by
Oscar Grenfell
A number
of corporate media outlets have begun the year by publishing
scurrilous and derisive attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder
Julian Assange.
The
coverage has the character of a coordinated political campaign, with
the most sinister motives. Its aim is to legitimise the stepped-up
persecution of Assange by the US and British governments, which are
pursuing the journalist and publisher because of WikiLeaks’
exposures of their war crimes, diplomatic intrigues and illegal
spying on the American and world population.
Virtually
identical articles were featured this week in some of the most
prominent publications around the world, including the London Times,
the Washington Post and the Australian. All of them centred on
personal smears against Assange and attempts to downplay the immense
threat to democratic rights posed by the US-led vendetta against him.
The
pretext for the venomous outpouring was the publication of a
confidential email sent by WikiLeaks to media organisations,
rebutting 140 falsehoods about Assange that have appeared in the
press. The document demanded that the recipients of the email refrain
from presenting the defamatory statements as facts.
A
version of the email was first published online on January 7 by Emma
Best, a self-styled “transparency activist.” Best’s “activism”
has included numerous denunciations of WikiLeaks that echo the
talking points of the US government and its intelligence agencies.
She came to media prominence by “leaking” private online
discussions between WikiLeaks supporters last year.
The
tenor of the coverage that followed Best’s blog post is summed up
by a sampling of media headlines: “Julian Assange fails the smell
test” (Washington Post), “WikiLeaks Doesn’t Want Reporters
Covering Julian Assange’s ‘Poor Personal Hygiene’”
(Observer), “WikiLeaks wants people to stop saying Julian Assange
bleaches his hair, eats with his hands, or has bad hygiene”
(Business Insider Australia), and “WikiLeaks doesn’t want you to
say Julian Assange lives in a cupboard ‘under the stairs’”
(Mashable).
In other
words, a raft of publications seized upon the email as the
opportunity to trumpet some of the most demeaning lies they have
previously circulated about Assange to undermine the mass popular
support he enjoys.
One
would have no idea from the articles that their subject is one of the
world’s foremost political prisoners, whose claim for asylum has
been upheld by the United Nations. Or that doctors have repeatedly
warned that Assange’s ongoing involuntary detention in the small
Ecuadorian embassy in London poses grave risks to his rapidly
deteriorating health.
Nor do
the individuals who affixed their bylines to slandering Assange care
that the US attempts to prosecute him are aimed at doing away with
press freedom and creating a legal precedent for locking-up any
journalist or whistle-blower who challenges the powers that be.
They are
representatives of what world-respected journalist and filmmaker John
Pilger aptly described as “Vichy journalism,” after the French
regime that collaborated with the Nazi occupation of the country
during World War II. Their aim is to suppress the truth, smear those
who expose government crimes and defend the status quo.
The
attitude of the establishment media to WikiLeaks was summed up by the
article in the Times, which was prominently republished in the
Australian. It denounced Assange for his “long career leaking
other people’s secrets.” The Observer likewise condemned
“government transparency absolutists.”
The
article’s authors, and the organisations who publish their filth,
make no attempt to conceal the fact that they identify wholeheartedly
with the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations whose
corruption and crimes were exposed by WikiLeaks. They are aggrieved
that WikiLeaks’ publications have documented US-led war crimes of
an historic magnitude in Iraq and Afghanistan, US imperialist
meddling all over the world and CIA spying, to name only some of its
most notable revelations.
The
WikiLeaks email itself pointed to the relationship between government
interests and the circulation of smears against Assange.
WikiLeaks,
the document stated, has published: “The largest, most accurate
leaks in the history of the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, US
politics, and Saudi Arabia, among many others. Predictably, given the
nature of some of these entities, numerous falsehoods have been
subsequently spread about WikiLeaks and its publisher.”
The
email noted that media lies against Assange have escalated since
March last year, when Ecuador cut off his communications, internet
access and right to receive most visitors. WikiLeaks observed that
the scale of attacks against its founder was “perhaps because
there is an incorrect view that Mr. Assange has no means to defend
his reputation from falsehoods in such grave circumstances.”
WikiLeaks
particularly highlighted a Guardian article last November which
claimed that Assange met with American political lobbyist and
consultant Paul Manafort at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2013, 2015 and
early 2016. The allegation was aimed at tying the WikiLeaks founder
to Manafort, who later served as a Trump campaign advisor and has
been a central target of a US Special Counsel investigation into
purported collusion between Trump and the Russian government.
Since
November, the article has been utterly discredited. The Guardian’s
editor Kath Viner and the authors of the piece—most notably the
anti-WikiLeaks hack Luke Harding—have evaded all questions about
the fraudulent character of their allegations and made no attempt to
substantiate them.
Despite
this, many of the comments on the WikiLeaks email repeated the
Guardian lies, only noting in passing that they had been contested.
Many of the articles asserted, without any substantiation, a
relationship between WikiLeaks and Russia. Business Insider Australia
blithely stated: “Some view WikiLeaks as a tool of Russian
intelligence, given Russia’s interference in the United States 2016
presidential election and WikiLeaks’ role in releasing private
emails from Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta.”
In
reality, WikiLeaks published leaked documents in 2016 that revealed
that the Democratic National Committee sought to rig the party’s
primaries against Senator Bernie Sanders on behalf of war-monger and
big business operative Hillary Clinton. WikiLeaks also published
secret speeches delivered by Clinton to Wall Street banks, in which
she pledged to do their bidding.
None of
the slanderous articles against Assange bothered to mention that
WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents from
Russia, many of which exposed the authoritarian regime of Vladimir
Putin.
That the
latest smears against Assange were prominently featured by the
Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald only highlights the shameful
role of the Australian media in the attacks against the WikiLeaks
publisher, who is an Australian citizen.
The
complicity of the Australian political and media establishment
underscores the importance of demonstrations called by the Socialist
Equality Party in Sydney and Melbourne in March. The SEP will fight
to mobilise the working class around the demand that the Australian
government use its diplomatic powers and legal discretion to secure
Assange’s safe passage to Australia, with an unconditional
guarantee against extradition to the US.
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