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.
Promotion of the charges being levelled against Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, and intense scrutiny over their integrity has recently emerged from an unlikely source – British rightwing tabloid, The Daily Mail.
Known across the nation for its bare faced bigotry, shameless ignorance, blistering disdain towards open-minded youngsters and chronic lack of any sense of style, the Daily Mail is truly the last newspaper one would expect to indirectly assist the plight of an individual like Assange. When it isn’t waxing lyrical about the joys of casual racism and waging wars in Middle Eastern countries, one is likely to find the Daily Mail pouring vitriol over liberal politicians and anyone who doesn’t have a room temperature view. Yet nevertheless such prejudice, it would seem, has been lifted in favour of battling the common enemy of freedom of the speech. Or has it?
All publicity, one hears over and over again, is good publicity. When the Daily Mail runs Assange’s trial on the front page of their paper, instead of bitching about middle class, jumped up student protestors, it makes quite a profound statement regardless of what the text in the columns might say about Assange as a person. It says, of course, that this is a story worth covering and indeed the unsavoury circumstances surrounding Assange’s nebulous rape allegations also deserve critical analysis – should Mail reporters be capable of such a thing, of course. One must compare recent pages of other papers associated with the right to understand the magnitude of this – the Telegraph and the Times avoid even mentioning Assange’s name where possible, and seem crippled with fear at the prospect of transgressing against the views of the current politician’s power. Of course, this would be rather a difficult thing to do anyway when giving head to the swine under their desks.
But let’s not fall in love with the editor of the Mail just yet. One could certainly argue that the Mail’s fascination with Assange actually has nothing to do with his achievements as a political watchdog, and therefore their indirect support of him through exposure loses much of its relevance. On the contrary, it’s the sensation of the story which no doubt gets some chubby copy editor’s pulse pumping, as he wheezes and sweats over the prospect of a new, sordid exciting public figure to ejaculate over. A recent article in the Mail uses their trademark schoolboy humour to poke fun rather affectionately at Assange’s underground hideout, likening it to the super secret base of a villain from a Bond film. Nauseating clichés aside, the Mail probably just succeeded this time in doing what it usually does best – twisting anything of tangible merit into a grotesque circus of parochialism.
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?
