Assange: Myths, Hypes and Truths
By Saswat Pattanayak
New York, December 15, 2010
Beyond Hope: Audience Reception Realities
Despite the attached hopes, I am also convinced that the most important lesson WikiLeaks provides is that we as a people love reality television shows. And we want our televised heroes to become celebrities who must serve us juicy bits in shiny platters. For free.
Most of us really want Julian Assange to become free. We want his female bedmates to lose their cases. We want all the companies that withdrew support to WikiLeaks to close business. 260,000 cables were not enough. And now 400,000 cables are not enough. We really want WikiLeaks get back in shape and go on providing us billions of more cables. We want it all. For free.
We want the world leaders naked. We wish to see them squabble and fight and kill each other. Those sons of bitches. Those greedy monsters. We want Assange to roll out their graves. All power to WikiLeaks. We want to watch the complete season of WL: Reality Show. For free.
We want the world to transform radically, now that WikiLeaks is our tool. We demand Time Magazine to feature Julian Assange on its cover now that he looks so cool. We want the wars to end, America be shamed, miracles to happen. For free.
Revolution, the Chevrolet Way:
Julian Assange has done his bits. He has been an investigative journalist par excellence. Like I.F. Stone, he has legitimized spying, and for a noble purpose. In many ways he has reminded us where the news does not exist. White House press meets, for instance.
And he is right. The news is in the secrets. But what is even more important to remember is that the secrets should not become the sources of news. Had there been no “classified” documents, there would not have been so much news in this recent uproar. In other words, the current global focus is not about American war-crimes. It is about the sensational disclosure of documents that were supposed to be top secret.
Continuing with iconization of Assange also trivializes what constitutes radical struggles. Revolutions are products of peoples struggles, not of ruling class goofiness. It is crucial to recognize the contributions of Assange in utilization of modern technologies to enable top secret leaks. But to consider this act as revolutionary would be to miss the revolution altogether.
Revolutionary preparations entail thorough and critical analysis of history and its systematic, process-based progressive interpretations. Those who get impressed by event-based flow of anarchic information live with (as Gil-Scot Heron would attest) illusions that revolutions will be broadcast live on television with their chosen corporate sponsors presenting the show.
Vicious is the craving for hobnobbing with the rich linens. Sure, diplomats talk cheap and heads of states excel at doublespeak. But if we did not know of this already so as to be so shocked at WikiLeaks, we must have been truly asleep in the train of history. Where was the degree of our current indignation when Apartheid was continuing in full public light in South Africa, audaciously aided by the western free world? Even after the War that was supposed to end all Wars, we witnessed countries fucking up the Korean War so bad that we could not remain satisfied until we started controlling one part of the country and made a nightmare for the other till this date. Even after the great debacle at Korea and major diplomatic tragedies in Cuba, criminally offensive conducts in Chile, professing aloofness towards Algeria, we marched on to cause irreparable damage to Vietnam for year after year.
Even after Daniel Ellsberg and Pentagon Papers, Watergate scandal and Reaganomics, the leaked documents did not shake us up well enough. Even after McCarthy was mocked and Edgar Hoover was exposed to be a thug, we still remained stoic as ever. Even after Soviet Union died and another artificial enemy in the name of Islam was manufactured, we continued to buy the dope our media officials sold. Even after all the underground press of the 60’s and 70’s were purged to the last bit and all the black panther activists eliminated from functioning by the 80’s, all the peaceniks and war groups rendered powerless by 90’s, we still continued to switch on the television sets to hear President Bush tell us stories about WMD. Where has our collective anger been? Where has been our hatred for the system that is so sickening that it leads us with no free healthcare or education or maternity leave or equal pay across genders and races?
More than Assange’s audacity, what should alert us more is the manner in which the mainstream publications are appropriating him. Corporate media have never hesitated from depicting our heroic nature at Abu Gharib. Likewise, they have been making advertising revenues from WikiLeaks leaks this time around. Just the way they make money from Che Guevara’s legacies and Bob Dylan’s blowing wind. By its very nature, WikiLeaks is sensational, and since it draws the amount of mass interest as witnessed, everyone seems to be happy revenue-wise, so long as information overload helps neutralizing the impacts quite a bit. As a result, New York Times carried front page exclusive section on WikiLeaks release for weeks. CNN carried special slots exclusively devoted to WikiLeaks. Time Magazine logged unto Skype to interview Julian Assange. As if the leaks were not enough, his torn condom also made headlines and earned revenues for the media organizations that don’t devote a single column to highlight how Haiti is now just a garbage dump. Why should the world care about sexual positions Assange prefers, if not only because the media have to make an icon out of the man and feed off his lifestyle?
Beyond WikiLeaks:
As I stated earlier, to understand Julian Assange, it is necessary to go beyond WikiLeaks. This man is a courageous hacktivist, a notable conspiracy theorist and almost fearless as a journalist. He must be praised for what he is and all the relentless works he puts in. But that is where the adulation must end. Iconizing him will only work towards Obamazing him. Problem with this approach is failing to realize that individuals fail all the time due to various factors. He, too, shall fail. His attempts at becoming Time Magazine Person of the Year was a failed stunt. Even a mild Bob Dylan before the peak of his career had famously refused interview to Time Magazine denouncing that publication as a bourgeois trash. Assange must realize his organized efforts must not be confused with moments of fame. His activism must not be confused with attaining celebrity status. His social manifesto about conspiracies must not be confused with hackers’ guide to world revolution.
Assange has claimed that it is important to understand from the radicals who came before us. One major lesson from yesteryears is that we need less of cult figures and more of organized movements. This is what Zapatista Revolutions have been all about, when no one claims to have seen Subcommandante Marcos. Why Che Guevara was an obvious target is not too difficult to guess. Why Soviet experience got confused with Stalin’s eccentricities is not too tough a puzzle. To enable mass movements, it is critical to impart historical contexts and lessons. WikiLeaks and Assange must stop clamoring for support from mainstream press and corporations.
Co-opting of Assange is already taking place. He is already being “approved” as a genius by those very agencies that he apparently is at odds with. If progressive outcome must be expected from WikiLeaks, it shall be necessary to dissociate it from the mainstream fame. It needs to be disapproved by the corporations at the very least. Those who spiritually support WikiLeaks must expect, and not be shocked at Amazon or Ebay or Apple or Visa or Mastercard withdrawing collaborations. Assange must not find in New York Times and CNN his active partners or in Time Magazine a natural ally. More importantly, WikiLeaks must release the names of corporations and entities that are financially supporting it. An idea that promotes transparency must itself remain transparent, if it needs more support from principled loyalists, potential and existing.
WikiLeaks must bring itself to context. For Daniel Ellsberg to become a hero, it was Randy Kehler who proved to be the inspiration. For Assange to adorn cover pages globally, it took a young Bradley Manning to stand up for truth. WikiLeaks must campaign for Manning and ensure him the best of legal helps. Once WikiLeaks has declared its financial sources and expressed solidarity with its core contributors, the anarchy must stop and organized efforts towards global solidarity against war and poverty should begin.
Information Anarchy:
Contrary to popular opinion, information is not power. It is the biggest cause of powerlessness. Mere information promotes dangerous opinions. Leaking reports and making them available to the public is not enough. And remaining only at that stage is even less useful. The audience is so swamped with political information on a daily basis that it is virtually impossible to help them prioritize. Progressive interpretations of the available information is crucial in providing emancipatory education to the people. In order to trace the true history of people’s struggles that can empower them towards the path of social justice, it is necessary to contextualize the WikiLeaks Papers.
Most released documents pertain to military expansionist trends and manipulative stances taken by ruling elites throughout the world. None of that is unexpected or surprising, and yet as popular polls suggest people appear to be deeply shocked at the WikiLeaks findings. This proves less about the significance of WikiLeaks and more about the status of mass intelligence/intellectual levels in the world today. Most of the impressed population perhaps have no clue about the consistent patterns of colonialism and imperialism since last two centuries. Those who express surprise at WikiLeaks findings perhaps never knew about American military interference in two thirds of the world. Those who express surprise over torture tactics employed by Britain and America perhaps were not keeping in touch with the ways militarist nations function.
Massive brutality and inhuman treatments go together with the progresses of so-called “free” world and those that are suddenly outraged at the WikiLeaks findings perhaps never believed in thousands of progressive publications and protest songs and radical movies over the years. It is fundamentally crucial to interpret WikiLeaks along with necessary historical documents being circulated and published by progressives world over. WikiLeaks must not encourage an Eurocentric tendency among the readers and authenticity of revolutionary needs must not base on corporate media approvals.
Challenging Eurocentrism:
There is also a need to imagine Assange as an overweight bearded black Muslim. Would the press have covered him as kindly as now? Would people have really believed in his released cables and expressed outrage at various nations? In all likelihood, he would have been branded a terrorist and turned over to serve without representation at the renowned Guantanamo Bay. If two white women from Sweden would have claimed being even touched, he would have been convicted of rape charges already. Like Tookie Williams and Mumia Abu Jamal, he would have been sentenced a life, if not a lethal injection. Such is the irony about investigative truths in our world.
WikiLeaks should not have outraged any more than have the speeches of Frederick Douglass, the sociological researches by WEB DuBois, the first-hand accounts of war machinations by Paul Robeson, the fundamentally radical exposure of police brutality as a ruling class tool by Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Angela Davis. All of them and countless more have exposed sinister ways in which American imperialism has functioned over the years through suppressions of press freedom. What is so novel and outrageous about the WikiLeaks discovery that diplomats tell lies? Isn’t telling lies the reason why diplomats are paid, to begin with?
Assange must be acknowledged for his great courage in his role as a journalist. But any illusions regarding the paramount roles any amount of diplomatic cables can cause must be shattered. Like our misplaced faith in Obama, we should not once again now end up nowhere with WikiLeaks as our perceived savior. Informational anarchies devoid of socio-economic histories of oppressed people do not form sufficient conditions for organized revolutionary movements and a lot of online noise does not make a good revolutionary substitute.
