Virtually no one is defending Julian Assange's right to speak — US-sponsored thought control wins again

© 2018 Peter Free

 

13 May 2018

 

 

Does American oligarchy have the "free world" in its grip?

 

From James Cogan:

 

 

Remarks made this week by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks editor [Julian Assange] in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities.

 

On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US, Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world and blocked his friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not been heard from.

 

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.

 

If Assange falls into the hands of the British state, he faces being turned over to the US.

 

The so-called parties of the “left” and the trade unions are all tacitly endorsing the vicious drive against Assange.

 

Around the world . . . Stalinist and . . . pseudo-left organisations, anxious not to disrupt their sordid relations with the parties of the political establishment and the trade union apparatuses, are likewise silent.

 

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International unconditionally defend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

 

If the ruling elite can haul him before a court, it will hold him up as an example of what happens to those who speak out against social inequality, militarism, war and police-state measures.

 

His prosecution would be used to try to intimidate and silence all dissent.

 

© 2018 James Cogan, Ecuador hints it may hand over Julian Assange to Britain and the US, CounterCurrents (12 May 2018)

 

 

Exactly.

 

That is why even people who despise Mr. Assange should resist his silencing.

 

 

The moral? — Public complacence is fascism's food

 

Squashing Julian Assange and Wikileaks is not substantially different than the "thought control" that we used to accuse the Soviet Union and communist China of.

 

The United States has become a militaristically inclined oligarchy — similar in key respects to the totalitarian states that it pretended it was going to supplant with Freedom's new and unipolar dawn.

 

We see that excessive power, foreign or American, chews personal freedom and truth away, no matter who is in control.

 

The moral collapse of the allegedly free world is indicative of this. Recall that even supposedly moral Sweden cooperated in imprisoning Mr. Assange for trumped up reasons.

 

In sum, whatever liberty-loving "soft power" Americans might have exercised (as antidote to competing totalitarian political systems) has pretty much vanished.

 

What we have left is a mass of viciously led sheep reflexively chanting "USA".

 

God help the one that individually wanders out the automated flock and goes off message.