I invite you to click this link and witness an interesting historical moment.
Among the things I discovered in the listening:
- In the 14th minute, the interviewer gains Assange’s agreement that the United States government during the Obama Administration was fascist. Convention attendees were very excited to hear Julian go on about that.
- As the 17th minute begins, Assange claims “it doesn’t make any difference who the President is” because of the forces controlling the United States. He continues in the 18th minute to claim “the Green Party, Gary Johnson and the Bernie Sanders campaign” were part of a joint movement which could prevent corruption and hold the next President accountable. Obviously, by exchanging views with the Green Party Conventioneers, Julian was associating WikiLeaks with this defense against corruption. “Jill Stein was taking copious notes during your answer,” the interviewer shares after his treatise.
- Toward the end of the 20th minute, Assange claims “I like things to look like what they are.” Around the time he made this statement, Assange engaged in multiple communications with Donald Trump Jr., offering his support and advice to the Trump campaign, all while denying in public that he and WikiLeaks were supporting the Trump campaign. “I like things to look like what they are.” LIAR.
- During the 30th minute, Julian brings a rhetorical point that supporting the Clinton campaign is acquiescing to extortion, again gaining the rapturous approval of the audience.
- As the camera pans the applauding audience during the 32nd minute, we can see strong evidence that the Green Party had a damn big problem organizing and elevating into leadership positions non-Caucasians in 2016.
Recent posts on the WikiLeaks Twitter Account shows that they are doing precious little publishing which attacks the rampant corruption of the Trump Administration, the last Congress, the Republican Party and conservative movement. Suddenly the spigot of hacked, extremely selectively curated and leaked documents is closed to a non-damaging trickle. WikiLeaks is still taking plenty of shots at Democratic Party leaders, though.
A similar phenomenon of disinterest in holding the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans accountable for their incredibly broad attacks on the Obama Administration’s environmental policies can be observed at the Green Party’s Twitter account. They do retweet an expression of resentment that Democrats in Congress are advocating for the Green New Deal, though.
And Jill Stein appears solely interested in posting about Venezuela these days. Preventing military action in Venezuela is a worthwhile pursuit, but it sure does lack perspective to leave behind almost everything else that is being revealed and worked on by the new House Democratic majority.
As we enter the 2020 Presidential campaign, it would be valuable if we could remember this history, learn from our experiences and help more of our fellow Americans avoid pursuing these sorts of damaging attacks on the progressive movement, Democratic Party leaders, and perspective-filled analysis. It’s also worthwhile to offer critique to the Green Party for engaging with such a charlatan as Assange, something that had become quite obvious to many of us by August 2016.
There’s plenty of space between offering good faith critiques and realistic political assessments of the Democratic Party and the Green Party’s failure this century to successfully organize, win elections, help bring about its policy goals and engage in honest rhetoric.
The Green Party in the US, unlike in, say, Germany, where it has had a modicum of political success and even been part of governing coalitions at the state level, has no coherent program. If the Greens have done anything to gain political power at local levels and build on that to gain power in state legislatures, say, I have not heard about it. No, the Greens in the US remain a fringe movement that have moved from worshipping Ralph Nader to worshipping Julian Assange. Their presidential nomination has been up for sale.
Very much in theme with this diary is the incredibly brazen dishonesty of the erstwhile hero of some on the Left, Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn’s claim here is incredibly Trumpian. He goes out of his way to sling a couple of personal and professional insults along with an easily disprovable claim. Clicking Aaron Rupar’s Twitter account shows that his practices are almost exactly the opposite of what Greenwald claims they are.
More explicit dishonesty and misleading claims are made in other recent tweets and retweets from GG, along with his serial expressions of his mystifying hatred for Chelsea Clinton. It’s weird and disturbing, what he’s doing these days.
The Green Party in my current state is little more than a PO Box. That said, on those occasions when the party manages to get someone into an elected office, the newly elected officeholders seem to have this odd tendency to change their party affiliation to GOP. Make of that what you will. I’ve sorted out that between the opportunists and the perpetual professional candidates that the party is effectively useless here in the US.
and has had one for a while. My impression when I lived just a spitting distance from the Colorado border was that one of the co-chairs of the Green Party at the time (Dave Chandler) was anti-immigrant. He viewed the influx of immigrants as he perceived it as simply not eco-groovy. Otherwise his rhetoric would have fit with Lou Dobbs circa the middle part of last decade. Chandler eventually had to give up his co-chair position. Last I heard, he was an independent (which of course can mean about anything). The basic composition of the Colorado Green Party that I remember from a decade or so ago was very well-off and very white. I doubt much has changed.
Not surprised at all with their falling for Assange’s line. He knows how to play an audience. I’ll give him that.
A little side note: someone I once mentored and who was once a family friend was probably in that audience. That particular person turned against us in the aftermath of 2016. When that individual told us point blank during the ACA repeal attempt of 2017 that we deserved to go bankrupt & lose access to our healthcare for voting HRC, I ceased all contact with that person. My spouse is disabled and healthcare is a life and death issue for us – literally. This is someone with a private business and is apparently well off. Probably would have never noticed if the ACA were repealed.
Propaganda damages people. I’m so sorry that your family friend hurt you in this way.
People change, and not always for the better. The person I knew back in the day was by that time no longer recognizable, aside from physical appearance. A shame. Yes, propaganda does damage people – no telling how many minds get lost, or how many can find their way back once they are in too deep. The person I once knew was awesome. Although not quite a death, I mourned for a little while all the same.
Wikileaks had first bite at the Panama papers and refused to publish. Then Assange attacked the papers for being “biased” against Russia.
They are no longer what they pretend to be.
“From earliest interviews, Assange is a racist, sexist, right wing libertarian who loved Rand Paul and the US constitution.”
Yes, there is a fair amount of evidence of this ideology by Assange.
Me, I particularly love this Assange quote from the last link:
“The position of the libertarian Republican–or a better description, right–coming from a principle of non-violence which is the American libertarian tradition. That produces interesting results,” said Assange. “So, non-violence: well, don’t go and invade a foreign country. Non-violence: don’t force people at the barrel of a gun to serve in the U.S. Army. Non-violence: doesn’t extort taxes from people to the federal Government with a policeman. Similarly, other aspects of non-violence in relation to abortion that they hold.”
There you go. In the end, Assange is an explicit enemy of our movement. You can’t have progressive governance without sufficient revenue from a progressive tax rate. Nothing those Green Party leaders want could be accomplished if they followed Assange’s vision of proper governance. And it “…produces interesting results…” to hear Julian express opposition to civil rights for women and his duplicitous denial of the violence visited upon women who are denied contraceptive and abortion rights.
What Ron Paul extols is some sort of return to early 20th century isolationism. Rand Paul advocates that to a somewhat lesser degree, but enough to where the like of Assange would find much to like. They have a very myopic view of violence and one that is quite convenient for legitimate enemies of the US and its allies (or what remains of US allies these days).
What the Pauls, their followers, and useful idiots explicitly don’t give a rip about is the organizational and structural violence experienced by people in the margins: people of color, women, LGBTQ, persons with disabilities, etc. The rules of the system and the attitudes baked into the society itself allow those who are marginalized to be denied the benefits of an allegedly free society. To the extent that results in real harm – physical and psychological (and we can measure that all sorts of ways from lifespan, to suicide rates, to premature births, etc.) we can say that is where the real violence can be found. It is violence that may be draped in flowery prose, but more often than not legalese. That is what Assange is cool with. Whether they realized it or not that August evening in 2016, that is what the US Greens chose to associate themselves with.