Susan Wright on the Right
Let’s see a show of hands of all of those patriots who feel Julian Assange, and his platform, WikiLeaks, is a vital and necessary part of keeping truth and freedom alive…
Ok. Now go ahead and smack yourselves with those hands. He’s not, and the sooner you get that out of your heads, drop the partisan chains that make you chase after him, and recognize who he really is, the better off we’ll all be.
Curiously, there was a time when Assange and WikiLeaks were demonized as a dangerous element by those on the right.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity comes to mind. In 2010, he wanted Assange hunted down and imprisoned for his part in revealing American troop movements in the Middle East, something that could have cost them their lives.
Fast forward to today and Assange’s apparent admiration of Donald Trump, and Hannity is happily offering Assange a spot as a guest host of his show.
So quick was Hannity to forget about Assange and his outfit targeting our troops, that they’ve apparently become close.
When a Twitter glitch took Hannity’s page down for a few hours last year, a bored housewife made a fake Hannity page, raging about the “conspiracy,” and was so convincing, Assange believed her to be the real deal.
That housewife released the direct messages shared with Assange. He offered up news on Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and its Russia probe.
He also suggested that he and fake Hannity take the conversation to more “secure” channels.
In other words, Julian Assange has gained entry through Hannity to push his narrative out, via a Fox News platform.
So while there has been a noticeable turnaround on the right, regarding Assange and WikiLeaks, the secret sharing huckster is now being hit by someone from the inside, ready to share what he knows about Assange, and the actual goals of WikiLeaks.
They’re not blowing up Democrats for our good.
A 41-year old “defector” from Assange’s inner circle, Iain, is sounding the alarm.
“I never understood at the time that these people are really quite fanatical, and not in a good way,” said Iain. “They will lie to your face, they will lie on Twitter… The pressure is being piled on, the lies are being piled on.”
Some released chat logs from a private chat among Assange and his closest online supporters in February painted a picture of misogyny and anti-Semitism in the ranks.
Other chat logs showed Assange’s plot to damage the reputation of a former volunteer, James Ball.
In February 2016 Assange offered this this ominous observation: “WL enemies end badly… Sometimes it is because we cause it to happen, other times it seems like fate.”
Iain, a liberal anti-war activist, himself, became involved with Assange and WikiLeaks while the media was raging about the Bradley Manning leaks, in 2012. His positive coverage of Assange and what WikiLeaks was doing resulted in Assange reaching out to him and drawing him in.
Being a dedicated liberal, when WikiLeaks made its sudden flip to the far right, Iain was confused and concerned.
He finally found what he sees as a kind of Rosetta Stone into Assange’s thinking in a leaked email Assange wrote way back in 2007 while soliciting support for the nascent WikiLeaks concept. One of the goals for WikiLeaks, Assange wrote, “is total annihilation of the current U.S. regime and any other regime that holds its authority through mendacity alone.”
Wow. That’s not very friendly. Sean Hannity should have him on his show to talk about that.
Total annihilation.
WikiLeaks baffled some supporters when it started seeding or promoting fake news about Hillary Clinton’s health, Pizzagate, and even Democrats engaging in satanic rituals at the same time it was releasing genuine material stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
This was not, as it might appear, a cynical bid to garner Donald Trump’s favor; nor was it simple pandering to a new funding base, argues Iain. It was part and parcel of Assange’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin against their common adversary, the United States.
The U.S. intelligence community has long considered WikiLeaks to be just another propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
And if you say you trust WikiLeaks more than our intelligence community, you’re doing patriotism wrong.
Assange established a WikiLeaks Party in Australia back in 2013, supposedly based on libertarianism and government transparency.
Supposedly.
What came after Assange failed to win a Senate seat was a ranking in preference of the white nationalist Australia First Party, along with the rightwing Shooters and Fishers Party (Yes, these are apparently the names of actual political parties in Australia).
Once the election was over, WikiLeaks’ website became a resting place for Russian propaganda that would rival that of RT.
“The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control,” read a post on the Ukraine conflict. “The government of Crimea, a Russian province… has disavowed the illegitimate government that illegally seized power in Kiev and requested Russian protection.” Posts on Syria described the 2013 Ghouta chemical-weapons attack by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad as “unsubstantiated” and “staged.”
“The party’s website content now operated solely to legitimize Russian propaganda by placing it under the umbrella of WikiLeaks’ valuable brand of truth and transparency,” said Iain.
Say, remember the move by members of Trump’s campaign team to have the language in the GOP platform towards Russia’s moves in Ukraine “softened” during the 2016 convention?
“Information and false information have always been weapons, used at all levels of society, from the family structure to the state, and WikiLeaks… uses both, and not just to inform or mislead society, but to literally reshape it according to a singular viewpoint,” said Iain. “It is a viewpoint that speaks of ‘annihilation’ and then acts in the taking of political ‘scalps.’”
He’s referring to one such message sent in the private chat by Assange, where he noted that then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced from her position because of the drop of DNC internal emails, showing a clear preference for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
Some of us knew Julian Assange was a bad actor from the beginning.
Some of us know that if you’re a foe (you know, somebody so awful that you actually feel they deserve to be imprisoned) one minute, you’re not going to inexplicably flip without something insidious behind it.
This Iain may be blowing the whistle on Assange for reasons I couldn’t personally get behind (No, I’m not sad that Hillary Clinton lost, even as I’m disgusted that Donald Trump won). He’s not wrong when he sounds the alarm, however.
Assange’s bread-and-butter is trickery. For those who would call themselves conservatives to chase after him now, as if he’s somehow working for our good or on the side of the U.S., with his open support of Trump, you have been duped.
He is not your friend.
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