Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero?
pjwestin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What Snowden did was objectively good, and he did so at great personal cost, but you should be cautious about making any living person your hero. His politics seem to lean closer to libertarian nut-job than anything else, and it’s very possible he will disappoint you in the future. Case in point, Glen Greenwald broke the Snowden leaks, and I considered him one of my heros for a time,.but these days he sounds more like Tucker Carlson than anyone else. The point is, admire heroic actions, but don’t make people your heroes.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure, but you could say the same of Luigi Mangione and that isn’t slowing anyone down.
Glenn was always a libertarian crank. But after he got ousted from The Guardian, his economic needs superseded his politics. I might suggest that if Glenn had ended up on MSNBC rather than the gutter for FOX News washouts, he’d be denouncing Snowden today rather than praising him.
I don’t think you can criticize Snowden because the guy who interviewed him ended up becoming a crank. But I also don’t know of what became of Snowden, outside “he fled to Russia after Hong Kong wouldn’t hide him”.
I might suggest that Snowden was only able to leak what he did because he climbed up the ranks through Booze-Allen to begin with. And there you’ve got an inherent problem with whistleblowers - either coming or going, they must have done something you don’t like.
But I’d say his turn of conscious and his work ethic and professionalism in how the information was aggregated, leaked, and confirmed makes him a role model for anyone else who aspires to turn coat against a fascist regime. Whatever you think of the individuals, you still do need Role Models in order to inform how you might achieve similar results. That means studying other people - studying history at the individualist level - and asking how they did what they did. Ideally, you’re studying people you admire because you want to be more like them. Realistically, you’re going to study people and see their warts. And that might shape what you think about their motivations and whether your own motivations lead you the same way.
pjwestin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, I would say you shouldn’t make him your hero either. Even if you think what he did was heroic, lone gunman assassins usually don’t turn out to be very stable, well adjusted people. Hell, Ted Kacynski has some good points about post-Industrial life, but that doesn’t mean he should be your hero.
Very possible, and nearly as disappointing. My point isn’t that he changed or became worse, just that I projected more of my ideals onto him than he actually shared.
To be clear, I’m not. I’m saying that he has some views and beliefs that may lead him to disappoint you in the future. He mostly doesn’t comment much on politics outside of the surveillance state, but he has described himself as a libertarian, and said that he believes social security is a scam that needs to die. It seems clear that he is anti-authoritarian, but it’s very possible that, if he ever became more vocal about American politics, you’d learn a lot about him that would disappoint you.