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
2 - ‘Responsible for Trump’
The
emotional impact of The Guardian is to suggest that Assange is
responsible for four years or more of Trump rule. But more
significantly, it bolsters the otherwise risible claim that Assange
is not a publisher – and thereby entitled to the protections of a
free press, as enjoyed by The Guardian or The New York
Times – but the head of an organization engaged in espionage
for a foreign power.
The
intention is to deeply discredit Assange, and by extension the
Wikileaks organization, in the eyes of right-thinking liberals. That,
in turn, will make it much easier to silence Assange and the vital
cause he represents: the use of new media to hold to account the old,
corporate media and political elites through the imposition of far
greater transparency.
The
Guardian story will prepare public opinion for the moment when
Ecuador’s rightwing government under President Lenin Moreno forces
Assange out of the embassy, having already withdrawn most of his
rights to use digital media.
It
will soften opposition when the UK moves to arrest Assange on
self-serving bail violation charges and extradites him to the US. And
it will pave the way for the US legal system to lock Assange up for a
very long time.
For the
best part of a decade, any claims by Assange’s supporters that
avoiding this fate was the reason Assange originally sought asylum in
the embassy was ridiculed by corporate journalists, not least at the
Guardian.
Even
when a United Nations panel of experts in international law ruled in
2016 that Assange was being arbitrarily – and unlawfully –
detained by the UK, Guardian writers led efforts to discredit
the UN report.
Now
Assange and his supporters have been proved right once again. An
administrative error this month revealed that the US justice
department had secretly filed criminal charges against Assange.
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