The Disappearing of Julian Assange: Death To A Story

This is the second video in my ongoing art series The Disappearing of Julian Assange, about the way Assange's image is being deliberately erased from the public's consciousness:

Transcript:

Like a stretched-out loop of VHS tape, if you do a Google Image search for Julian Assange today, you will only get pages and pages of stale, outdated pictures, repeating over and over.

That's because there have been no official images of him since May 1, 2019 when the paparazzi snapped a bunch of pics of Assange through the window of the prison van including this iconic pic of him, staring right down the barrel of the camera, holding up a defiant fist.

But that was nearly four years ago. In a culture hungry for novelty, this is death to a story.

Because if you work for a media outlet and you go to a professional image library like Getty or AP or Reuters and you can't find anything new to run your story with, that story is going to get buried.

More than ever before the internet demands new, fresh images all the time and inhibiting the press' access to them is a small, but significant act of sabotage.

If successful, the case against Julian Assange will set a legal precedent that enables the US to snatch and imprison anyone, from anywhere in the world, who writes or publishes facts that embarrass the US.

The ramifications are enormous for pretty much everyone on planet earth, but especially foreign journalists who might want to write about what the US war machine is doing to their country.

But with only this worn-out tape of increasingly vintage images to present them with, the stories defending Assange and warning of what this precedent means often go unseen.

Is this deliberate? I don't know. But for the US war machine, it's certainly very convenient.

In case you missed it, here's In My Wallet, the first video in my The Disappearing Of Julian Assange series:

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2