As I’ve worked to warn the public about the blow to American press freedomthat Julian Assange’s prosecution would create, the people who want him jailed have responded with a uniformly repeated assertion: that there’s no way the government could actually try to prosecute Assange for practicing journalism. Now that Assange has been arrested and is on his way to being prosecuted for just this reason, these apologists for the national security state have been proven completely wrong-both in regards to the issue of Assange, and about their entire view of how our society works.
The Trump administration’s case for prosecuting against Assange is utterly fraudulent. The “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” charge that they’re using is exactly the same charge that the Obama administration considered prosecuting WikiLeaks with in 2010, before the Obama administration decided that doing so would be an illegitimate act which would have endangered press freedom.
The DOJ is now trying to prosecute Assange only because the current administration, especially Trump’s authoritarian and politically biasedattorney general William Barr, does not care about upholding press freedom. It wants to use Assange’s prosecution to set a precedent for the government to seek charges against outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Postwhenever they leak secrets about the president’s inner circle. Contrary to what I’ve been condescendingly told by the pro-establishment liberals who’ve sought to rationalize Assange’s persecution, the U.S. government’s war against Assange is indeed a war against press freedom.
Part of the why these centrist Democrats have so adamantly resisted the idea that Assange’s prosecution would endanger press freedom is that despite their dislike for Trump, they still fundamentally believe in the U.S. government’s ability to uphold democratic norms. After all, the essential basis of their argument for prosecuting Assange is the idea that the government should be able to keep secrets from the people with impunity, making whistleblowers like Assange deserving of retribution. Their view is based in the illusion that America’s “democracy” is too stable for this kind of crackdown against journalism to happen-a perception that fits with the political establishment’s myths about how America is an “exceptional” nation which intervenes around the world to spread “democratic values.”
But reality is catching up to these lies about what kind of country America is. The government will go after Assange for engaging in journalism, and the courts seemingly won’t protect Assange when this happens. If the Trump administration gets away with it, we’ll enter a new era where the powerful can abuse their power without risk of too much public exposure. This will enhance the state’s abilities to carry out secret drone assassinations, spy on the citizenry, collude with corporations, commit war crimes, imprison Americans without trial, torture prisoners, manufacture lies, plot foreign destabilization efforts, and engage in all the other kinds of activities that we often rely on leakers to bring our attention to.
The purpose of Assange’s persecution is to intimidate journalists and anyone else who speaks out against the deceptions of the ruling oligarchy. Their message to us is that we need to shut our mouths and accept their narratives, because they control the truth. Assange deserves to be jailed because they say so. The CIA, FBI, and NSA should be trusted because they say so. The American empire is a good thing for the world because they say so. Russia hacked the election because they say so. Assad used chemical weapons against his own people because they say so. Juan Guaido is the legitimate president of Venezuela because they say so. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist group because they say so.
Democrats are so eager to push us towards this fascistic paradigm because the Democratic Party would fit right in with it. Democratic leaders overwhelmingly support the Trump administration’s illegal coup in Venezuela. Throughout the last three years, the Democratic Party has used the bogus “Russiagate” scandal to glorify America’s intelligence agencies, and House and Senate Democrats have mainly supported Trump’s Syria strikes. And going into 2020, the party continues to move in the direction of subservience to militaristic values and the national security state; for example, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg recently said that he’s “troubled” by Obama’s clemency for Chelsea Manning despite the lack of constitutional justification for Manning having been prosecuted in the first place. Buttigieg’s statement shows how America’s political establishment is increasingly endorsing an Orwellian vision where whistleblowers and dissenters are persecuted.
We can’t let society further descend into totalitarianism. Make noise about the injustice of Assange’s prosecution. Donate to Assange’s legal defense fund. If you’re in the U.S., the UK, or Australia, contact your elected representatives to protect Assange. Go to the global rallies for him that activist groups are organizing, or organize events for him yourself. As Assange said in his brief address to reporters before he was put in the cop car: “The UK must resist this. The UK must resist.” For the sake of humanity’s freedom, the whole world needs to resist as well.
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