He said he was unimpressed by east London's multiracial neighbourhoods, telling one British user of the forum: "It's where all of your Muslims live. I didn't want to get out of the car."
Is this quote verifiable? If so, it's certainly changed my perception of the guy.
He was 23 at the time. I posted a lot of stupid crap online at 23 too. He posted this at the end of a lengthy screed complaining how racist Europe is.
context:
< User7> we don't have ghettos in the UK
< TheTrueHOOHA> sure you do
< TheTrueHOOHA> i went to london just last yearit's
where all of your muslims live
I didn't want to get out of the car.
< User7> no, that's Bradford
< TheTrueHOOHA> I thought I had gotten off of plane in the wrong country
I don't know where it was, but it was by London City Airport and it was terrifying
< User8> same thing in France
< User7> TheTrueHOOHA: east London
yeah, a lot of ethnic groups have settled there
< TheTrueHOOHA> I guess it's nice that they set up their own community, though
< User7> TheTrueHOOHA: not many people here share your opinion
< TheTrueHOOHA> they just seemed awfully... orthodox
< TheTrueHOOHA> i mean it wasn't like, "hi, we're your friendly neighborhood muslim community. welcome to our main street."
< TheTrueHOOHA> it was more like, "SUBMIT TO THE WILL OF ALLAH. SHARIAH REGULATIONS POSTED AT ALL CORNERS."
Not perfect, but not quite as bad as the original quote. He seems to have matured since then.
This seems more like backstopping his cover as super brainwashed/patriot militaristic tote the party line nonsense while he secretly steals all their dox
I think it's important to maintain perspective about who Edward Snowden is as a person, and what he did in an effort to expose injustice. He might be a raging bigot and a racist. I don't know, but I know that I'm glad he did what he did. That doesn't excuse any alleged racism or bigotry -- not in any way -- but I always try to remember that even the people we choose as heroes are flawed.
My feelings on matters like this were heavily influenced by the graphic novel Watchmen. It's characters are a great mix of comic book hero archetype and real world people with real world problems and hang-ups. I try to look at my heroes through the same lens as Alan Moore.
Parts of East London can be intimidating, with high rates of racist and religious violence.
Here are a couple vigilantes arrested for "harassing, intimidating and assaulting people on the streets of east London while claiming they were enforcing sharia law".
While every community has some violent crime, I wouldn't be too quick to indict Snowden as xenophobic just because he sensed a threat in some neighborhoods.
If you don't feel comfortable, keep moving until you do. You can analyze whether it was racist later, and then feel guilty if you want to.
In retrospect, I was probably safer every time I walked alone through the streets of Chicago's various neighborhoods than that one time I pulled in to an interstate highway rest stop in Florida. A sheriff's deputy had to watch over us and our car from the time we pulled in to the time we rolled out. None of us have ever peed so quickly in our entire lives.
In retrospect, we should have gone straight through and opted for wetting our pants. In that situation, there was no apparent difference in skin colors. Number of shirts owned, yes. Tooth count, definitely.
Had a similar family with different skin color locked all their doors and hastily re-entered traffic, I wouldn't be calling them racist; I'd be calling them wiser than me. So as I do not know much about the neighborhoods and suburbs of London, I think I'll withhold any uninformed judgements on what he said and did as a young man. It may well be that he is both racist and correct. On the whole, I care more about the latter.
As an ex resident of East London (Leyton) he's right about it being a shitty area and having a high muslim population. However these two facts are independent.
I would lock my doors too. Only because I know two people who got carjacked.
They are not entirely independent. They are simply correlated to different links in the causality chain. The Muslims are there because it's a shitty area, not the other way around. If it were a good area, the houses would be too expensive for the latest wave of immigrants to move into.
It was the same way with the era of immigration in America. The first generation off the boat lived in the worst neighborhoods, and then the next generation rose to power and lorded it over the boats that came in on their watch. I imagine (though I don't know) that Hindus and Sikhs are more accepted as British than Muslims are, just because they have been around longer, and that they have long since moved into the better neighborhoods.
I don't know, exactly. I do know that Florida has its own Fark tag. It was northern Florida. The rest stop was curiously crowded for the amount of traffic on the road, compared with every other interstate rest stop I have ever pulled in to. When we parked, a sheriff's deputy--not a state highway patrolman--adopted a position near our car, and he was making eye contact with people near us and shaking his head "no".
I can only assume that we were at risk of involuntarily auditioning for Deliverance 2.
I have absolutely no interest in finding out more about what it was all about.
Judging by the famous "shot in the balls" quote, Snowden has probably changed his outlook a little since then.
Or, of course, he could have been leaving this type of trail of online activity precisely because he knew it could be observed, and wanted to put himself in a particular light for anyone doing so, if he was already intending his exfiltration of data or some such act at that stage.
That's probably just wishful thinking on my part, though :) More likely scenario, quoting from the author of the material linked: "So Snowden was young once, and said anything that occurred to him? Imagine my shock!"
Bear in mind Snowden has proven his commitment to rigorous honesty. Many people you might think of as decent might think these things, but not admit it, even to themselves.
I don't judge Snowden for saying these things, any more than I would judge a person who lives in a rich White/Jewish area and would never dream of living or going to a poor Muslim/South Asian area. That is to say, I don't judge him at all for saying these things.
Is this quote verifiable? If so, it's certainly changed my perception of the guy.