Did Leftist Panel Member Admit Glenn Is Right About Occupy Wall St?

There's an interesting video starting to make the rounds in the blogosphere. It was taken a couple weeks ago and includes a New York Times freelance writer talking about how the Occupy Wall Street structure doesn't really foster an "anti-authoritarian" sentiment as much as it could, and a liberal editor who seems to be talking about how Glenn Beck as actually right about where the protests could go.

First, a couple points about the video. First, it's important to note that it doesn't seem to be a planning meeting as some are billing it. The liberal blog site Jacobin organized it as a "public debate and panel discussion in Manhattan...about Occupy Wall Street and left politics and strategy." The word "strategy" is mentioned, but so are "public debate and panel discussion." So it would seem this wasn't some secret planning session with the movement's top brass and minds.

Additionally, there are some "edits" in the video, especially where Beck is mentioned. We're always suspicious of edits, and we believe we should point that out. Jacobin claims that the "jumps are caused by tape-switching," but there's now way we can confirm that.

So now to the video. The first shows NYT freelancer Natasha Lennard, who has reported on the Occupy movement for the times and was even arrested with the protesters. In it she says:

The state of the square now…[people] would not speak at the park. Because being an outright anti-authoritarian or an anarchist is not really something that people like to be live streamed around the world with a fucking police pen around you.  So there is a silencing that’s sort of gone on without much addressing, because to address it would be to out oneself.

Watch that part below:

Lennard has since responded via Twitter, saying the meeting wasn't a secret meeting nor was she employed by the NYT at the time she appeared on the panel:

The next video shows editor and activist Malcolm Harris opining about Glenn Beck and confirming, surprisingly (maybe), that Beck has actually been right about some of the protest. He explains:

And the capitalists know that’s not the case, right? If you want to read what the capitalists think about this you can go look at what Glenn Beck says, right? He’s got a better analysis than most people on the left about where this could go, how threatening this…—

[Video cuts, but seems to continue about Beck when it continues.]

…I think he’s like one of those fortune tellers who 99 percent of the time is just totally bullshitting everyone, and then 1 percent of the time [Beck's] eyes roll back in his head and he’s got, like, divine insight, you know: ”It’s the coming insurrection. It’s–I’ve been reading these French guys.”

That's interesting for a lot of reasons. First, the jump just happened to be while talking about Beck and right after Harris notes that Beck's analysis regarding where the protest is going is actually better than some of the leftist pundits.

Take it for what it's worth.

You can watch the entire video below: