[rad-green] Assange’s Persecution Has Exposed M edia Depravity The World Over

*https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/22/assanges-persecution-has-exposed-media-depravity-the-world-over/
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/22/assanges-persecution-has-exposed-media-depravity-the-world-over/>FEBRUARY
22, 2020*



*Assange’s Persecution Has Exposed Media Depravity The World OverBy
 CAITLIN JOHNSTONE*

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*This is the speech I gave
<https://www.facebook.com/2301719993184488/videos/187806339151950/> at a
demonstration last night in Melbourne for Julian Assange, whose extradition
trial begins February 24th.*

Julian Assange started a leak outlet on the premise that corrupt and
unaccountable power is a problem in our world, and that problem can be
fought with the light of truth. Corrupt and unaccountable power responded
by detaining, silencing and smearing him. His persecution has proved his
own thesis about the world absolutely correct.

Power is the ability to control what happens. Absolute power is controlling
what people *think*  about what happens. Humans are story-oriented
creatures, so if you can control the stories that the humans are telling
each other about what’s going on, you can control those humans.

This is the power of narrative management. This is why governments and
billionaires use propaganda, advertising, buy up media conglomerates and
fund think tanks, employ public relations and spin doctors, buy up troll
armies and bot farms: because they know that those who control the
narrative, control the world.

You can do whatever you like, as long as you can control what people
*think* about
what you’re doing.

No one understands this better than Julian Assange. He famously said that
if wars are started by lies, then they can be stopped by truth. That’s the
basis of WikiLeaks. Bringing truth to the public in the most pristine and
revolutionary way possible. They made it so people could leak documents to
them safely, and then they released them with minimal redactions and
editorial. Like many online innovations it cut out the middle man, and the
middle man, in this case, are the media spinmeisters who normally present
information with an overlay of establishment-friendly narrative.

You know the ones. The ones that are like, “Here’s what I found out, but
more importantly, this is what you should *think* about what I found out”.

It had immediate effects. Global reach, exposing the most corrupt roots of
the most powerful people in an environment where the growing alarm at the
GFC, climate change and endless war meant that people were hungry for the
truth about why these things are still happening despite their unpopularity
and despite our every effort to stop them.

The spotlight Assange’s persecution has thrown on the institution of
journalism is one of the untold stories, mainly because the villains are
the journalists–the people we usually rely on to tell us all the stories.
This corruption was unearthed not so much through leaked documents, but
through what we have been witnessing as the media-driven public mobbing of
Julian Assange the person.

The mainstream media, to this day, lies constantly about Assange. If you
pick up any recent story about Assange it will be littered with smears and
lies. They’ll say offhand how he colluded with the Russians like that’s
true, or that he was ”charged” with rape, or they’ll have a throwaway line
about how he smeared poo on the walls of the embassy, or they will say the
reason he was granted asylum by Ecuador was to flee rape charges (like
that’s a thing).

There are dozens and dozens of lies, and they get repeated as truth
throughout any reporting on Assange even after months or years of being
debunked. There is a story on *The Guardian*  website right now from
November of 2018 that claims that Assange met with Paul Manafort, Trump’s
campaign chair. Can not have happened. Did not happen. The Ecuadorian
embassy was the most surveilled building on planet earth at the time
<https://theintercept.com/2018/11/27/it-is-possible-paul-manafort-visited-julian-assange-if-true-there-should-be-ample-video-and-other-evidence-showing-this/>.
Every single person who went in or out of there had to jump through many
bureaucratic hoops.

No video evidence or any evidence at all was ever found for this claim, and
there were plenty of people who wanted to find it. It didn’t happen.

And yet, that story is still on *The Guardian* website
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy>
today
over a year after it was first published. It still comes up as the number
one result on Google when you search assange and manafort. There’ve been no
retractions. No apologies.

*The Guardian*. Not *New Idea*. Not *Hello!*. Not *News of the World*. *The
Guardian*. The bastion of all things worthy and noble.

It has been very revealing.

Assange has only ever been persecuted because he exposed US war crimes. No
one has ever gone to jail for those war crimes, but instead of
concentrating on that, the press decided to go after Assange.

Let’s be clear: when journalists use their power and privilege to cover up
and divert attention from war crimes, they become war criminals themselves.

Journalists today are finally waking up to the fact that the legal
precedent the Trump administration is setting by reaching out across the
Atlantic, taking an Australian journalist, from an Ecuadorian embassy, in
the middle of London, is devastating to journalism all over the world. Not
just in the US, not just in the UK, but all over the world. No journalist
is safe. Because if they can do that to him, they can do it to anyone.

We also learned that the United States do not consider foreign nationals to
have a First Amendment protection
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/wikileaks-editor-us-is-saying-first-amendment-doesnt-apply-to-foreigners-in-assange-case-4eaf2cff69bb>,
so the US is effectively saying that the long arm of US law can extend to
get you anywhere, but they *also* don’t have to extend its protections.

And journalists are finally realizing that, but still silence is pretty
deafening. Australian journalists should be writing furious op-eds
vigorously defending Assange and demanding that our politicians act
immediately, but at best we are getting tepid, smear-laden, mealy-mouthed
wet squibs of copy that try to maintain that they were, of course, correct
in the past, but also hit the alarm button.

And it just doesn’t work.

Until journalists admit they were wrong and Assange was right, and the US
really *did* want him in jail for publishing like he said
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/24/how-many-times-must-assange-be-proven-right-before-people-start-listening/>
back
in 2010, back when they were calling him paranoid
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/nick-cohen-julian-assange-paranoia>,
their readers aren’t going to notice that its time to change course. They
aren’t going to know to act.

There is a lot of confusion about what to do. Radio host Alan Jones had a
very popular Facebook poll
<https://twitter.com/Plucille54/status/1230512815724802050> going this
morning asking whether the Australian government should intervene and bring
Assange home. I saw it a few hours ago and it was at 75 percent for “Yes”
with thousands of responses already, six days to go, and gathering hundreds
of pro-Assange comments. He deleted it
<https://www.facebook.com/103528053573479/posts/576097412983205/?d=n>.
Obviously that was not the response he was planning on.

So there is confusion, and there is silence. But silence is space. A space
has opened up before us. In Australia right now, there are two kinds of
people: those who think that Assange should be brought home, and those who
don’t want to think about it at all. They’ve gone quiet. And we’re so used
to being on the defense, we’ve gone quiet too.

A space has opened up.

The narrative is there for the taking.

All we have to do is to stand up as one and take control of this story.

Let our voices ring out.

This man is innocent.

We must bring him home.

Publishing is not a crime!

Viva Assange!

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