It’s a minor miracle Julian Assange has managed to secure his freedom and return to Australia, avoiding near certain imprisonment for decades in the US for exposing government lies. Assange had almost uniquely managed to enrage not only the US government, the most powerful ever, but elites from both the left and right of politics in the US and across the world.
In 2010 he enraged Republicans, especially the ‘neo-con’ faction, by exposing US secrets surrounding the Bush era Iraq and Afghanistan wars, then in 2016 he infuriated the Democratic party establishment by releasing emails that revealed the party’s bias against former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton’s Machiavellian behaviour to seek to defeat Donald Trump.
The world is much better informed as a result, however much damage it caused the reputation of the US. Journalists should surely seek to expose the truth, not run propaganda for the US military industrial complex and foreign policy.
It’s a tribute to years of campaigning by his supporters that the US eventually decided to end its pursuit, which was becoming a public relations disaster as more and more people felt at the very least, Assange had served enough time in prison in the UK and before that at the Ecuadorean embassy for actions that were only ‘crimes’ in the US, not Australia or the UK.
Assange’s plight has been pivotal in breaking down the increasingly redundant and damaging left-right political divide. Politics is becoming about the rights of individuals versus the government.
His case brought together an extraordinarily wide group of people traditionally associated with different political tribes – the Greens, Alan Jones, Jeremy Corbyn, Robert F Kennedy, and perhaps even Donald Trump, who recently indicated he might pardon Assange if re-elected.
While welcome his release wasn’t exactly a win for journalism. He’s had to agree to a felony crime of possessing or accessing material related to the national defence of the US, which is something journalists at mainstream US media outlets do regularly, writing stories based on government leaks that seek to influence the public narrative.
“The US security state succeeded in criminalising journalism and extending their jurisdiction globally to non-citizens,” presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy said in a statement.
Assange was being pursued under the Espionage Act, an evil relic from World War I that criminalises much of what journalists do and which has been called a “fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional law” by the American Civil Liberties Union.
It emerged to prosecute writers during World War I for disagreeing with the war, making it illegal to publish classified government information, regardless of the public interest. With its famously vague wording It’s rarely if ever used for actual espionage, rather instead to try to silence individuals who upset the US government.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrew recently received Australia’s highest honour for ‘services to public health’. That level of award should really be given to Assange, the most famous ever Australian journalist, for services to the truth.
The big question now is what further secrets will Assange reveal in coming weeks and months, assuming there’s been no secret nondisclosure agreement agreed in the background.
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