“This is a scandalous situation—Western journalists aren’t standing up against Washington and aren’t standing up for basic freedoms.”
“Washington wants to punish Assange for the sin of illumination—power knows how to protect itself against illumination and against evaporation.”
“Power knows that ‘force is always on the side of the governed’ and therefore you need to keep people in the dark.”
“Western journalists aren’t standing up against Washington’s effort to pursue Assange—it’s up to the public to stand up for basic freedoms and illuminate power’s workings and induce an urgent evaporation.”
Julian Assange’s situation is all about the freedom to publish information, the freedom to expose government misconduct, and the freedom to know what your government is doing in your name—these are basic freedoms.
The Scandal
Western journalists should stand up against Washington’s effort to come after Assange for exercising basic freedoms. But my friend responded as follows when I asked my friend how many Western journalists are doing so:
Very few—it’s a scandal.
This is a scandalous situation—Western journalists aren’t standing up against Washington and aren’t standing up for basic freedoms.
The Situation
Assange founded WikiLeaks—an organization that publishes news leaks—and a US Army intelligence analyst named Chelsea Manning leaked to WikiLeaks an enormous amount of classified and sensitive material.
What did the material contain? I took the following notes on a 20 May 2022 piece:
“WikiLeaks published a video of soldiers in a US helicopter laughing as they shot and killed unarmed civilians in Iraq”—the victims included “a Reuters photographer and his assistant” and the “US military refused to discipline the perpetrators”
“WikiLeaks revealed that the total number of civilian casualties in Iraq was 66,000”—this number was “far more than the US had acknowledged” and this revelation caused Washington “intense embarrassment”
WikiLeaks “shone an appalling new light on the abuse meted out to the Muslim inmates at Guantánamo Bay, including the revelation that 150 innocent people were held for years without charge”
on the revelations’ embarrassing nature: “It’s easy to see why the US launched a criminal investigation.”
Washington wants to bring the hammer down on Assange—a 17 June 2022 NYT piece says that Assange was charged in 2019 “in the United States under the Espionage Act in connection with obtaining and publishing classified government documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on WikiLeaks in 2010” and that the “British government approved an extradition order on Friday for Julian Assange”.
I took the following notes on a 1 July 2022 CBC piece:
“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has appealed the British’s government decision last month to order his extradition to the U.S.”
“Julian Assange has battled in British courts for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse.”
“American prosecutors say Assange, an Australian citizen, helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.”
“Assange’s supporters and lawyers maintain he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech.”
“They argue that the case is politically motivated, that he would face inhumane treatment and be unable to get a fair trial in the U.S.”
That’s the Assange situation.
Two Essential Things
There are two essential things to keep in mind regarding the Assange situation:
(1) freedom of speech only becomes relevant when you vehemently dislike the speech in question—for example, the DPRK has no problem at all with speech that’s pro-DPRK
(2) there are basic freedoms at stake and the effort to focus attention on Assange—and on his personal life—is a transparent effort to distract from these basic freedoms and to distract from what’s at stake
It’s essential to keep these two things in mind.
Commentary
Samuel Huntington writes the following in his 1981 book American Politics:
The coexistence in America of the antipower ethic with inequality in power gives rise to what may be termed the “power paradox”: effective power is unnoticed power; power observed is power devalued. At times Americans have gloried in the conspicuous consumption of wealth, but never in the conspicuous employment of power. The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.
Let me emphasize this part:
Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.
Washington wants to punish Assange for the sin of illumination—power knows how to protect itself against illumination and against evaporation.
And David Hume writes the following in his 1758 Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary:
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
Power knows that “force is always on the side of the governed” and therefore you need to keep people in the dark.
I took the following notes on the 20 May 2022 piece that I quoted from previously:
on what extradition will mean for Assange: “Once in the US he will almost certainly be sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life. He will die in jail.”
on what extradition will mean for British journalism: “It will become lethally dangerous to handle, let alone publish, documents from US government sources. Reporters who do so, and their editors, will risk the same fate as Assange and become subject to extradition followed by lifelong incarceration.”
Assange’s defense “has argued that his only crime was the crime of investigative journalism”—Assange’s defense points out that “the indictment charges Assange with actions, such as protecting sources, that are basic journalistic practice”
“the US alleges that ‘Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records’”—any “journalist who failed to take this elementary precaution when supplied with information by a source would be sacked”
the US “stated that Assange ‘actively encouraged Manning’ to provide the information”—it’s routine journalism to do this
“Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has warned that: ‘It is dangerous to suggest that these actions are somehow criminal rather than steps routinely taken by investigative journalists who communicate with confidential sources to receive classified information of public importance.’”
“If and when Assange is put on a plane to the US, investigative journalism will suffer a permanent and deadening blow.”
“And the message will be sent to war criminals not just in the US but in every country round the globe that they can commit their crimes with impunity.”
Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Alice Walker put out the following 17 June 2022 statement about the Assange situation:
It is a sad day for western democracy. The UK’s decision to extradite Julian Assange to the nation that plotted to assassinate him—the nation that wants to imprison him for 175 years for publishing truthful information in the public interest—is an abomination.
We expect the world’s most despised autocrats to persecute journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers. We expect totalitarian regimes to gaslight their people and crack down on those who challenge the government. Shouldn’t we expect western democracies to behave better?
The U.S. government argues that its venerated Constitution does not protect journalism the government dislikes, and that publishing truthful information in the public interest is a subversive, criminal act. This argument is a threat not only to journalism, but to democracy itself.
The UK has shown its complicity in this farce, by agreeing to extradite a foreigner based on politically motivated charges that collapse under the slightest scrutiny.
And there’s an excellent 9 September 2020 piece from Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker—I took these notes:
“On Monday Julian Assange was driven to the Old Bailey to continue his fight against extradition to the United States, where the Trump administration has launched the most dangerous attack on press freedom in at least a generation by indicting him for publishing US government documents.”
“If Assange is extradited to face charges for practising journalism and exposing government misconduct, the consequences for press freedom and the public’s right to know will be catastrophic.”
“Assange faces extradition to the United States because he published incontrovertible proof of war crimes and abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing the most powerful nation on Earth.”
“Assange published hard evidence of ‘the ways in which the first world exploits the third’, according to whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the source of that evidence.”
“Assange’s 2010 publications exposed 15,000 previously uncounted civilian casualties in Iraq, casualties that the US Army would have buried”
“the United States is attempting to accomplish what repressive regimes can only dream of: deciding what journalists around the globe can and cannot write”
“all whistleblowers and journalism itself, not just Assange, is on trial here”
Washington wants to “accomplish what repressive regimes can only dream of”—retribution against Assange means that “all whistleblowers and journalism itself, not just Assange, is on trial”.
Noam Chomsky presented—for Assange’s 2020 trial—an interesting formal statement to the court:
Chomsky’s statement quotes the points from Huntington and Hume that I quoted previously—I took the following notes on Chomsky’s statement:
“Julian Assange’s actions, which have been categorized as criminal, are actions that expose power to sunlight—actions that may cause power to evaporate if the population grasps the opportunity to become independent citizens of a free society rather than subjects of a master who operates in secret.”
“it’s long been understood that the public can cause power to evaporate”
“Hume underestimates the efficacy of violence but his words are particularly appropriate to societies where popular struggle over many years has won a considerable degree of freedom”
“In such societies, such as ours of course, power really is on the side of the governed and the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.”
“That is one reason why the huge public relations industry is the most immense propaganda agency in human history, a reach that’s developed and reached its most sophisticated forms in the most free societies, the United States and Britain.”
“That institution arose about a century ago when elites came to understand that too much freedom had been won for the public to be controlled by force so it would be necessary to control attitudes and opinions.”
liberal “intellectual elites understood that as well”
“One device to control the population is to operate in secret so that the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders will stay in their place, remote from the levers of power which are none of their business.”
“That’s the main purpose for classification of internal documents.”
“Anyone who has pored through the archives of released documents has surely come to realize pretty quickly that what is kept secret very rarely has anything at all to do with security, except for the security of the leadership from their domestic enemy, their own population.”
“The practice is so routine that illustration is really quite superfluous.”
“Julian Assange’s alleged crime in working to expose government secrets is to violate the fundamental principles of government, to lift the veil of secrecy that protects power from scrutiny, keeps it from evaporating—and again, it is well understood by the powerful that lifting the veil may cause power to evaporate.”
“It may even lead to authentic freedom and democracy if an aroused public comes to understand that force is on the side of the governed and it can be their force if they choose to control their own fate.”
“In my view, Julian Assange, in courageously upholding political beliefs that most of us profess to share, has performed an enormous service to all the people in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing.”
“His actions in turn have led him to be pursued in a cruel and intolerable manner.”
Western journalists aren’t standing up against Washington’s effort to pursue Assange—it’s up to the public to stand up for basic freedoms and illuminate power’s workings and induce an urgent evaporation.
Worth noting that the public conception of Assange's crimes seems to no longer be the cables, which I rarely see brought up that much anymore, at least comparatively. It's recently metamorphosed into bringing down the Clinton campaign and somehow electing Trump, a notion that was pretty soundly refuted by Thomas Ferguson and his co-authors in their 2018 paper on Trump's election, "Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games." Zombie ideas never die, I suppose.
An important essay that needs the highest visibility possible in US media. A serious criminal assault on the 4th estate and Assange for exposing the crimes of state.