Greenwald explains the Musk takedown of BBC reporter

Click above for the video

Everyone else is showing the video of Elon Musk destroying BBC reporter James Clayton who had clearly come unprepared, so I’m just putting it here wrapped in the Glenn Greenwald video, because Glenn explains it all very well. Remembering that Greenwald is a leftie from way back, but has become hyper-critical of the crazy left that simply repeats anything the government says as long as that government is Democrat. 

The BBC reporter I believe just turned up to Twitter HQ in San Francisco, asked for an interview with Musk, which Musk gave him. Amazing. Also amazing that the guy had clearly done no research. Just assumed that he was right to say the the “amount of hate on Twitter has increased”. But could offer no example when asked, and then pressed. Good on Musk!

I follow Twitter only to see what’s being talked about. I have an account, but only to access; I never tweet. Because, like it or hate it, Twitter is where people go to talk. Some 400 million of them. In 8 billion tweets a day. I subscribe to over 200 accounts, in areas of my interest, from China, to current affairs, to language, to HK, to Oz, and trying to be across the spectrum. You get unique access to what people, some of them the biggest movers and shakers in the world, are saying, in real time. My own experience since Musk took over has not changed much at all. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve seen more hate speech. Though if you want hate speech on there, you can certainly find it. 

The Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), that Clayton mentioned -- but only at the end -- as saying there’s “more hate” on Twitter, is a pretty sketchy outfit. I’ve talked of them before, here. They’re of the view that all the ills in the world are from “disinformation” or “hate" (as defined by them) and always from the “Far Right”. They are clearly in their own bubble and unable to see the equivalent -- in some ways more toxic -- disinformation on other sides of the spectrum. (I’d say the Russia collusion hoax was way more harmful to the American body politic than anything Q-anon does).

ADDED: the ISD hit piece on Musk, by Clara Martini is here. From where I was led to another piece in Vanity Fair of April 26, 2021, to which I’ve added my comments. I gotta say, this VF writer Bess Levin and the people at ISD, are all of a type. Laptop class, never created a job in their life, having a go at a man who has created hundreds of thousands of consequential jobs in consequential industries. They are as mosquitos on the hard skin of a true elephant. I’ve called him the greatest entrepreneur in the world. Maybe of all time, but certainly of today. And they, the critics, call him a “misogynist” for poking fun at do-nothing, non-job-creater, Liz Warren?? And making fun of Bernie, the laziest man in the US Senate, which is sayin’ sumfink....

Below the fold, my marginalia to the Bess Levin piece:

This above by Bess Levin is ignorance of the world. 
Actual or confected ignorance. 

The last real person who knew the real world, who wrote about real stuff at Vanity Fair was the late great Christopher Hitchens. VF is now pretty tawdry, a pale imitation of its old robust self.