John Pilger: The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange
September 7, 2020
The extradition hearing beginning this week is the final act of an
Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is
due revenge, said John Pilger in a speech Monday outside the court building.
Having reported the long, epic ordeal of Julian Assange, John Pilger gave
this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on Sept. 7 as the
WikiLeaks Editor's extradition hearing entered its final stage.
By John Pilger
When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he
had started WikiLeaks. He replied: "Transparency and accountability are
moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism."
I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way.
Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that
we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who
claim to act in our name.
If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing
in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they
conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be
democrats, we have the right to know.
It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers
that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian
alive in Trump's fascist America.
In 2008, a top secret U.S. State Department report described in detail how
the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed
personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to "exposure [and]
criminal prosecution".
The aim was to silence and criminalize WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after
page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle
of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.
The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists:
the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the "liberals" who
mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.
'Due Revenge'
And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and
I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character
assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism
was a service to the public, never to those above.
Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed
the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of
America's wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.
He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official
truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy
journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that
his life was in danger: that the "sex scandal" in Sweden was a set up and an
American hellhole was the ultimate destination. And he was right, and
repeatedly right.
The extradition hearing in London beginning this week is the final act of an
Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is
due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham.
So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents
during the Cold War.
Today, the land that gave us Magna Carta, Great Britain, is distinguished by
the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to
manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian - a
form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was
refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.
Cowardice in Canberra
Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison, I have seen the
effects of this torture. When I last saw him, he had lost more than 10 kilos
in weight; his arms had no muscle. Incredibly, his wicked sense of humor was
intact.
As for Assange's homeland, Australia has displayed only a cringing cowardice
as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought
to be celebrated as a national hero. Not for nothing did George W. Bush
anoint the Australian prime minister his "deputy sheriff."
It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks
will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which
press? TheGuardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington
Post?
No, the journalists in these organizations can breathe freely. The Judases
on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made
their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because
they are needed.
Freedom of the press now rests with the honorable few: the exceptions, the
dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor
laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism -
those like Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose
sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that
freedom is possible. I salute him.
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in
London.Pilger's Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British
Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work.
The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, "Year Zero: the Silent
Death of Cambodia," among the 10 most important documentaries of the
20thcentury. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be
found here.
