Starve The System Of Its Life Source

Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno, after a recent trend towards siding with the agenda of the U.S./NATO empire, is working on a deal to expel Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy. After this happens, it’s very likely that the U.S. or the U.K. will be able to fulfil their threats to arrest Assange-an arrest that, telling from the past language of President Trump and his top officials, could result in Assange’s torture or execution.

Assange has been cleared of all criminal charges, and his practice of releasing secret information is something that news organizations do all the time. The government only wants to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks because they’ve brought transparency to a global oligarchy that depends on secrecy. And if they’re able to arrest Assange, it will set a precedent for the Trump administration to target any news outlet that publishes leaks. By extension, anyone who challenges power will also be easier to treat as a criminal.

The persecution of Assange means we’ve reached a point where the oligarchy no longer cares about pretending our society is free. As the financial crisis has discredited neoliberalism and globalization, governments and corporations have been putting more effort into fighting those who oppose these systems. Assange’s story is the culmination of this war on dissent, and we need to fight back.

If Assange is arrested, people around the world should take drastic action to defend against this attack on our freedom-as Caitlin Johnstone says, we’ll need to collectively “shake the earth” in response to it. And this effort will need to have more than the pro-Assange protests that are being planned; we’ll need to deprive the system of its life source by organizing massive strikes.

Talk to your personal and social media friends about helping in a massive general strike in the event that Assange is detained. For a day or so after the news breaks, we need to not buy anything and not go to work, and we need to do this worldwide. If this doesn’t have impact, I’ll routinely help put together more pro-Assange strikes going into the future. If a lot of others do the same as me, the strikes might get publicity that puts pressure on the U.S. and U.K. governments to free Assange.

This effort will contribute to the other strikes that are being planned, like the workers’ strike that will happen on September 3rd this year. And it will be part of a very effective revolutionary strategy, which is to force the elites to give into our demands by threatening the system they depend on. When people stop participating in the economy with regular and frequent strikes, and they do this for a long time, the system will become unstable, and the politicians and billionaires will essentially be forced to negotiate with the people.

We’ve been getting a lot closer to this reversal of power roles so far this year, as many worker strikes have been happening around the world. If we use the outrage that Assange’s persecution is causing to expand this strike movement-and combine it with additional actions, like protests and civil disobedience-change will happen. The system depends on the cooperation of the people, and if we take that cooperation away, the system won’t be able to go on.