Snowden now faces the traitor’s fate – worship from hipsters and Hollywood

New York

Brooklyn is the hipster heaven of New York, which is perhaps why it was there that a bust of Edward Snowden was unveiled yesterday.  Not that it stayed long.  The bust of the former National Security Agency contractor was put on a pedestal sometime on Monday with the word ‘Snowden’ glued on the base at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument at Fort Greene Park.  It was taken down a few hours later by parks and recreation employees.

I don’t want to read too much into this, but the brief deification and bringing down of Snowden’s image does seem apposite.  When the Snowden leaks were first publicised the left-wing press – in particular the Guardian and the New York Times – hailed him as a free speech hero, as though free and ‘protected’ speech was now generally agreed to include leaking vast quantities of national security secrets to terrorist groups and enemy states before fleeing to Vladimir Putin for sanctuary.  But the ‘Snowden is just so hip’ theme did stay up for a while. Earlier this year Hollywood gave an Oscar to the interminable Citizenfour documentary, which they cannot possibly have done for the film’s artistry or watch-ability.

But for Hollywood the leaking of NSA and GCHQ secrets was still just so hip.  The US film industry may have been less than amused last year when a studio was subjected to a hack and leak – and all that told us was that one studio exec didn’t think so highly of Angelina Jolie.  But it seems that so long as the secrets released damage British and American security, rather than cause any major A-list celeb rift, then it’s all cool.

And yet – perhaps a more real-world understanding of the wreckage that Snowden has caused is finally emerging.