The truth sends you to jail

By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist

Just 10 years ago, on a sunny October day, Julian Assange was speaking in front of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. A large group of young people, whose ideals had no time to die and rot, watched him intently. Assange was a star and leftists (is any of us different?) were praising his righteousness and courage.

Today, Assange is in London’s Belmarsh prison of maximum security. Waiting to be extradited to the United States, as they accused him of espionage under the notorious, 1917 Espionage Act.

Assange did not fight in the jungle, because fighting in the jungle no longer makes sense – the jungle, after all, no longer exists, at least not as a hidden, dangerous place, the home of outlaws. For satellites, Google earth and our supervisors, it’s all the same – Brixton and Amazon.

Assange fought on servers, where our lives take place.

Assange did not shoot at the powerful. He did something far more violent, far more deadly: he allowed us to find out the truth about them. He did not blow up the railroads, he did not take the land from the rich to give it back to the poor – because the land, no one needs it anymore. He carried out a much more devastating attack: he declared that deception and lies were the bloodstream and the heart driving the world.

Assange did not, like North Korea, launch a long-range missile. He didn’t drop an atomic bomb. He activated something incomparably more powerful: the truth. Which – is it right – liberates. Assange did everything he could to free us. The fact that we are not – and will not be – free, is not up to him.

The seriousness of his act is evident from the fact that you won’t meet kids on the street wearing T-shirts depicting his character. Those who profited from his information – champions of “free journalism” like The Guardian, for example, also turned against Assange a long time ago. Neither the American Republicans nor the Democrats will cry for Assange. No senior European Union official will visit Assange in prison and express concern over the human rights situation in England. No EU journalism award will bi given Assange’s name.

No, you won’t be watching concerts where music stars, united, demand freedom for Assange. Beyonce and Coldplay did not start or end their performances at the Super Bowl halftime with the exclamation: Free Assange!

Should it be mentioned: if Assange had been arrested by Putin, or Assad, all that would have happened.

After Wikileaks published the dirty secrets of Western democracies, we also learned how much the United Nations is worth today.

Assange waved with the decision of the UN working group in front of the press on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The working group for arbitrary arrests has decided: the relationship with Assang is illegal, he must be released immediately and he should be compensated for the 2.000 days he illegally spent in detention.

It’s just that Great Britain wasn’t interested in the decision of the United Nations Working Group as much as they’d be interested in conclusions and instructions that, let’s say, Aco Radoman, Boban Batricevic and I would make while eating burek in ‘Tara’.

The British authorities responded to the hollow story of the United Nations with a cold statement that Assange, as soon as he steps out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, will be arrested. In the end, he was arrested not in front, but in the embassy.

And it all started, do you remember, with a bizarre accusation from Sweden – that Assange deliberately made the condom he used burst, putting his sexual partner in danger.

The British authorities responded to the lurid story of the United Nations with a cold statement that Assange, as soon as he steps out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, will be arrested. In the end, he was arrested not in front, but in the embassy.

And it all started, if you can remember, with a bizarre accusation from Sweden – that Assange deliberately broke the condom he used thus putting his sexual partner in danger.

Every fool knew it wasn’t about it. As any fool knew that, Assange, if he had gone to Sweden to declare a broken condom, would have ended up in a U.S. prison where he’d, or would have not, declared his activities which the State Department described as “cyber terrorism.”

Just like every political idiot has had to understand the message of the “Assange case” so far.

Julian Assange chose the “wrong” fight against the “wrong” enemy. You can have your noble goals: you can wage your cultural, feminist, transgender struggles as much as you like – you can, as much as your heart desires, announce the end of capitalism and revolution, you can, whenever you want, stand up for various vulnerable groups, from whales to refugees, you can have your anti-Western, pro-Putin rallies, you can, like me, if you feel like it, write something nice about Assange.

You can do all that. But for those who publish the truth, there is no safe space. The terror of truth will not be tolerated.

And it’s the truth, whose action always seems like absolute terror, which is the only thing that can set us free and redeem us. And I’m not the one who says it. It’s Jesus.

The imprisonment of Assange is a great – and shameful – story of our time. It is one of those events that push the system to its last, outer limits, when, having nowhere else to go, the monster turns to the citizens to whom someone (Assange) pastes a picture of the emperor on the desktop, then spreads his arms and says:

“Okay, it’s time to stop joking. You didn’t really believe what we told you about the rule of the people, that your vote is valid, that you decide your own destiny? You didn’t really believe that we were advocating for the media to reveal the truth, which is not true if it is not extremely embarrassing? You didn’t really think we supported the fight against corrupt power, did you? We mean, everyone knows that power is always corrupt? We mean, it is clear to you that everyone supports the anti-corruption fight – as long as it is the fight against corruption in other people’s ranks? It’s clear to you that, when it comes to our corruption, as a rule, there’s a higher interest and it’s why it’s not advisable to deal with the issue of corruption right now, in an explicit way? Because, I guess you understand that, revealing the dirty secrets of our enemies is the way to the Nobel Prize, while revealing our dirty secrets is the way to prison?

We, of course, reckon that you are stupid, your stupidity is, after all, the foundation of our power; we, of course, reckon that you consider hypocrisy to be wisdom, so your hypocrisy is the foundation of our power – but no one is so stupid as to really believe in our stories of democracy and freedom of speech? We mean, really?”

Then citizens go to the shopping mall or visit a porn site. The power stays powerful and Assange dies in prison.

It’s how the modern version of Andersen’s fairy tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ ends.