Uncle Tom’s Empire
CJ Hopkins
I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but, given the arrest of Julian Assange last week, and the awkward and cowardly responses thereto, I felt it necessary to abandon my customary literary standards and spew out a spineless, hypocritical “hot take” professing my concern about the dangerous precedent the U.S. government may be setting by extraditing and prosecuting a publisher for exposing American war crimes and such, while at the same time making it abundantly clear how much I personally loathe Assange, and consider him an enemy of America, and freedom, and want the authorities to crush him like a cockroach.
Now I want to be absolutely clear. I totally defend Assange and Wikileaks, and the principle of freedom of the press, and whatever. And I am all for exposing American war crimes (as long as it doesn’t endanger the lives of the Americans who committed those war crimes, or inconvenience them in any way). At the same time, while I totally support all that, I feel compelled to express my support together with my personal loathing of Assange, who, if all those important principles weren’t involved, I would want to see taken out and shot, or at least locked up in Super-Max solitary … not for any crime in particular, but just because I personally loathe him so much.
I’m not quite sure why I loathe Assange. I’ve never actually met the man. I just have this weird, amorphous feeling that he’s a horrible, disgusting, extremist person who is working for the Russians and is probably a Nazi. It feels kind of like that feeling I had, back in the Winter of 2003, that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, which he was going to give to those Al Qaeda terrorists who were bayonetting little babies in their incubators, or the feeling I still have, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset who peed on Barack Obama’s bed, and who is going to set fire to the Capitol building, declare himself American Hitler, and start rounding up and murdering the Jews.
I don’t know where these feelings come from. If you challenged me, I probably couldn’t really support them with any, like, actual facts or anything, at least not in any kind of rational way. Being an introspective sort of person, I do sometimes wonder if maybe my feelings are the result of all the propaganda and relentless psychological and emotional conditioning that the ruling classes and the corporate media have subjected me to since the day I was born, and that influential people in my social circle have repeated, over and over again, in such a manner as to make it clear that contradicting their views would be extremely unwelcome, and might negatively impact my social status, and my prospects for professional advancement.
Take my loathing of Assange, for example. I feel like I can’t even write a column condemning his arrest and extradition without gratuitously mocking or insulting the man. When I try to, I feel this sudden fear of being denounced as a “Trump-loving Putin-Nazi,” and a “Kremlin-sponsored rape apologist,” and unfriended by all my Facebook friends. Worse, I get this sickening feeling that unless I qualify my unqualified support for freedom of press, and transparency, and so on, with some sort of vicious, vindictive remark about the state of Assange’s body odor, and how he’s probably got cooties, or has pooped his pants, or some other childish and sadistic taunt, I can kiss any chance I might have had of getting published in a respectable publication goodbye.
But I’m probably just being paranoid, right? Distinguished, highbrow newspapers and magazines like The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vox, Vice, Daily Mail, and others of that caliber, are not just propaganda organs whose primary purpose is to reinforce the official narratives of the ruling classes. No, they publish a broad range of opposing views. The Guardian, for example, just got Owen Jones to write a full-throated defense of Assange on that grounds that he’s probably a Nazi rapist who should be locked up in a Swedish prison, not in an American prison!
The Guardian, remember, is the same publication that printed a completely fabricated story accusing Assange of secretly meeting with Paul Manafort and some alleged “Russians,” among a deluge of other such Russiagate nonsense, and that has been demonizing Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite for several years.
Plus, according to NPR’s Bob Garfield (who is lustfully “looking forward to Assange’s day in court”), and other liberal lexicologists, Julian Assange is not even a real journalist, so we have no choice but to mock and humiliate him, and accuse him of rape and espionage … oh, and speaking of which, did you hear the one about how his cat was spying on the Ecuadorean diplomats?
But seriously now, all joking aside, it’s always instructive (if a bit sickening) to watch as the mandarins of the corporate media disseminate an official narrative and millions of people robotically repeat it as if it were their own opinions. This process is particularly nauseating to watch when the narrative involves the stigmatization, delegitimization, and humiliation of an official enemy of the ruling classes. Typically, this enemy is a foreign enemy, like Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Milošević, Osama bin Laden, Putin, or whoever. But sometimes the enemy is one of “us” … a traitor, a Judas, a quisling, a snitch, like Trump, Corbyn, or Julian Assange.
In either case, the primary function of the corporate media remains the same: to relentlessly assassinate the character of the “enemy,” and to whip the masses up into a mindless frenzy of hatred of him, like the Two-Minutes Hate in 1984, the Kill-the-Pig scene in Lord of the Flies, the scapegoating of Jews in Nazi Germany, and other examples a bit closer to home.
Logic, facts, and actual evidence have little to nothing to do with this process. The goal of the media and other propagandists is not to deceive or mislead the masses. Their goal is to evoke the pent-up rage and hatred simmering within the masses and channel it toward the official enemy. It is not necessary for the demonization of the official enemy to be remotely believable, or stand up to any kind of serious scrutiny. No one sincerely believes that Donald Trump is a Russian Intelligence asset, or that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite, or that Julian Assange has been arrested for jumping bail, or raping anyone, or for helping Chelsea Manning “hack” a password.
The demonization of the empire’s enemies is not a deception … it is a loyalty test. It is a ritual in which the masses (who, let’s face it, are de facto slaves) are ordered to display their fealty to their masters, and their hatred of their masters’ enemies. Cooperative slaves have plenty of pent-up hatred to unleash upon their masters’ enemies. They have all the pent-up hatred of their masters (which they do not dare direct at their masters, except within the limits their masters allow), and they have all the hatred of themselves for being cooperative, and … well, basically, cowards.
Julian Assange is being punished for defying the global capitalist empire. This was always going to happen, no matter who was in the White House. Anyone who defies the empire in such a flagrant manner is going to be punished. Cooperative slaves demand this of their masters. Defiant slaves are actually less of a threat to their masters than they are to the other slaves who have chosen to accept their slavery and cooperate with their own oppression. Their defiance shames these cooperative slaves, and shines an unflattering light on their cowardice.
This is why we are witnessing so many liberals (and liberals in leftist’s clothing) rushing to express their loathing of Assange in the same breath as they pretend to support him, not because they honestly believe the content of the official Julian Assange narrative that the ruling classes are disseminating, but because (a) they fear the consequences of not robotically repeating this narrative, and (b) Assange has committed the cardinal sin of reminding them that actual “resistance” to the global capitalist empire is possible, but only if you’re willing to pay the price.
Assange has been paying it for the last seven years, and is going to be paying it for the foreseeable future. Chelsea Manning is paying it again. The Gilets Jaunes protestors have been paying it in France. Malcolm X paid it. Sophie Scholl paid it. Many others throughout history have paid it. Cowards mocked them as they did, as they are mocking Julian Assange at the moment. That’s all right, though, after he’s been safely dead for ten or twenty years, they’ll name a few streets and high schools after him. Maybe they’ll even build him a monument.
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It seems Mr. Hopkins has hit a nerve, or a few of them, judging by the comments. They are all very interesting. As a working class slug, reading all the messages, it seems the elephant in the room and the naked emperor, (to mix metaphors) have never been identified. The issue of the last 70 or so years is that all the groups identified in the article and comments, are part of the company that is making us believe that “snow is black” or at least a dark shade of grey. The two real reasons the Julian haters hate, is that he is blamed for exposing and causing the downfall of Hillary Clinton. That Hillary is not President is bad enough, but the other shoe is now to drop. The coming destruction of the Moloch worshipers empire and narrative causes them to abandon all pretense. They are throwing it all… Read more »
For all you that are being consumed by the latest ruse planted by the Oligarchs relating to Assange
Legal Dictum: has been set out by ex prosecutor of New York State Lionel LeBron
on Lionel Nation u tube channel.
Hence basic legal case law set out for we the sheeple while we sermonize on the blatant anglo-zionist ruse in our dying western civilzation
PACE E BENE
BY DECEPTION WE MAY WAGE WAR
Brilliant peice yet again CJ. How unsurprising that the maggots have come out to feed since Assange’s arrest. These ‘journalists’ betray themselves for what they really are. Mouthpieces for the ruling classes. They protect power. Their betrayal of Julian Assange is the lowest of the low in my opinion. Here in Australia, we have the prime example of Peter Greste who writes for the ‘liberal’ The Age newspaper, but I shouldn’t be surprised at all; I read ‘Manufacturing Consent’ years ago, and know of the revelations of Udo Ulfkotte, the now deceased German journalist. Keep shining a light on the dark corners CJ.
“as long as it doesn’t endanger the lives of the Americans who committed those war crimes”
Sorry, but I really don’t give a shit about Americans who commit war crimes. They can rot in Hell.
Oh some of them already are – but I took that phrase as sarcastic. No-one comes to heaven or a true blessing shared with hate in their heart – but that does not mean you have to deal with anyone else’s choices – only your own. But that my include attacking ourself in others instead of ourself. I read of a GI whose comrades were ambushed and killed in Vietnam – who was triggered to revenge in the next village in a blind rage – and then lives the images and the memory every day since. A part of them live now in him and he has to face what he did regardless the circumstance. This is not a matter of sympathies but of human relationships under hate and violence and trauma. Hate doesn’t travel to its target but poisons the heart of the hater. Do we hate in others… Read more »
This reminds me of Liam Neeson’s recent confession that many years ago he walked around with a cosh hoping to get into an altercation with a black person in order to kill them, upon learning that his friend had been raped by a man of that colour. Of course, some people respond in a reasonable way but you get that typical kneejerk outrage which is simply a mindless form of censorship and suppresses what needs to be aired and discussed.
It is a delicate matter to bring hate to light because it is in a sense like defusing a bomb. Hate thoughts are hidden – EXCEPT where given social permissions, justifications and etc – hence the drumming up (repetitive exposures) of another people, nation, religion, or race as hateful sets the target for a circuit of emotional discharge. A directed weapon and of course the undermining of a peace loving desire to initiate catastrophic consequence. As I see it the core denial is itself denied and protected against exposure. The way all this ‘fits together is in a sense a perfect defence of hate and fear in a lock in by guilt – accused in the other as survival in persistence of such ‘control’ or private assertive judgement. ‘Coming out’ as truly Human being is only temporarily allowed in the very young – until fitted to the mind and world… Read more »
I would re-phrase that : I’m all for exposing american war crimes…..in particular if it endangers the lives of the americans who committed those war crimes.
Excellent.
There are, of course, many who would read the beginning of this great, if depressing, article and think that they had found a perfect spokesman for what they themselves believe… Perhaps it could even take in a troll or two – the sort who never read a whole article, although they would soon have to confront the fact that they had been made top-ranking fools of.
What you say in sarcasm about “personal loathing” has, unfortunately, become such a fashion regarding Assange.
Ace tweet by Jonathan Cook: “Notice how the Guardian is now the go-to place for vassal state politicians – Ecuador’s Moreno, Venezuela’s Guaido – to convey propaganda on behalf of the US national security state. And the Guardian has the gall to call such stenography an exclusive” – hear, hear, Mr Cook. There is also fairly brutal demolition of the Guardian by MediaLens which cheered me up a little bit. In it John Pilger responds to a Guardian editorial which said ‘the Assange case is a morally tangled web. He believes in publishing things that should not always be published – this has long been a difficult divide between the Guardian and him.’ to which Pilger points out ‘These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the… Read more »
Imagine if all of us who haven’t been overtaken by the propaganda were willing to pay the price and all stand up at.once. Wouldn’t that be something? After all, what do we have left to lose?
What would they do? Lock us all up? Mass drone us? At least, whatever the outcome, everyone would be unable to pretend any longer about the reality of things. Maybe they would all collapse like a deck of cards, or like those advertising blimps on The Simpsons starve to death without our manufactured consent to prop them up.
Good…but how?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eRa5mGuHXyg
😀….I did that like 10 years ago!!!
What you resist persists. What you choose not to use, fades from non use. But what you appreciate, appreciates. A negative appreciation is self-reinforcing and the more we seek to overcome or escape (fear) the more tightly entangled in its reinforcement. Thinking that expresses a negative or fearful self definition is ‘divide and rule’ or doublethink by its nature of self-contradiction, and the mind of such thinking ‘rules out’ a positive or integrative appreciation. But no one can stop doing or activating it when they know not what they do. Engaging in the framed drama feeds the drama with identification. But watching our thought and reaction uncovers our correspondence or vibrational involvement with all facets of a conflicted reality as either a lack of feeling or upsetting feelings that respectively freeze or discharge emotional energy. The intent to kill or deny the hated or to freeze and deny expression of… Read more »
“Freedom from propaganda is no longer resorting to using it”, consciously as choice, because it is elementary mind control, which is inherently designed to preclude learning for oneself, wasting valuable
time to expand appreciation …
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
~ Edward Bernays, “Propaganda,” 1928
Just ask Justice Leveson to re-view thoroughly ‘D’ BBC 😉 & Murdoch: logic 🙂
The giving of consent may be hidden or ‘unconscious’ – but it is there. As for BBC or whoever; I don’t tell anyone else what to think or say or do. I have my own life! If you try to take over the lives of others, you lose your own – its a kind of false ‘possession’. The translation of the dark arts into ‘scientific’ psychological and neurological frameworks of thought and ‘experiment’ hides in the very foundations of ‘consensus science’ exactly as it did in ‘organised religion’ – and yes both such terms are doublethink of self contradiction. To live IN relation to a ‘mad world’ but not OF it, is to grow a sane world by living the moment at hand, for it is always nigh. But to struggle within insane framing is to believe ‘this time it will be different’. I met a woman with her dog… Read more »
I am intrigued at how Julian Assange was able to grab hold of his copy of the Gore Vidal book and then , whilst headfirsted and handcuffed , had the wherewithal to hold it upright for the Ruptly camera with his tethered hand as he was launched toward the open door of the police van.
It’s fairly obvious that he highly recommends Vidals’ critique of the national security state.
Now if it were to top the Amazon bestseller list ?? ….. With a little effort we could quite easily achieve this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1494887991/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
@ZigZag Wanderer. Good comment, I was equally intrigued, all weekend long, checking sales, just like you
lol, earlier today i commented on exactly this matter, but with with far more context, to BigB, regarding Amazon’s largest client 🙂
What did Assange say ?
“Resist UK”
*************
The comment is below the following article, but somehow it seems appropriate here too…
https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/15/in-his-own-words-assanges-statement/
I think i’ll dig the garden a bit and mull over copy pasting 😉
Tim,
With regard to Assange’s words as he was dragged off by the police I had a slightly different take on it. I may well be wrong but I interpreted what he was shouting, and it was difficult to hear it clearly, as something along the lines of “Resist, UK! Resist the…US!”. It struck me as an appeal to the UK to not give in to the US’s extradition demands. It’s unfortunate that commas don’t feature in the spoken language!
I saw the clip he Assange said something like: Resist UK, Resist the Trump Administration. Basically he is making a plea to the British Government to resist his extradition to the U.S. Now deep down he knows that is not going to happen. Since America and Britain have almost the same world view. Same imperialist global goals. Both criminal partners in crime. Both birds of a feather. In short Assange knows he is a cooked goose and he will be extradited to the U.S. by a very obliging Britain. So I can conclude that he said those words Resist UK, more to his vast army of supporters in Britain,US, Europe and around the world to mobilise and put pressure on the UK to resist the Trump Administration. I think he was trying to rally his supporters indirectly. We all know UK and US are as bad as each other and… Read more »
I think you are being overly cynical (again). As evidence in support of my judgement I would direct your attention to all the attempts by the elites to shut down views that challenge official narratives. The British government has just published an “Online Harms” white paper, which is supposedly about stopping terrorist propaganda and harm to children on the Internet, but hidden in the middle is a set of proposals for stopping disinformation: if these proposals had been law back in 2002/3 it would have been perfectly acceptable to push the WMD narrative, but any criticism of the narrative would have been immediately censored as disinformation. If their propaganda was as effective as you claim, they wouldn’t be bothered about people on the Internet criticising their claims. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/793360/Online_Harms_White_Paper.pdf
Perfect article. Not just about Assange but a complete overview of the current state of affairs in the world…in our psychological appraisal of the world. We, humans, behave like machines most of the time and very little awareness of doing so. It’s worth revisiting the Milgram’s experiment if you need science to back up the complancency of the majority to the ‘masters’. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) But this is not new. It’s been like this forever as far as our historical memory can go. We behave like an unconscious herd that follows the lowest behavioural response in the crowd. Humanity, the human race has not evolved a bit in the last 2000 years. We chose radical mechanistic views, radical materialistic perspectives and in the process we emptied our own humanity. We wanted to think of ourselves as above and beyond everything, capable of everything, in control until now when the result of mankind… Read more »
Ramdan Not 2,000 – more like 5,000 years of hereditary conditioning. The dangerous addictive behavioural patterning leading to the over-accumulation by a few – who could form an oligarchy – was a well recognised behavioural pattern known in the Bronze Age. It was also recognised that it would destroy civilisation – so the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and their Near Eastern neighbours – including early Mosaic Law – held regular clean slate debt amnesties – the famous Jubilee. Michael Hudson has recently done a four part history of debt. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-was-their-davos-a-four-part-interview-with-michael-hudson-about-his-forthcoming-book-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-1.html So that lesson was forgotten, and the Petroleum Interval was harvested primarily by the most powerful plutarchy history has ever, and will ever, know. Progress and prosperity ended for all but a minoritarian few in the 70s and 80s. The spectacle and carnival of debt – with its bright lights, perpetual looped entertainment, hedonic distractions and desire-fetish techno-totem ‘things’ – kept… Read more »
Indeed.
Long time ago we choose to reward accumulation of material things. Outright agressive and despotic behaviour have been rewarded and applauded while compassion and cooperation were (and probably are) seen as deplorable signs of weakness. We fed the beast over the human.
Mankind has to confront the consequences of our dreamlike state. In spite of the bleakness of the present situation we have a unique opportunity to make things right now:
Will people listen?
Will the blind see?
I have some resonance with your ideas but hold that an extreme and catastrophic past set the splitting of a mind under terror – for those who survived a ‘terraformed world – and all who come into such an acquired or inherited model. Survival as a split mind in a physical existence under terror structured the development of both subjective consciousness, language and civilisation. It still does and is observable but for the mind’s recoil and diversion. Before the beginning of human interest in and USE of ‘history’ was the ‘mythological era of the Gods’, ‘Suns’ or Ages, that makes NO sense to our current scientific world-view – unless seen in terms of celestial events that such a ‘Model’ rules out – but is discernible through the records of global antiquity, catastrophic geology and recent developments in plasma physics – which open to a new Cosmology. A non separative Cosmology… Read more »
My friend, for me is a simple logic without the need to resort to any particular God or ntellectualism.
If we choose to focus on material objects external to us as ends or means to a purposeful, happy life then we end up where we are now. Someone will believe that accumulation of those objects is desirable and more important that fellow humans or natural life
…with that in mind you’ll end up lying, betraying, killing, attacking,etc and justifying all despicable actions, just for the sake of those things that you believe are valuable…This attitude is not only egocentric but actually the summum of ignorance of what life really is.
….and yes, is just a perspective….is just a change in focus what is ultimately needed….
Lack of love that seeks to regain it by possession or domination is a distortion of a true desire – in that there are qualities of love and power that are rightly ours to have and to hold and to share in – but from fear of lack in isolation rises a self-inflation of aggrandisement – or from a lack of support and protection rises the armoured disposition. Addicts seek for substitution for true connection that they are without by the nature of both their self-convictions and the thoughts and actions that uphold them as real and inescapable. I sense that greater fears drive people to what in their framing seems a lesser evil – and as one step leads to another – an initial error or folly can generate a tragic waste of life. Breaking the pattern – or indeed the spell – requires seeing the pattern in active… Read more »
Bravo, CJ: this is about the best analysis that I have read that captures the Zeitgeist of the MSM complicity in attempting to salve the Empire-ego …in complete nihilation of any last vestige of humanity and compassion. When truth-telling is a crime… …well, we know what happens next. Happens, or happened? Soon in the UK: if you ‘Google’ (and most search engines do) – the first three pages of results and sponsored content will be digitally watermarked – “Official – UKGov.org” … accredited by ‘Fullfact’ – the official ‘independent’ factchecking partner of UKGov. But this won’t just happen: this has been a determinant identifiable trend – well, all my adult life. Which takes us back to the late 70s and Dame Maggie T. The relationship between state and subject has been profoundly and brutally altered: we are all interpellated automatic subjects of an authoritarian state now. We always were: but… Read more »
I think that the Assange affair will go down in history as our Dreyfuss moment; a significant historical inflexion point. What we have borne witness to is a mass movement of what was once the liberal intelligentsia into a type of liberal totalitarianism which will not brook the existence of any countervailing political philosophy, not to mention a quite unapologetic and open class hatred. This newly minted reactionary worldview, is, for example, evident in the diseased nihilism of its doyenne, Ayn Rand. This ability to choose sides in what is an ongoing class struggle is something unique to the liberal intelligentsia. ”The ability to attach themselves to class to which they did not originally belong was possible for intellectuals because they could adapt themselves to any viewpoint and because and because they and they alone were in a position to choose their affiliation whilst fhose immediately bound by class affiliation… Read more »
Snap! Different words, historical POV, and figures of speech – but I think we just said pretty much the same thing.
The Dreyfus affair, hmmmmmmm. Interesting comparison…
The mostly ignored evidence around the Dreyfus affair strongly suggests it was a psyop, cooked up by zionists to kick-start the ‘nudge the Jews to Palestine’ campaign. Assange / Wikileaks (and Snowden) feel like a psyop too. His 911 stance (“I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”) tells us all we need to know. I far as I can tell, he has never published info unfavorable to Israel, and arguably only does controlled leaks the US intelligence community want out.
Francis Lee: utterly brilliant comment, Cheers. The future is indeed looking very grim Francis.
I think western establishments will be somewhat disappointed their abuse of power and menace has been unable to silence criticism. They don’t scare us like they thought they might, just as people weren’t too scared to criticise Rome, the Nazis, Stalin and the rest. They deserve to end up like Mussolini.
Slaves under a loyalty test. True loyalty is in shared idea and common cause – but conformity and compliance in a mere show or mimicry of loyalty is what makes a slave to fear. Doing and saying what is required or believed to be required in order to survive, mitigate pain of loss or ‘rise higher’ in relation to the pressing down of pain of loss on others. Fear is tyranny – when hidden behind asserted denials and justifications. The cost of tyranny is giving power and freedom and love to the hateful. Thus grows a grotesque parody of life, under the coercive control of that which has none – for it is but a mimicry in form of dead concepts by which to hide the true of living from a fear and threat of pain and loss, given power over truth. Hate works behind a mask and illuminating the… Read more »
Like the baseless fabric of this vision. It’s official the Antichrist is amongst us..forsooth the hounds of hell the dogs of war are loosed amongst us…put me neck pon a block and even chop it off me duppy come back and it still a laugh..they the servo mechanism s are already dead.
George Galloway did an excellent piece on Assange in his Talk Radio show. Kristinn Hrafnsson the current journalist / editor of WikiLeaks speaks with clarity and sadness on the current trial by media we are witnessing as democracy dies in front of our eyes. Here in the U.K. Nesrine Malik wrote an “ opinion piece “ on Assange in which she (the current high priestess of Viner’s rag ) opined that Assange should be tried for rape, that we must not allow this crime, proven to be false, to go unpunished. That this 3rd rate journalist is given a platform for her vitriol is indicative of the level to which we have deteriorated here. I phoned the Guardian about their piece, spoke to an Irish woman ( Readers Editor) who one would think would have a more measured approach considering Irish history. I myself am Irish and spoke to her… Read more »
“Logic, facts, and actual evidence have little to nothing to do with this process”. Then we are dealing with mythology. Assange is a prince to billions of people and has been kidnapped by the ‘dark forces’. This can only be settled at Runnymede.
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/sex-lies-and-julian-assange/4156420
Here’s a rather interesting, to put it mildly, Australian documentary about Assange in Sweden.
‘This is why we are witnessing so many liberals (and liberals in leftist’s clothing) rushing to express their loathing of Assange in the same breath as they pretend to support him, not because they honestly believe the content of the official Julian Assange narrative that the ruling classes are disseminating, but because (a) they fear the consequences of not robotically repeating this narrative, and (b) Assange has committed the cardinal sin of reminding them that actual “resistance” to the global capitalist empire is possible, but only if you’re willing to pay the price.’ – yes, fear is at the heart of it. First and foremost economic fear, because if you don’t toe the party line you are not invited into the club, but there is also a form intellectual intimidation levied against any journalist who strays too far from the kind of group-think that defines the Guardians output. Since Viner… Read more »
I think for a long time the boundaries between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ have been fragmenting and melting and in many ways have, or are becoming, close to meaningless. I loathe Owen Jones far more than Assange, yet Jones is supposed to represent the ‘left’ on the left-leaning, liberal Guardian, a newspaper I’ve read for a very long time, but now can’t read without wanting to scream and rip it to shreds. My big problem with the left is that vast swathes of them have uncritically embraced the twin chimeras of identity and gender politics, which have, paradoxically alienated the left from millions of people who don’t even know what these categories and theories mean, but who do, in their everyday lives see their communities ravaged by the vicious class politics of neo-liberalism at home and neo-imperialism abroad, and they are increasingly rejecting them; as trillions are wasted on… Read more »
Excellent comment. A further point to note is that the Right takes electoral advantage of the identity politics as pursued by the faux left. They call it ‘cultural marxism’ (or politcal correctness) and use it to mobilize those who dislike the finger-wagging about gender in the media.
Forgot to add that what I describe (the Right taking advantage from gender identity politics) was very clear in Brasil when Bolsonaro got elected. Agitatiing against ‘cultural marxism’ was one of his main issues. The same with ‘populist’ Right wing parties elsewhere.
MichaelK: exactly bang on. Agree that the left has abandoned the working class, and hence the rise of people like Farage, Trump, Wilders, – Pauline Hanson, here in Australia. Many people are feeling lots of economic pain and confusion, and who is there to give them the answers: the Nationalistic Right. The Left is (by and large) nowhere to be seen. Fully agree Michael.
Let’s just get one thing straight. Chelsea Manning is an agent, unless you believe that in the real world these are possibilities: From Wikipedia On January 5, 2010, Manning downloaded the 400,000 documents that became known as the Iraq War logs.[106] On January 8, she downloaded 91,000 documents from the Afghanistan database, known later as part of the Afghan War logs. She saved the material on CD-RW and smuggled it through security by labeling the CD-RW media “Lady Gaga”.[107] She then copied it onto her personal computer.[108] The next day, she wrote a message in a readme.txt file (see right), which she told the court was initially intended for The Washington Post.[109] The person who was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment (reduced to 7) is now feted by the media with a photoshoot in Vogue by Annie Leibovitz and very sympathetic interviews where she says precisely nothing to indicate that… Read more »
Withholding automatic acceptance or belief is the opportunity to look at it all (whatever it is) in a different light. The mind with which we look determines the result as our perception and experience. That is already a significant reawakening of awareness and responsibility. It ‘does your head in’ to try to work out what is going on in a world where ‘news’ of events can be made up not only piecemeal – but as a broad spectrum mind trap. But where we choose to give attention and extend or share relations is the basis of the world we each meet. Giving true witness is the basis for receiving it – and this means the capacity to pick up on a manipulative deceit and leave it hanging – not taking the bait. There is another perspective that I don’t see given a voice – and that is of an overriding… Read more »
On my journey since 2014 on waking up (partly) to the lie of 9/11 and then last year really waking up (staged death and injury) I have argued and argued and argued and argued with people. What fascinates me is that people will not change their minds even when they have no reason, logic or evidence to defend or justify their belief – absolutely none (see my article about self-styled skeptics guilty of this https://off-guardian.org/2018/02/27/44920/). For example, I’ve engaged with Mick West of metabunk infamy over the collapse of WTC-7. I’ve discussed my 10-point Occam’s Razor challenge with him and invited him to respond but in our lengthy email exchange he could not provide a single point to support fire as cause. Not a single point but it didn’t change his mind! When I see 26 downvotes on a comment with only a single comment in response – a pathetic… Read more »
Perhaps you are quick to see everything as staged by ‘whoever they are’. Manning”s unmanning so to speak could be part of a plea bargain – what I mean is that events can be more complex than ‘they staged it or ‘everything is their disinfo’ excepting the voice that accuses it in the other. The next thing is that if the focus is on denial of independent journalism that challenges corrupt or secretly wielded power by holding it in some sense to account, bringing in the claim that ‘Manning is a disinfo agent’ may seem an attempt to divide or bring conflict into the issues arising from Assange’s arrest – or unravel to a fearful chaos where even more of this ‘world’ is staged than reason would allow. In a world of perception management rather than real communication – what does it look like? How will this come over? What… Read more »
Binra, I’m afraid your comment contains the sort of cliche responses I’ve come so used to expecting no matter whom I turn to. Perhaps you are quick to see everything as staged by ‘whoever they are’. I’m very quick to cry fakery where the power elite are involved it’s true. Very, very quick. However, there’s a perfectly good reason for that. Their fakery drips with certain hallmarks. They’re everywhere you look. Manning”s unmanning so to speak could be part of a plea bargain. Not when you look at the evidence in its entirety. Right off the bat the story screams implausibility – not that I suspected or noticed it at all when I first heard it back in the early twenty-tens because at that stage I had no clue about 9/11 or all the rest of it. The confiding in whomever it was, the downloading of a ridiculous quantity of… Read more »
Well I didn’t argue – I simply engaged.
I’ve seen enough to suspend emotional judgements on unconformable or inconsistent accounts – and to any ‘news story’. I haven’t taken it up as my focus. I see that we can look on the power given to deceit as too big to foil, but it also speaks of cornered desperation – which of course can be dangerous to confront head on.
Following the wrong guide ‘delivers unto evil’. I focus on the basis for discerning the nature and purpose of what we accept as our guidance. The world is not what we think – but what we think determines how we see and be in relation to it.
I feel part of a psyop’s payload is to to f*** the mind that gives it attention. I look on the negative in order to free myself from its fascination and framing.
I get part of what you say, binra. I’m obsessed when there is really no reason to be because you can work these things out so quickly and move on – which I kind of do in a way. I mean, people spend hours upon hours analysing Christchurch whereas I just look at it sufficiently to work out it’s a staged event. For one thing, I cannot stomach all the nauseating witness testimony and all the ridiculous convolutions. I do admire the people who wade heroically through it, I simply don’t understand how they can stomach it – then again they do come up with some wonderful nuggets of hoaxery and get creative with it, eg, the driving dog in the Parkland shooting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt0fkI5ZdVQ. Hilarious!
If I don’t feel anything trustworthy to relate to or with – I don’t give it allegiance or alignment. In this sense I choose not to enter into a deceit recognised as such – or at least as not who I am or accept myself to be. I cant and do not need to have to convince anyone else of what is their own will – but I do feel to reflect the nature of what is being chosen AS choice. Not knowing what we do is the realm of human expertise set as normalised and habitual perception and response. The complexity of deceit – as I see it – goes deep into the structuring of the mind and of society. Making up ‘reality’ seems like a terrible ‘power’ to me – but is the logical extension of a mind of judgement in its own spin. To make war upon… Read more »
This is a rather interesting take on Julian Assange from, of all places, Fox News and and one of their opinionated journalists, the ‘rightwing’ Tucker Carlson, who single-handedly demolishes the ‘case’ against Assange. Jimmy Dore is stunned that Carlson is inclined to do this, remember he’s on the rightwing, when the assembled ranks of ‘liberals’ and the ‘left’ inside the corporate media fail so badly. What, the fuck, is going on?
You ought to put some kind of health warning on those links you supply. I made the serious mistake of clicking on Owen Jones’s pontificating shit: “You cannot be a progressive if ….” yadda yadda – and we get the liberal mantra about what is permissable to support. And Joshua Frank complaining that Assange is “misogynistic” – thus dismissing all those damning leaks because the guy who leaked is just not nice.
“….after he’s been safely dead for ten or twenty years, they’ll name a few streets and high schools after him. Maybe they’ll even build him a monument.”
Don’t forget canonization – just as the outspoken arch-bishop Óscar Romero was finally canonized 38 years after he had been safely assassinated.
We don’t need such a long scribe to understand that shooting a messenger is always more important than reading the message. Truth is verboten.
At the time, Julia Gillard was Prime Minister of Australia. Asked what she thought of Assange who had just burst on the world stage she said of his activities ‘they are a grossly irresponsible thing to do’. She disqualified herself with that because she had had the opportunity to say that it’s all so new, must examine.
She has the opportunity now to make good, but her love for Obama (the Trojan) is probably stronger.
Chuckle, very astute 😉
I don’t know Julian Assange and I’m not sure I’d get on with him if I met him but I’m pretty sure I’ve been subjected to a barrage of propaganda about him. The format is the same whenever there’s an Enemy of The State involved and its designed to paint the none true believers into a corner — you get pushed into a ‘like’ / ‘hate’ binary choice so you end up mentally worming your way around it by coming out with some anodyne like “He might be a crazy/dictator/whatever but…..” which is tantamount to agreeing with the ‘he’s an enemy of the state that should be shot on sight’. Its all about degrading or destroying the messenger so that you can neutralize the message. (I have found myself being caught in this kind of rationalization many times. My first sentence, the routine disclaimer, might be construed as more of… Read more »
It’s true.
(“The demonization of the empire’s enemies is not a deception … it is a loyalty test. It is a ritual in which the masses (who, let’s face it, are de facto slaves) are ordered to display their fealty to their masters, and their hatred of their masters’ enemies.”) – spot on analysis by the author! Here in the U.S. the “hip” and “liberal” late-night millionaire comedians are doing their part to display complete amoral “fealty” to their wealthy masters – mocking Assange and his arrest in the most odious ways imaginable. Demonstrating yet again that our American propaganda system is absolutely airtight. There simply will be no deviation from acceptable thought and opinion allowed. So if you want to think of yourself as someone who is – “hip” and “liberal” – than surely you must laugh along with the crowd and at the apparently hysterically funny joke that is, and… Read more »
Yes, it would make a great slogan…demonisation of our rulers enemies is not a deception… it’s a loyalty test.
And it has always been so. Those that fail the cardinal test do so at their own peril. Later to be canonised when it is safe to do so as CJ alludes to.
Those canonised at the point of death are sure to be the empires/rulers acolytes such as John McCain.
“So if you want to think of yourself as someone who is – “hip” and “liberal” – than surely you must laugh along with the crowd and at the apparently hysterically funny joke that is, and has been, essentially – the torture of Julian Assange.” – how true, but pseudoliberals have not only failed to see that Assange is being tortured, but clamour for greater privations to be inflictedon him. The sneering of Moore, Hyde, Malik and Phillips via the Guardian has been especially revolting. But this doesn’t stop them churning out endless ‘won’t someone think of the children’ type articles despite the fact they have been giving their tacit support to gangsters who are devouring the planet, and thus responsible for the very conditions they can’t stop whining about. The emergence of out and out lunatics like Trump signals how even the most damaged politician can somehow seem preferable… Read more »
The massive migration to the starboard side of the human ship makes it easier to retch over the side. It also jeopardizes its seaworthiness. Soon we would have heard that Assange only has one ball, were there not so many Swedish witnesses. Good article, not white-hot enough.
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