Right-Wing Smear Jockey Stumbles Across The Truth

The ease and enthusiasm with which the left wing has adopted Julian Assange as the last bastion of truth has vexed those whose hearts beat on the right to no end over the last few weeks. Of course this is arguably because right wing politicians have never held honesty particularly high in their own regard, but Melanie Phillips, of all people, raised an interesting counter argument to this in her daily column on Tuesday.

Having poured a standard issue load of vitriol over left wing liberals, as is customary these days to fill up copy space, (and hell, if you’re getting paid over a pound a word to do it then frankly I really don’t see much of a problem with that, it’s not as if what she has to say usually makes any sense anyway) Phillips drew our attention to Assange’s motives for blowing the inner working of the US government, amongst others, wide open. Yes, it could have something to do with trying to transform global politics into a more open, transparent plane. Yes, it could have something to do with Assange taking it upon himself to be a moral mouthpiece for the violently oppressed proletariat (come again?). Yet what if the ugly reality, the true motive behind this delicious scandal, is revealed to be Assange’s ‘’all pervasive nihilistic rage,’’ as Phillips herself phrases it. Hyperbole aside, she’s raising a valid point which is yet to have been addressed or analysed in depth so far: what if Assange just wants to fuck shit up, as it were?

Even the most liberal of left wing fan boys for Assange will concede that the damage he has wrought upon global politics is enormous, and the shockwaves the cables have sent across the world, the middle east in particular, are going to reverberate back and cause a great deal of problems for western states over the coming years. Sure, the United States will quite easily ride out the bulk of the consequences, the shattered relationship with Pakistan, already hanging on a threat, or the increased tension with Russia, hardly a surprise in the first place. However, closer to home, Prince Andrew is still blushing and fumbling his words over the PR cataclysm of his rather undiplomatic comments of yesteryear, the government’s own diplomatic status with countries in the middle east lies in tatters, and after all this Assange continues to taunt the West that he has thousands of more cables set to blow, ready to rent apart even further the growing ruptures between Occident and Orient.

Let’s not forget a more local issue which the entire debacle has thrown up –that of housing the self-proclaimed ‘journalist’ in our own European hotbed, putting the Coalition under increasing pressure to either extradite Assange to Sweden or continue to exasperate allies by holding him out of bail. There are few people out there who will deny that the trial is going to be an utter mockery of international law, simply because the prosecution is standing on quicksand, and even when one takes into consideration the unreleased cables, it would be no surprise if the Assange case becomes old news before next August. This self-styled Australian hacker just wants to watch the world burn, a rather good idea in my opinion, but it’s not going to last for long. And that’s assuming that he doesn’t fall down a ravine or lose eighty per cent of his brain cells in a routine check up or crash his plane in the Alps.