The Assange Case Isn't About National Security, It's About Narrative Control
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Julian Assange once said, "The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security."
As someone whose life's work before his imprisonment was combing through documents of an often classified nature, he'd have been in a prime position to know. He'd have seen time and time again how a nation's citizenry are not under the slightest threat from the secret information in the documents that had been leaked to him from around the world, but that it could damage the reputation of a politician or a government or its military.
As the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder continues to trudge on with the UK government's granting the Biden administration permission to appeal a declined extradition request, claiming that it can safely imprison Assange without subjecting him to the draconian aspects of America's prison system which caused the initial dismissal, it's good to keep in mind that this is being done entirely for the purpose of controlling public access to information that is inconvenient for the powerful.
The prosecution of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act is being touted by the US government as a matter of national security; you can't simply allow journalists to publish classified information about the things its military forces are doing in the nations they occupy, because that could endanger American lives.
Leaving aside the fact that the Pentagon already admitted years ago that it could not find a single instance of lives being lost due to the publications for which Assange is currently being prosecuted, this case is not and has never been about national security. This case has always been about narrative control.
The US government is not afraid that unauthorized publication of government secrets will lead to Americans being killed, it's afraid it will lead to their knowing the truth. The powerful understand that narrative control is everything, and that an entire globe-spanning empire depends on keeping the masses from having a lucid perception of what's really going on in the world. There is an unfathomable amount of power riding on their ability to continue doing this.
Assange isn't in Belmarsh Prison for doing something wrong, but for doing something right. For trying to give the public information which will help them form a truth-based worldview so that they can make intelligent informed decisions about where they want to collectively steer society together. Because the oligarchic empire depends on the ability to manipulate the way people think, act and vote to benefit the powerful, this was like handing someone who's being groomed by a sexual predator a guidebook of all of the psychological tactics that are being used.
This good deed could not go unpunished.
Nothing WikiLeaks published endangered the American people, it endangered a globe-spanning empire's ability to control our understanding of what's happening in the world. This was a most egregious offense as far as our rulers are concerned, and it could not be allowed to stand.
So an example is being made. In less polite times Assange would have been tortured and drawn and quartered in the town square while the king looked on sipping from a goblet of mead. In the days of polite liberal democracy our rulers must remain hidden, and they must publicly torture dissidents to death in the name of national security concerns.
Beneath all the spin and excuses, this is all being done to show everyone what happens to you if you reveal embarrassing truths about the most powerful people on earth. If you compromise their political security. It's telling the world, "If you ever try to interfere in our control over the dominant narratives, this is what we will do to you."
And, whether we fully understand what's really happening or not, that's the message that is being ingested here. Journalists who find themselves in a position to publish such things going forward will find themselves thinking thoughts about what happened to Julian Assange.
This is why it's so important that they don't win this case. We cannot allow ourselves to be cowed away from the truth in this way, or else we're flying blind. We're unable to obtain information which will help us steer society in a truth-based direction.
The Assange case receives so much attention not because of interest in one man's fate, but because of interest in everyone's fate. If humanity is ever to turn away from its self-destructive patterns and create a healthy world, it will necessarily need to do so guided by the light of truth and transparency. As long as the powerful are able to keep us confused and deluded using propaganda and government secrecy, such a world will never come into being.
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Turn your head to the right, now to the left; now gaze over your shoulder. Now erect your hardiest psychological barriers. The propaganda is machine-gunning at you, seeking to infiltrate every pore, capillary and synapse. And having no weight of veracity, it seems light and airy, which makes that infiltration so much easier. Every US government utterance about Wikileaks and Assange is a major component of that infiltrate. Unabated resistance is absolutely necessary to maintain even a dollop of sanity.
Vigilance!
Great piece, Cait, I'd just like to add my piece on the same subject posted yesterday:
The mainstream media doesn't care about the so-called censorship the Assange case might have on them. They are playing by a different set of rules to begin with. Rules often changed by their government and financial alliances. Indeed, at this point in time, the powers that be see no difference between Wikileaks and QAnon.
Of course, there is a difference, but as disruptors to the mainstream narrative ... they're akin.
The control of the narrative at the establishment media level and the censorship of online opinion voices are in lockstep with the Assange case.
In the last few years, progressive news sites - The Intercept in particular, have been compromised. TYT bought out. Democracy Now a shell of itself. RT News smeared. Generic news sites like Yahoo and others with high online visibility have eliminated user commentary, Facebook, Twitter, Google severely curtailed commentary.
Why? Because someone like you might say something to challenge the power of someone they want to protect. Assange, as they see it, is vicariously responsible.
Or let me put it another way, does anyone really believe that what Julian Assange exposed back in 2010 really changed anything? Joe Biden is President. What did knowledge of US war crimes by the very regime that gave us Biden really change? NOT A DAMN THING!
We are good with our imperialism, we are good with the corrupt regimes of the Clintons and the Bushes, we are good with continuing unauthorized wars in the Middle East. What the hell did Assange do to change any of that?
Assange is not being prosecuted because he's a journalist who exposed a war crime or two, he's being prosecuted because he inspires discourse outside the strictures of what is acceptable, which is a danger not only to the corporate controlled narrative but more importantly to their bottom line - indeed their very existence. There are six and seven figure jobs at stake here.
He needs to be stopped, in their minds, because he will and already has inspired countless others to think for themselves. That is anarchy as the powers see it. But there is a component of profit in this more so than anything else.
The corporate media, whose goal is profit, wants to deliver the narrative with their own massaging of the facts, whereas Wikileaks, whose goal is speaking truth to power, delivers the message with no commentary often in the form of a leaked document that the public themselves can digest and debate coming to a more authentic realization.
Maybe the reason no one in the mainstream speaks up for Assange is because he's not really on trial for being a journalist exposing inconvenient truths, he's on trial for being a heretic. He's on trial for threatening an industry's profit margin and the salary of the paid drones therein. He's on trial for giving you a voice. He's on trial for future crimes. Even when the FBI is caught red-handed paying off a convicted pedophile to fabricate testimony as a star witness, no one bats an eye lid. It doesn't get lower than that. All to keep the hookers in the house happy.