I was completely unaware of this war on DU, and the under-handed way it is being conducted until last week.
I am a Democrat. I support Obama. I lean strongly to the left on social and progressive causes. See my history of posts and comments to establish that.
I also happen to admire Snowden. I think the tactics the government uses to suppress whistleblowers - which comes out of the playbook of corporate whistleblower suppression - is despicable. I don't want the government to be doing things that scare me or case me to lose respect. I have long been sympathetic to the price whistleblowers pay for sticking their head up. No matter what his personal politics, Snowden has my respect for finding a way to not be utterly destroyed by the situation.
Last week I made a post about all the weird attacks on Glenn Greenwald. I also respect Greenwald for helping Snowden, and I mentioned that as a matter of full disclosure in my post. My post was suppressed using "technical rules" - the guy who did it felt I was attacking "old DUers" even though some of the posts in question were by new people with 100 posts. He said he could have denounced me for being new or a sock puppet, etc. Yet this guy knew these things weren't true. We had corresponded in private recently, and he had been supporting my other comments and posts. I was a true Democrat to him until he found out I supported Snowden.
It was obvious when he said my post was to conduct an argument. I checked my post, and I realized my disclose about Snowden was a trigger. Now some attack I hadn't intended to make was being projected upon me. Moreover, this guy had my whole post suppressed on the "meta" rule (notice how he claimed I was attacking anti Snowden speech when he was the one who actually and successfully attacked pro Snowden speech). Many similar posts go up on DU all the time. I can name other occasions where the rules were manipulated inthis fashion, creating an environment of fascism rather than democracy.
Anyway it is possible to be a card-carrying lefty Democrat AND a fan of Snowden.
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