Free Julian Assange (or at least your fucking mind)

This month marks the tenth anniversary of WikiLeaks. This day marks the sixth anniversary that its publisher and editor has been held in some form of detention. I ask you to remember why the former should be celebrated, pilule the latter mourned.

Okay. Here come the insta-comments which rage that it is good that the bad man is being held. “Julian Assange is charged with rape”. “Julian Assange is biased against Hillary Clinton”. Let’s look at those claims before we agree to celebrate WikiLeaks.

First. Julian Assange is not on charges. He is wanted for questioning. He is wanted for questioning in a nation that has some peculiar, if well-intended, legislation around sexual assault. The complaint made by Assange’s consensual female sex partners to police was about his failure to wear a condom. The complainants did not ask for him to be charged. They wanted to compel him to take a sexual health test. Frankly, I can fully understand this. I have shagged blokes who were diddling other ladies without telling me, without seeking my “permission”, and I totally had the shits with them and nagged them until they got their dongs scraped. Do I like these men who imperilled my sexual health? No. Did they sexually assault me? No. Have I ever taken a risk with somebody else’s sexual health? Yes. I have TOTALLY said “let’s not worry about latex” without full confidence in the purity of my vagina. That’s bad. But it’s not something for which, I believe, I or anyone else should be charged. Let alone fucking extradited.

If you want to know “why doesn’t he leave the embassy, if he’s as innocent as you claim?” here’s the answer. He has offered himself up for interview at the embassy for years, and it is only in recent weeks that Swedish authorities have sought the justice they say they want to uphold. I don’t know what unfolded in that conversation. I do know that the UK government has an extradition arrangement with Sweden who, in turn, has an extradition arrangement with the US. So this is the situation. A guy who didn’t wear a condom (I agree that this is a bad thing) could be handed over to US authorities for being the same filth bag that I have been.

Why won’t he face that? Hey. Do you remember what the US did to alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning? The woman who bravely risked everything to bring the world pictures of the atrocities in Iraq? They put her in prison for thirty-five years. She had already borne previous torture. She recently tried to kill herself. For this, probably an act of great sanity, they added a period of solitary confinement to the sentence of one of history’s heroes. What do you think they are going to do to Assange, the man that made Manning’s revelations, and many others, possible? It’s not overstating the case to say that he faces a risk of execution, in the US, the great defender of human rights that endorses capital punishment.

I would also ask you to remember that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found in February of this year that what Assange now faces is a form of detention, and that this detention was unlawful.  Last Month, the UN rejected an appeal by the British government to that decision. The UN has found twice that Assange is, in fact, “detained” and should have his liberty restored. Personally, I think the UN is a bunch of liberal shit. But, for those of you going on about the sanctity of justice. Your favourite institution has told you what that looks like. Look at it.

Second, the claim that Assange is biased against Clinton. This is a complex claim, because, what, after all is bias, if not inevitable, and why do you think WikiLeaks should be above the inevitable?

There is no such thing in the world as a publication or a person who does not hold a view. The WikiLeaks view has long been “we need to hold power to account”. Those powerful people who were not being held to account have always been those about which WikiLeaks publishes. As Assange said when being asked about why he did not publish extensively on Trump, the things that come out of the man’s own mouth are enough of an indictment. He himself admitted to dodging tax, screwing employees and being a vile racist. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that people wouldn’t have voted for such an openly, even proudly, corrupt man.

I was, I will own, fairly surprised when people did vote for this abhorrence in large numbers. But, I also accepted it as something that could be explained. We have one nominee who said “I am going to screw you and you’ll know about it” to a nation of people who are losing their jobs and one who said “I will screw you and pretend to be your friend”. Assange, I think, had no more idea than I did that people would go for the honest devil instead of the dishonest one.

Of course, he did have very personal reasons to loathe Clinton. The politician had made her position on whistleblowers clear. She had called Edward Snowden a terrorist and had much stronger words for Assange. And, it is not as though the Clintons don’t have form on calling for politically convenient executions. Do you remember the name of Ricky Ray Rector? He was a black Arkansas man who shot himself in the head after allegedly murdering a police officer. He effectively lobotomised himself and should have been, by any standard of your justice, deemed unfit for trial. Bill Clinton returned, during the 1992 presidential campaign, to oversee the state-endorsed murder of this man. It helped get the guy elected.

I am not saying that I have a favourable personal opinion of Assange, or that I think his motivations are any purer than his donger. Or my minge. I am saying that what WikiLeaks does is essential.

You can say for all you are worth that there is nothing in the Podesta trove of emails. I read many of them, and I can’t say that if you hold that opinion, you have. No, there’s no gotcha moment such as the one we presume to be delivered by Chelsea Manning. We don’t see pictures of people dying. We do see the processes of power that can lead to such death.

Hillary Clinton telling Goldman Sachs that there’s one conversation she’ll have with them, and another with the people. Clinton’s aides discussing which filthy kind of filthy speech would best discredit Bernie Sanders. Clinton’s campaign managers saying that they can use “brown and woman pundits” to spin their message of vile neoliberal control. The Obama administration’s receipt of employment recommendations from a Citigroup boss, which were nearly all taken up. This series of documents tells me that the powerful are conscious of their need for power, that they don’t give a hoot for the people on whom this power is exercised.

You can also say that Assange, or whoever controls the WikiLeaks social media accounts, have said some insensitive things. I won’t disagree. I cringe when I see some of WikiLeaks communications. Some of it looks sexist to me. Some of it looks anti-Semitic. I do not believe that Assange, or anyone at WikiLeaks, is actually sexist or anti-Semitic. But I think that some of the messaging is fucked and inconsiderate. I also suspect that some of it is written by a man who has not seen sunshine for six years and who reasonably fears for his life. I know that sometimes I, even from my comfortable home and good life, can sometimes say public things that look fucked and inconsiderate. I don’t want to hurt people with what I write, but sometimes, I do. I try not to double-down when someone calls me out for a misuse of language. I try to learn. Just the other day, an Aboriginal person told me to quit using the word “Indigenous”. I have. But I know I am going to make errors of the type in future. I know I am going to defend errors that I have made before I learn from them.

And WikiLeaks will make some missteps, too. It doesn’t have a PR department. All it has are people who believe in holding power to account. They screw up with their language at times. It shits me. But, fucking, seriously. Look at what they give the world. This is an astounding project that reveals the mechanism of power as never. And, you know, you might just have to suck it up if the power they are revealing happens to be a power you personally like. All this, “I liked it when you were anti-Bush, but not when you are anti-Clinton.” For fuck’s sake, What that politician did in Libya. Those corpses don’t care if they were slain by a Democrat or a Republican.

For those of you three who actually read my tedious posts, you will already know what I think of the power of Hillary Clinton. I believe she is every bit as bad as Trump. Who, in any case, has already forgotten his promise to “working people” by installing some good old Goldman in his sorry little cabinet. Great. Now we have naked racism and hidden neoliberalism, whereas with Hillary we would have had the opposite. Naked neoliberalism and hidden racism.

My point is. WikiLeaks is amazing. It’s not perfect. Assange isn’t perfect. People aren’t perfect, and I am still, more than 150 years later, pissed off that Marx cheated on his adoring wife. But what that old drunk bastard gave the world. More than Assange, but, fuck me, that guy has given us so much. As has everyone at WikiLeaks. And if you want to moan about him being a bad guy, do so. But think, to what end am I expressing this opinion? Who, or what, does my complaint serve? The world is full of people who cheat on their partners, have a shandy and say dumb stuff on Facebook. It is not terribly full with people who can hold power to account. Assange is one of them. Fucking free him.

FFS. Get over this “I suspect this person is not nice and therefore everything they do is tainted”. Name me ONE of your heroes who lived like an angel. Some of us are already laughing in anticipation of the first to say Gandhi. The first to say Mandela.

WikiLeaks is doing vital work. I am not asking you to financially support this, although this is an option. I am just asking you not to fucking muddy this vital work with your claims that Assange is the devil.

Free Julian Assange.

(I have posted this on both Facebook and the world wide intertits if you care to share. The rest of you. Go mad in the comments about how I am a rape apologist or whatever. I won’t read these, because I’m not. Rape is not something I will ever forgive, minimise or excuse. I know where I stand, on this and other matters. Perhaps before responding in a rage in under five seconds, do some other reading on WikiLeaks and ask yourself the same question. Ask yourself fearlessly “where do I stand in relation to power?” Make sure you’re not cowering at its boot.)

41 thoughts on “Free Julian Assange (or at least your fucking mind)”

Comments are closed.