow Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald for example, you might come to believe that the US government and intelligence agencies have been lying to the public about Russian aggression, that they are comically incompetent, and that Biden secretly wants a new war with the Kremlin as part of a secret neoliberal/neo-con plot to continue US imperialism around the world.
The public, according to their narrative, is so enthralled by US propaganda and complicit “mainstream media” journalists that they just can’t see what is really going on. Greenwald has been extremely busy creating the narrative that this is (surprise!) all President Biden’s fault, retweeting ludicrous stories like this:
Wright’s argument is so specious he even adds a caveat to his thesis that Biden/NATO should have made huge concessions to Putin before the invasion, writing: “Obviously, we don’t know for sure what concessions might have forestalled Russian invasion,” and: “Obviously, I don’t know what the Biden administration may have offered Putin in private. It’s conceivable that they offered more than we know about.”
This begs the obvious question: why write the piece if your main criticism isn’t based on any meaningful evidence?
Glenn Greenwald has also been smearing MSNBC for supposedly supporting war with Russia:
If you watch the clip, you’ll notice neither host Alex Wagner nor her guest, NPR’s David Folkenflik, “bitterly complain” that Tucker Carlson is making it harder for Republicans to support military intervention in Ukraine. They merely point out the bizarre reality of the GOP’s new political dynamics where the majority now openly support Russia and other dictatorships in Eastern Europe. That’s it.
Matt Taibbi’s take isn’t so transparently fraudulent and childish, but it is still deeply misleading and dishonest. Taibbi has essentially been arguing the same thing; that neoliberal elites want a war with Russia and are lying about it. He just hints at it by poking holes in media stories and an extremely tired “just asking questions” routine he has perfected as of late.
In an excruciatingly long essay on his Substack, Taibbi drags out in extraordinary detail the utterly inane point that “The Biden administration and the press wrongly predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 16th.”
Published on Feb. 17th, Taibbi called the supposed blunder a “giant omelet on the face of the West.”
Russia then invaded Ukraine on Feb. 21st, a whopping five days after US intelligence agencies and the White House had predicted. How inept.
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The Biden administration got it right
The Biden Administration has released a stunning amount of what US intelligence agencies have gathered about Russian aggression as events were unfolding. And contrary to Taibbi and Greenwald’s assertions, the picture they painted has turned out to be highly accurate. Reported the NY Times on Feb. 12th:
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has detailed the movement of Russian special operation forces to Ukraine’s borders, exposed a Russian plan to create a video of a faked atrocity as a pretext for an invasion, outlined Moscow’s war plans, warned that an invasion would result in possibly thousands of deaths and hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin.
Then, on Friday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the United States was seeing signs of Russian escalation and that there was a “credible prospect” of immediate military action.
The Biden administration did get the date wrong by five days, but otherwise preempted Putin’s war games spectacularly well. Furthermore, they have succeeded in keeping the rest of the West unified against him — a feat that many observers believes can help avoid serious bloodshed. Putin faces unprecedented opposition from European over his actions, and if he doesn’t pull back from the brink, will only succeed in decimating his own economy. The West might not be willing to spend lives on countering Russian aggression, but it is prepared to sacrifice economic wellbeing to ensure the survival of NATO and Western Europe’s security.
Biden does not want war
The Biden administration has also explicitly stated that it will not commit American troops to fight a war against Russia, not that Greenwald or Taibbi have taken any notice of this:
Again, there has been absolutely no talk from the Biden administration (or the liberal media) of any “intervention in Ukraine”. The public is rightly outraged by Putin’s behavior and see it as a real threat to global stability. The media isn’t hyping this up, Vladimir Putin is by invading Ukraine.
But why bother reporting the facts if they don’t fit your narrative?
The grifter left
Why are Taibbi and Greenwald putting forward a version of events that don’t bear any resemblance to reality? The answer is fairly straightforward and sadly predictable.
Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald play a new and unique role in the increasingly fractured US media landscape. Both left legacy media companies to forge new independent careers so they could be free of editorial interference. As rogue journalists, both have positioned themselves as bold truth tellers in a world of lies. In reality, this just mean joining a loose knit community of ‘Alt Left’ grifters with a well established industry of peddling ideological nonsense. The modus operandi is simple: attack Democrats at all costs, no matter the evidence and no matter the moral cost. Alt Left journalists ascribe all of America’s misfortunes to the Democrats and the “neoliberals” and are very, very loud about it.
In the Alt Left world, the rise of Trump was the fault of the Democrats. Trump’s crimes against his country were a distraction from the real crimes of Nancy Pelosi and “The Deep State”. Russiagate was a myth, and Democrats are so evil it is worth saddling up to White Nationalist conspiracy theorists to oppose them. When Putin, a psychopathic dictator with frightening territorial ambitions invades a fledgling democracy, this too must be ascribed to the Democrats — even if they have explicitly stated they will not use force to stop him.
Taibbi and Greenwald probably don’t like the fact that Russia is illegally invading Ukraine, but their business model and ideological constricts dictates that they must keep their focus on the real enemies: Joe Biden and the Democrats. They have scrambled to find a narrative that suits their ideological ends and have settled on one so lazy and sloppy that even they probably don’t take it seriously.
Taibbi and Greenwald aren’t Russian stooges, Putin propagandists, or paid by the Kremlin. It is far sadder than that. They are just tired salesmen plugging a narrative they know will keep their fanbase happy.
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Excellent analysis and insight. Thank you for defanging Greenwald and Taibbi, and exposing them for their intellectual dishonesty.
I hate opinions I don't agree with, too, but when Greenwald and Taibbi start detailing facts that don't align with what I want to believe I just can't listen. I think I'm ready to take that last leap of faith and go all in for people who give not one fuck about me. Hillary 2024! We came, we killed, we came again! Hillary is such a badass.