> I really admire his restraint with what he’s trying to convey here despite how many people will miss reading between the lines.
It wasn't that subtle, to be honest, given the author even says "Stasi-like citizen surveillance" (and in general references Stasi multiple times throughout the article), clearly alluding to what you think he is alluding. But I agree with you, I believe even something not-so-subtle like this will be missed by the overwhelming majority.
Really well-written and well-sourced article. Glad to see someone managing to write something that is pleasant and fun to read, while, at the same time, cutting straight through all the bs with no debris of fluff to just pad up the article.
EDIT: found an even better/more illustrative quote in the article -
"The participants in Clubhouse have tried to block these tattletale reporters from eavesdropping on their private conversations precisely because they see themselves as Stasi agents whose function is to report people for expressing prohibited ideas even in private conservations"
I don't think you are missing anything substantial. While you might have missed the actual historical names and details, you got the idea right. Stasi is just a commonly used name for the Ministry of State Security in Soviet-occupied East Germany post-WW2. Which was known for creating those kinds of systems where it would be commonplace for people to snitch on their family and friends for as much as wrongthink.
On a more fundamental/deeper level, from my understanding, he is alluding to those systems and how regular people would all tattletale on each other voluntarily and out of some misguided conviction and belief in the system (except instead of getting canceled on twitter, they would get gulag'd instead). Without realizing that the system was not their friend and that they themselves were extremely likely to end up next on the chopping block the day after.
On twitter, Taylor Lorenz accused Marc Andreessen of using the "R-slur" in a Clubhouse discussion. In fact, some one else said the word in the context of some /r/wallstreetbets folks calling themselves "retards" in a self deprecating manner.
Taylor Lorenz's issue is that she is blocked by Marc Andreessen and several others on Clubhouse. So she is blocked from entering many key rooms (i.e. the one where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were on)
Not even just that. After being confronted about the fact that Marc never said it, Lorenz didn't apologize at all and said "it was just another male voice that sounded similar". Turns out, in the end, it wasn't even a "male voice", it was Felicia Horowitz. And the context in which that word was said was fully appropriate too, regardless of who said it. If you show what Felicia said to any reasonable person, I don't think they would be able to argue that there was anything "problematic" about it. Relevant quote from the article:
>The moderator of the discussion, Nait Jones, said that “Marc never used that word.” What actually happened was that Felicia Horowitz, a different participant in the discussion, had “explained that the Redditors call themselves ‘retard revolution’” and that was the only mention of that word.
And of course, after all this overwhelming proof that this was all just falsehoods and lies, there was no apology, no retraction, and the "journalist" just decided to play the victim as if she was the one who was wronged.
That's the first time the word "restraint" have appeared near Greenwald's name in a long, long time. Given that he's accusing NYT reporters of being the Stasi, I don't think that "restraint" is the word I'd use to describe him.
I didn't get the impression that he was trying to subtly accuse any reporters of being directly involved in anything like that, but if the incentives of modern journalism align to create the same outcome where inconvenient status-quo-doubters are silenced, why does it matter how we got there?
I really admire his restraint with what he’s trying to convey here despite how many people will miss reading between the lines.