Glenn Greenwald seems to be confused about how to label groups that transform from one ideology to another when it comes to a surge in calls for the suppression of certain books:
It is important to note that [ACLU lawyer Chase] Strangio’s views are mostly definitely not shared by everyone at the ACLU. Many of the group’s more traditional free speech advocates still prioritize its civil liberties principles over liberal politics and liberal political causes. As I noted when I defended the organization in 2017 for its free speech representation in Charlottesville, the ACLU has defended Milo Yiannopolous against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s refusal to allow ads for his book, and this year publicly defended the National Rifle Association against the efforts by New York State General Letitia James to disband it. …
But for numerous reasons, the ACLU — still with some noble and steadfast dissenters — is fast transforming into a standard liberal activist group at the expense of the free speech and due process principles it once existed to defend. Those reasons include changing cultural mores, an abandonment by millennials and Gen Z activists of the long-standing leftist belief in free speech and replaced by demands that views they dislike be silenced (which in turn causes Gen X and Boomer managers and editors fearful of losing their jobs or being vilified to succumb to this authoritarianism); and a massive influx of #Resistance cash donated to the ACLU not in the name of civil liberties but stopping Trump and the Republicans, much of which was used for political rather than legal staff-building.
I consider a commitment to free expression to be a core principle of anyone who is a member of a liberal democracy, so saying … is fast transforming into a standard liberal activist group at the expense of the free speech and due process principles it once existed to defend. … is really quite the contradiction in terms. A liberal group against free expression is not a liberal group; it is decidedly illiberal.
Is this important? Of course it is. Central principles motivate actions; actions define groups. If some liberal group no longer defends free speech, then it’s time to label them as illiberal. They don’t like that, then let them defend their actions. That very discussion, honestly undertaken, often serves to bring to the fore the problems that some position-of-convenience will bring to that organization’s accomplishment of its mission.
Liberal is not an empty label, it brings a large bowl full of meaning with it. Such words are often deployed with cunning care by the deceitful, and is probably one of the more enraging practices that humanity engages in.
