McCarthyism Against the Truth

While taking asylum in London’s Ecuadoran Embassy due to the charges against him, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, sent a message yesterday to United States President Barack Obama asking him to renounce the witch hunt against WikiLeaks and to stop the persecution of its members and informers. Assange emphasized in particular the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is accused of having handed over hundreds of thousands of documents to the leaks website that revealed crimes against humanity committed by Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq, and which are testimony to the constant interventionism by Washington diplomatic representatives in their host countries.

The “witch hunt” expression, as well as the events it alludes to, likely refer to the dark period during which Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy headed the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, and took on — with the excuse of fighting communism — a crusade against those who professed that ideology, as well as socialists, liberals, democrats, freethinkers or anyone who dared question the political system, economic system or international policy of the U.S.

Just as is happening now, [in the 1950s] national security was used as a pretext for the authoritarian use of power and discretion in the persecution of expressions of freedom and transparency. McCarthyism generated a climate of terror in politics, academics, journalism, literature, cinema and theater and general stagnation. It even caused a regression in the political development of U.S. society.

The current government’s anger toward the informants that had the courage to publicize what goes on behind the scenes — starting with Manning, WikiLeaks and Assange himself — comes off as more grotesque now than five or six decades ago, when you consider that today Washington does not have a global enemy like the Soviet Union. The leaks that have resulted from Assange’s organization are not a security threat to the United States, but rather [are a threat] to the obscure, corrupt and illegal practices that regularly occur in the public institutions of the U.S. and other countries. Similarly, the work of the Australian informant and his colleagues constitutes an impulse for effective democratization of societies and their governments.

The same dilemma is now being played out through the diplomatic crisis unleashed by Assange’s decision to seek asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and from Quito’s determination to grant him asylum. An important international fracture is developing around this situation: While Washington, London and Stockholm insist on blocking Assange’s exit to Ecuador, on Saturday the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) — made up of Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia — expressed its support for Rafael Correa’s decision. A similar message came in yesterday from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) — an entity which groups together all South American countries and several Caribbean ones — when they expressed their support for the validity of the right to asylum and the immunity of diplomatic areas in general, and those of Ecuador and London in particular.

It is worth considering how far the U.S., Great Britain and Sweden troika will take their eagerness for vengeance against WikiLeaks and their determination to make the founder of said organization an example for those who would dare publicize the miseries caused by governmental authorities. In the meantime, that eagerness looks like an undesirable and shameful resurrection of McCarthyism, right in the middle of the 21st century.