The
Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred
of evidence. It did what it is designed to do, says Jonathan Cook.
by
Jonathan Cook
Part
7 - Heroes of the Neoliberal Order
Equally,
The Guardian has made clear who its true heroes are. Certainly
not Corbyn or Assange, who threaten to disrupt the entrenched
neoliberal order that is hurtling us towards climate breakdown and
economic collapse.
Its
pages, however, are readily available to the latest effort to prop up
the status quo from Tony Blair, the man who led Britain, on false
pretenses, into the largest crime against humanity in living memory –
the attack on Iraq.
That
“humanitarian intervention” cost the lives of many hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis and created a vacuum that destabilized much of
the Middle East, sucked in Islamic jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS,
and contributed to the migrant crisis in Europe that has fueled the
resurgence of the far-right. None of that is discussed in The
Guardian or considered grounds for disqualifying Blair as an
arbiter of what is good for Britain and the world’s future.
The
Guardian also has an especial soft spot for blogger Elliot
Higgins, who, aided by The Guardian, has shot to unlikely
prominence as a self-styled “weapons expert”. Like Luke Harding,
Higgins invariably seems ready to echo whatever the British and
American security services need verifying “independently”.
Higgins
and his well-staffed website Bellingcat have taken on for
themselves the role of arbiters of truth on many foreign affairs
issues, taking a prominent role in advocating for narratives that
promote U.S. and NATO hegemony while demonizing Russia, especially in
highly contested arenas such as Syria.
That
clear partisanship should be no surprise, given that Higgins now
enjoys an “academic” position at, and funding from, the Atlantic
Council: a high-level, Washington-based think-tank founded to
drum up support for NATO and justify its imperialist agenda.
Improbably,
The Guardian has adopted Higgins as the poster-boy for a
supposed citizen journalism it has sought to undermine as “fake
news” whenever it occurs on social media without the endorsement of
state-backed organizations.
The
truth is The Guardian has not erred in this latest story
attacking Assange, or in its much longer-running campaign to vilify
him. With this story, it has done what it regularly does when
supposedly vital western foreign policy interests are at stake – it
simply regurgitates an elite-serving, western narrative.
Its
job is to shore up a consensus on the left for attacks on leading
threats to the existing, neoliberal order: whether they are a
platform like WikiLeaks promoting whistle-blowing against a corrupt
western elite; or a politician like Corbyn seeking to break apart the
status quo on the rapacious financial industries or Israel-Palestine;
a radical leader like Hugo Chavez who threatened to overturn damaging
and exploitative U.S. dominance of “America’s backyard”; or
social media dissidents, who’ve started to chip away at the
elite-friendly narratives of corporate media, including The
Guardian itself.
The
Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a
shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.
***
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