Taibbi: US shifting to era where some ideas, people deemed ‘too dangerous’ to have ‘civil liberties’

Journalist and author Matt Taibbi on Thursday said that some conservatives and liberals now have a common cause against a new trend supporting the privatization of control over speech, in which some people and ideas are deemed “too dangerous” to be shared with the public. 

In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Taibbi responded to criticism recently levied against author and journalist Glenn Greenwald, a former writer at The Intercept, for speaking and providing content to right-wing media outlets. 

Taibbi said that this criticism is symbolic of a larger “epistemic revolution,” in which a growing number of people believe information should be controlled by “experts.” 

“In the Trump era, I think there’s been kind of a significant philosophical shift to just some things are just too dangerous, some people are just too dangerous to allow to have civil liberties, and what we really need is a group of enlightened experts,” the journalist said. 

Taibbi went on to say, “It’s a different way of looking at things than I think liberals would have looked at it maybe 20 or 30 years ago, and as a result, there are now a number of people who would formerly have been political enemies who are now saying the same thing, which is we disagree with that kind of elitist approach to the situation.” 

Watch part of Taibbi’s interview above.