Can someone remind me of the reason we are supposed to be
against Julian Assange? I’ve not been following the matter too closely so I
wouldn’t know. Not being an expert on the subject I would not bother to write
about it were it not for the fact that the hatred expressed towards Assange, and
the trouble he is in, seem at odds with everything I was taught about who we are
as a society. I believe it had something to do with him reporting unpleasant
facts about Hillary Clinton. Are facts bad because they are unpleasant?
Have we really gotten to the point where we feel we can
punish people for reporting truths we don’t like? Oh, I’ve heard it said the real
problem is that he doesn’t give a fair and balanced picture of what’s going on.
If that were a real journalistic concern, Woodward and Bernstein should have
said “Yeah, Richard Nixon was involved in a cover-up of the Watergate break-in,
but let us also tell you about some bad things Democrats do.” Journalism doesn’t
work that way. You dig into a story and you follow it to the end. It is your
job to report news/truth as best you can and tell the story as you come across
it. A clue brings you to more information, which starts to reveal a narrative which
you then report. In the case of Julian Assange, I believe he released information
that was given to him.
When a journalist or editor is given timely information, he
does not sit on it until an equal amount of information is found that gives
counter-balance to it. But the fact that Assange is tied to inconvenient truths
about Hillary Clinton and the DNC is enough to cause liberals looking for anybody
to blame for their candidate’s loss other than their candidate to irrationally
hate and blame him. It is enough for liberals to betray their basic notions of freedom
of the press and demand imprisonment for someone who did nothing more than
release truthful information about a candidate running for the highest office in
the United States. I cannot escape the feeling that it is at its core an assault
on our appreciation for truth.
Of course, the fact that said information (allegedly)
influenced the outcome of the election, giving us Donald Trump, leads many to
believe Assange had some ulterior motive in releasing the information he did.
Many believe he was working with the Russians, although no evidence is provided
for this belief. This theory (accepted as gospel fact by many) has some very important
questions to be answered, which our own media might be interested in working on
were they not so busy condemning an honest journalist for showing them how to
do their job. The first and foremost question to ask is, did the Wikileaks
information actually even have any impact on the election?
But let us assume for a moment the unproven, that Russia was
really the source for Assange’s information: so what? Yes, so what? If we had this
sort of information on Vladimir Putin, would we not be just in sharing it with
the world? Would we be wrong to do so? Moreover, Julian Assange is not an
American but an Australian. His duty lies not in loyalty to the United States
and the secrets of its political parties but to truth. There is no reason other
than the wrath of an imperial nation that he should not release it. A very
powerful reason, no doubt, one which silences the overwhelming majority of newspersons
all over the world. It is to Assange’s greater credit that he did not let this
very real threat dissuade him.
Is it wrong of Julian Assange to report information even if
he did so with a personal agenda? Would he be the first to do so? I think we
can state with confidence that American journalists do so all the time. Do you
honestly believe that Assange’s truth
swayed the voting public more than Rush Limbaugh’s lies and half-truths? Should Assange, in reporting truth, be
punished rather than merely de-platformed, as was the punishment received by
hate-monger Alex Jones?
We speak of election interference as the ultimate crime, and
it is indeed something that should not be done. But when it comes to sharing
truths, embarrassing as they may be, I believe it is better to know than not
know. And election interference needs to be proven before we can mete out
punishments for it. In the case of Russia in the 90’s it was not merely
undeniable but openly discussed. It was not merely the U.S. telling some
unpleasant truth about Russian officials but blatant manipulation of the
political process. Similarly, nothing Assange could ever do could come close to
what
the CIA did to his own government. If our interest was one of law and
fairness, should we not first jail those responsible for the ouster of prime
minister Gough Whitlam before going after Julian Assange?
As I have said, the case of Julian Assange is one I have not
been following closely. But the precedence that would be set—has been set—by punishing
a journalist for releasing embarrassing but true information is a very
dangerous one. It changes who we are as a nation, or at least changes who we
have pretended to be. It changes each and every one of us in that it places our
personal narratives above the search for truth. It weakens our arguments when
we talk about censorship, renders laughable the call to defend Jim Acosta. Indeed,
it is a very potent weapon in the war between truth and political expediency.
Such a war has been waged for quite a while now, with the truth in constant
retreat. But there are moments in retreat when one has to rally the army to
defend certain key positions in order to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout.
I believe the case of Julian Assange to be one of those vital points around
which we must rally.
We are at a crucial juncture at this time in this nation, even
globally. There is an undeniable resurgence of fascistic practices and ideology.
Fascism as an ideology which promotes narrative over truth. Those on the
(alleged) left are trying to combat a rise in fascistic ideologies with a counter-narrative,
but it too is at war with the truth. Abandoning the search for truths, pleasant
or otherwise, is not an effective means of combatting fascism. It in fact gives
power to the notion that narrative supersedes truth. Democrats are at a point
where they are willing to compromise principles in order to win the larger
battle, but it is the very abandoning of principles that has gotten us to the
point we are now. Abandoning truth for narrative is a cowardly action. There is
no action the fascist would rather see us take, no response he would more greatly
relish. Narrative is the battlefield of his choosing. Truth should be ours.
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