[Part 8 of a series on Glenn Greenwald, other Useful Idiots & Cancel Culture.]
Everyone knows Glenn Greenwald hates this country’s insidious, evil tech oligarchy. He says so all the time, on social media and in his writings elsewhere. He also is a fierce enemy of the rich and powerful, which he also writes about frequently — without ever acknowledging that he is rich and powerful himself. To hear Greenwald tell it, he’s just a miserable stray mutt — incidentally, I’ll write tomorrow on the animal shelter run out of his Rio de Janeiro mansion and staffed by the poorest of Brazil’s poor — fending for himself in a hostile world.
Consider this Twitter thread, in which GG, as I will refer to him henceforth, starts out by attacking Taylor Lorenz, a female New York Times reporter who wrote on Twitter about “the very real threats and violence journalists (especially women journalists face).” GG thought this was a riot and so, possibly over a post-lunch espresso fixed by his household staff in Rio, he mocked her and essentially urged people to threaten her more.
Then he went on to attack “coddled, well-paid, highly privileged, coiffed, insulated, protected US elites,” without of course ever noting that he was born in the US and is part of the global elite, based on income, he professes to despise. At the same time he got in a dig at CNN’s (absolutely horrendous) Jim Acosta while not so subtly supporting Donald Trump, who he periodically claims to dislike, sort of, but can’t bring himself to regularly or even ever strongly denounce for the sexist, racist pig that he is, not to mention leaving understated, or unstated, that Trump was a president who was erratic but who at the economic level ruled for the financial elite, which GG does not admit he is part of. Hey, GG, when you going to do a series on the evil of Trump’s tax cuts and how they had the pigs feeding at the trough?
So how rich is Greenwald? I can’t say for sure but, as noted above, he has a lavish estate in Rio and one has to imagine he lives pretty well in a country where the monthly minimum wage is worth the equivalent of around $200. That’s pocket change for Greenwald, given how much he makes with his Substack, SS, henceforth. Speaking of SS, there are a few libs on that list but it’s quite telling how many rightists, like Crypto Fash leaders GG and Matt Taibbi, are on that list. I wonder if any of them got equity stakes in SS, along with their huge signing bonuses?
Then there’s the riches GG accumulated while working for First Look Media, publisher of The Intercept and owned by tech oligarch Pierre Omidyar, who GG, one would think from his brave talk about “elites,” detests for being so pampered and rich. Speaking of which, that’s the point of this story, so let’s go to the evidence.
Posted below are the sections of 990s — federal tax forms filed with the IRS by non-profits — showing (and hiding) salaries at First Look media. Sweet gig! Just look how much the loathsome Jeremy Scahill got paid in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. That’s amazing, but I guess he’s worth it because even though he produces next to nothing he’s a Dirty Warrior for truth, justice and….never mind. For his promotion of his lame, mediocre brand and incredible narcissism. Here’s a guy who did a shallow, dull movie about US interference in the Third World and guess who’s the star? Bro, I feel ya!
Also look at how much GG made in FY 2015. Actually, that’s not disclosed but I’ve been told by several sources — and it’s pretty obvious from the form — that he got paid, through an anonymous shell firm called Enzuli Management LLC (misspelled on form), $518,608. Oh yeah, a Brazilian journalist named Reinaldo Azevedo reported that David Miranda, Greenwald’s husband and a federal congressman from Rio de Janeiro state for the Socialism and Liberty Party, owns 18.75 percent of Enzuli Management and 1 percent of an anonymous Brazilian shell company called, in English, Enzuli Travel and Tourism.
“Both [anonymous shell companies] include the participation of Glenn Greenwald, founder of The Intercept Brasil,” Azevedo reported. He didn’t disclose the size of GG’s “participation,” but one assumes that it was the rest since Miranda, who has been accused of financial irregularities in Brazil — as has Greenwald; I don’t know whether the charges are true or dummied up by the fascist-style elected government of Jair Bolsonaro, but until and unless they are proven true I stand in solidarity with GG, who may have been targeted, ironically, by calculated leaks by his political enemies in Brazil, though that doesn’t mean the information is false.
First Look was a real cash cow for everyone, including me. I got paid $155,000 until I quit in disgust about 15 months after my hiring. (I’ve been told by well-placed First Look Media sources that GG received a secret bonus in FY 2015 for another $500,000, laundered through yet another shell firm. GG has declined repeated requests for comment about that over the years, so I didn’t bother asking him for this story. But I’ll ask him in a tweet about it later today, after I publish this story and will update it if he replies. He’s always got his mammoth platform on SS to reply at as well.
Now let’s go back to FY 2014 and then FYs 2016 to 2018. Keep in mind that the tax forms for 2019 and 2020 — which started on October 1, 2019, and ended on September 30, 2020 — are not available online yet. Hence, two full years of pay, and change, are missing as Greenwald announced he was leaving The Intercept in late-October 2020. When you add it all up it comes to more than $2 million over just 5 years. By the way, “Management” is again misspelled but I would assume it’s this shell company, which is registered in New York (and at one time in Florida) and founded in late 2013, which makes it part of FY 2014.
As my colleague at Washington Babylon, Tony Belletier, author of this great story about the Crypto Fash ecosphere which GG is a leader of, commented about GG’s fondness for pigs.
To close for now, and I’ll have a summary tomorrow of the series, I would note that GG (and Matt Taibbi and Michael Tracey) are not on the left. They are rich pigs — Tracey may not be rich but he sure is a pig — who seek to protect their class interests through their writing and social media presences. They are fundamentally rightists, and we all should do everything to push them to their natural home in the right-wing ghetto with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and the whole Fox News crew. Because they are dangerous, and lure in children, teens and even adults who think by supporting them they are promoting the Left, but instead are supporting the Crypto Fash SS division on the right.
