NSA Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden: Hero Or Villain?

Is there an objective answer to this question, or is it inescapably subjective?

In a sense, everything is subjective, that is, dependent on one's perspective. Yet there are degrees of objectivity and subjectivity. Subjectively, the sun is moving around the earth. Just look in the sky! Don't you see what it does every day?

And who could think the world is round? Isn't it obviously flat?

Yet we are able to gain a truer view of things by analysis and study. In other words, we move closer to “absolute” objectivity.

Paradoxically, objectivity is relative. We cannot obtain absolute objectivity because we cannot view existence from outside of existence, and we cannot perceive or think anything from outside our own minds. In other words, we cannot get outside of our minds to perceive external reality.

But it does NOT follow from that that all ideas, opinions, and thoughts are equal. The idea that the earth is flat is not just as valid as the idea that it is round. The knowledge of the reality that the Holocaust was an actually-occurring historical event is not on a par in terms of value or legitimacy with the insistence that the Holocaust is a myth. The fact that absolute objectivity doesn't exist, and that absolute certainty is elusive, does not mean there is no truth or falsehood. To believe that is to enter literal madness.

So we live in a paradoxical state of existence. But we don't need absolute certainty to live. Being pretty sure of many things, and being sure based on intellectually honest examination of reality, always subject to revision, is good enough for living.

So is it impossibly subjective to put a label on Edward Snowden?

Not at all. Not if words have logical meaning. It is true that one's attitude towards Snowden will determine how one views him, and thus the words one uses to describe him. But that attitude, as you will see, is itself rooted in which value system one is beholden to- a human one or a power one that elevates the State over the person. [1]

Thus the fundamental conflict here is between those two value systems- the human value system, vs. the power value system.

But first we must answer the question: what is a hero?

I define a hero as someone who willingly puts themselves at significant risk for the sake of specific other people or for the greater good. I think that is the most succinct expression of the fundamental meaning of the word. Probably the Snowden-haters would agree with that definition of “hero.”

It cannot be debated that Snowden put himself, consciously, at risk. Thus the only thing that is arguable at all here is whether what Snowden did was for “the greater good.”

For anyone who is pro-human, there really is no argument that it was. Human beings are obviously entitled to live their lives free of the malevolent monitoring of a murderous empire, or indeed of any state. Human beings are entitled to live their lives, which to live decency requires personal privacy. The NSA and USA are ushering in the nightmare world George Orwell envisioned in 1984. In that world, an all-powerful state monitors every action of its subjects down to the minutest detail, making resistance to its oppression impossible and imposing compulsory enthusiastic support for its wars.

So there can be no argument in human terms with the fact that Snowden performed a public good. (The idea that massive NSA spying is “protecting” its victims is errant nonsense on its face and I won't dally here refuting it. Others are refuting it very well.) The argument is with the oppressors of the U.S. power establishment. To them, their power is the highest good and the most important thing in existence. Therefore, they have the right to massively violate the privacy of literally billions of people, to steal and store in perpetuity all their private communications, to draw social maps of all their human connections, and to use the information to target for harm those whose presumptive political beliefs and activities the power system does not like. (Such as myself.) To them, anything that undermines their power is evil. Thus Snowden, by exposing their crimes, and threatening to generate opposition to those crimes, is evil.

Let us dispose right now of the transparently ludicrous and false alibi that this massive, permanent, total surveillance system is all designed for the sole goal of “fighting terrorism.” That is the least significant and smallest part of the massive spying. The far more important and pervasive purposes are controlling the domestic population of the U.S. and preemptively targeting for neutralization potential organizers and dissident leaders; targeting foreign governments and elites in order to dominate them; targeting foreign populations, as in Brazil, to aid the fascist and reactionary forces in those countries- remember, historically the CIA has provided thousands of names of people to be exterminated to fascist militaries all over the world, especially in Latin America, Indonesia under Suharto, Iraq under Saddam Hussein (when the U.S. liked him). With a massive NSA database at its disposal, now the CIA can murder more people than ever. [2]

The mavens of the U.S. power establishment say Snowden should plop himself into their clutches and “face the consequences of his actions.” In fact he's a coward for not doing so, is their position.

In other words, to use a war metaphor, a soldier should throw himself on a live grenade (absent nearby colleagues who would be at risk).

A soldier in combat doesn't seek to become a casualty. Likewise he is not a coward for resisting capture by the enemy.

I'm speaking in the hero context here. Snowden himself doesn't see the U.S. Government as his enemy, perhaps. He should, however, because it is his enemy. And the fact that they are trying to imprison him (for life if not most of his life) or kill him possibly, should make that obvious to him.

So, objectively, within a pro-human value system, Snowden is a hero. (Eschewing the Orwellian-type distortion of vocabulary that the power structure engages in habitually, where words mean their opposite.) In the power system value system, he is a “traitor” worthy of death (or, since people are looking, life in prison). (Maybe down the road they can kill him.)

The next question becomes; which is the superior value system?

The creatures who have sold their souls to the power system of course think that system is superior to a human value system. Superior because it can impose itself on humans. In other words, Might Makes Right. Power, being triumphant, is its own justification. As long as it can successfully oppress humans and impose itself on the world, that proves its superiority, in their minds. Plus, they receive the rewards of status, money, and privilege that comes with prostituting oneself to power. And no, that system isn't human, it is anti-human, because it systematically attacks and destroys human rights. Many others have articulated how this has become blatant in the years since 9/11/01. The U.S. power establishment has even effectively revoked the 500 year old right of habeas corpus. (See Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald among others on the human rights holocaust ushered in by the 9/11 attack, the U.S. equivalent of the Reichstag fire as an excuse for repression.) [3]

As a practical matter, all humans can do is struggle against the power system. Or accept our “inferiority” and the “inferiority” of our values. (At least inferior in a brute, survival of the fittest, natural selection sense. Of course, the power system is rapidly heading towards ecological disaster, which will certainly trump any false notions of its “superiority,”) The people in whom the human impulse is too strong to enable them to live comfortably as prostitutes to power inevitably sacrifice money, comfort, status, safety, and security, “irrationally,” as Edward Snowden quite consciously has done. (Indeed he has even spoken about giving up the cushy job, how one can just go along with things and take the money, as most of his former colleagues do.)

Crushing people's spirits with persecution, repression, torture, imprisonment, solitary confinement, etc., is designed precisely to make people surrender and accept the superiority of the power system. This is as true in Iran, or Russia, or China, or Syria, as in the U.S.

One then has to confront the question of what is wrong with our species?

While valid, that is a slippery question which can too easily get vicious criminals off the hook (by blaming the entire species). Because if everyone is guilty, than no one is guilty. But I didn't murder six millions Jewish people in concentration camps. I never owned slaves. I didn't order the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I didn't fly planes into the World Trade Center towers. I'm not assassinating people. I'm not torturing people. Therefore I do not accept guilt for these crimes, especially since I inveigh against them at personal cost. (I have long been unpopular with American secret policemen, who over the years have expressed their displeasure in the various nasty underhanded ways available to them.) We must reject the facile “man's inhumanity to man” pop-psych explanation for war and atrocity that dissipates guilt from the culprits, makes understanding impossible by obfuscating political causality, and is ultimately fatalistic as it says this is human nature, it has always been this way and always will be. Which is a crock, since in fact the world is always changing, societies and civilizations and cultures are not the same as they were a century ago, five hundred years ago, or two millenniums ago.

So while the Mick Jagger sang “I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me,” I reply, BULLSHIT, you money-grubbing prancer. (“Sympathy for the Devil,” the Rolling Stones.) Just his little contribution to the never-ending establishment coverup of those particular CIA assassinations, I guess. Another accessory after the fact.. That lyric is just a low-brow version of the Everyone is Guilty line that shields evildoers.

1] That of course assumes sincerity on the part of the haters who are reviling Snowden. I'm sure many of them are sincere. Hitler too was sincere. Sincerity isn't necessarily a virtue. It is also probable that among the chorus of establishment. propagandists and politicians heaping opprobrium upon Snowden are some real cynics who are carrying out a mission as part of their duties as members of the power structure and who would just as readily praise him if the establishment line of the day was to do that. In other words, their attitude may be a facile adaptation to what particular strategy or tactic of the day the power structure has fixed on for the moment.

2] The U.S. helped install a fascist military dictatorship in Brazil in 1965. Currently the president of Brazil is a former revolutionary who was tortured by that U.S.-backed dictatorship. Sounds like a strong motive for the U.S. to target Brazil and lay the groundwork for another fascist coup and wave of repression. By spying on the entire Brazilian population, the NSA generates a database for the CIA to target more people for torture and murder than ever before.

3] In point of fact, the U.S. didn't fundamentally change after 9/11. All that happened was that it got worse than it had been in the previous couple of decades. But looking at U.S. history, there is no time when repression of progressive dissent and movements such as black civil rights, labor organizing, and resistance to Imperialist wars was not the norm.

The U.S. has always been an enemy of human rights, as the historical record amply proves. It is an empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery, which expanded through military conquest starting with its failed attempt to seize territory from present day Canada in 1812! Unfortunately its propaganda is so effective that fools actually believe it was founded on democratic principles and is the freest country on earth and a liberator of mankind. Actual facts bound off their brainwashed brains like pellets hitting armor plates.