By Kyrill Potapov, Brentford and Isleworth CLP member
It’s been good to see MPs like John McDonald, Diane Abbot, Jeremy Corbyn, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Rebecca Long Bailey break ranks to speak out against the extradition of Julian Assange.
Talking to grassroots activists, I often encounter muted embarrassment or confusion and anger at why anyone on the left would support Assange. Watching protests against the extradition is a sad affair, with the same faces often taking the mic: these are Chris Williamson, John Pilger and others who have themselves been outcast from mainstream society. The UK press is similarly agreed on Assange’s singular villainy. Journalists like Peter Osborne, standing up for Assange, examining the facts and pointing out the threat of his prosecution to fellow journalists, are few and far between.
Character-assassination of Corbyn
Such an alignment between the press and the Establishment is not surprising. What surprises me is why there is not more solidarity with Assange among people who have just spent years fighting off a similar campaign of character-assassination on Jeremy Corbyn. There, as here, our ‘left-wing’ paper The Guardian, has led the charge: pouring out vicious personal attacks against Assange, together with evidence-free (and easy to disprove) allegations about his having secret meetings with Paul Manaford, or smearing poo on his wall in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
But the reason I want the left to wake from their slumber and speak out against the extradition is not out of any personal pity for Assange. Something far bigger is happening here. The very possibility of democracy is being eroded before our eyes and we are doing nothing about it. That isn’t an exaggeration.
We have perhaps forgotten about the Cambridge Analytica leaks, which showed how governments used Facebook data to manipulate political opinion. With case after case of data misappropriation, it’s clear that Cambridge Analytica is not a bug but a feature. Facebook, Google and others are developing ever better ways to identify swing voters in a particular area and then showing them content that would influence them to vote a particular way.
Misleading ads put out by Tories
As Zeynep Tufekci and others have shown, such techniques are unfortunately very effective. While we may find some humour in the discovery that 88% of Facebook ads put out by the Tories at the general election were misleading, such strategies will soon become both more effective and harder to spot. The winner of an election could be predetermined by the richest party or special interest group. This is a heinous and sublime amalgam of government bodies and private companies, feeding on us for their monopolies. How do we redress this vast power imbalance?
The only way to fight any of this is for us to unite against it. We can only do so if we can learn about it and understand it, and if we can share what we know and campaign against it. We must have mechanisms to bring secret bodies into public account, as Snowden did with the NSA. As Žižek argues, WikiLeaks was the ‘People’s NSA’. The possibility of any future WikiLeaks could be about to disappear.
Everyday journalistic practices
It’s worth just reading the charges against Assange in full. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation explains, the charges are not only highly unusual, they threaten the everyday practices of all journalists. There is a reason why no publisher has ever been charged under the Espionage Act, let alone one who never set foot in the United States. If a publisher can be called a ‘spy’ because what they publish is alleged to have the potential to harm the “general security” of some state operation (whether or not it’s proven that it has had such a harm), this will impact the freedom that journalists around the world feel to take risks and to publish public interest stories damaging to the ruling class.
Leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orban are already adept at using the law and the courts against their supposed intended purpose, in order to restrict liberty. Will the editors of a Polish or Indian magazine that chooses to publish documents exposing Orban’s corruption soon face deportation to a jail in Budapest?
Threats to democracy
Part of the reason more people are not vocal on this issue is a perception that Assange has been charged with rape. This is certainly a serious allegation, and though the threats to democracy would remain regardless of Assange’s actions, I despair at Assange supporters who try to minimize the significance of rape or get into debates about whether his alleged actions in their opinion should or should not constitute rape. It’s clear that we must stand in solidarity with all women or men seeking justice in a rape trial. It’s exactly because of the seriousness of such allegations that we should learn what we can about the wider context and any grounds for believing such allegations are true.
While the media and public figures have outright suggested that Assange is a rapist, without him ever having been questioned in connection with the allegations, the facts of the case should cause us pause for thought. The context here, and its relevant legal implications, have been clearly and passionately explored by UN Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Melzer. The reason Melzer and groups like Women Against Rape have come out so strongly against these allegations is because of the potential effect on all rape cases of rape being used for political ends.
CPS intervention
Whatever the truth of the allegations, it is a matter of record that the UK Crown Prosecution Service intervened to prevent Sweden from closing the case and even deleted emails about it. Finally, we might note that there can no longer be any grounds for judgement, as all allegations or charges of rape against Assange have been dropped earlier this year. The aura we might see around Assange that tells us he is a rapist is no fairer than still judging Cliff Richard as ‘guilty’ because of prior allegations about him.
This is not to say that Assange has never done wrong. There are plenty of things the left can be critical about here. I think Assange made some stupid choices in cosying up to Trump associates in the hope of a pardon, but the current charges are unrelated to 2016 and this is about much more than Assange and the choices he made over the six years he spent trapped in a room at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
As Assange’s trial continues at the Old Bailey, in as Snowden notes, a distinctly Kafkaesque fashion, the least we can do is put our doubts and unease to one side and speak out, to friends and family and on social media. Our very power to challenge the institutions that govern our lives is on trial, and we can’t let it go down without a fight.
September 10, 2020
