<nettime> Slavoj Žižek: Assange works for the people – now we need to save him

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Original to:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/422992-zizek-assange-cambridge-analytica/

bwo Goanet/Fidibus (where & who else ? ;-)



Slavoj Žižek: Assange works for the people – now we need to save him  (2 
Apr, 2018)

 Julian Assange has been silenced again, and the timing is most 
suspicious. With the Cambridge Analytica story dominating the news, it 
seems some powerful people have reasons to keep the brave WikiLeaks boss 
quiet right now.

Ecuador is a small country, and one can only imagine the brutal 
behind-the-scenes pressure exerted on it by Western powers to increase 
the isolation of Julian Assange from the public space. Now, his internet 
access has been cut off and many of his visitors are refused access, 
thus rendering a slow social death to a person who's spent almost six 
years confined to an apartment at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

This happened before, for a short period around the time of the US 
elections, but back then it was a reaction to WikiLeaks publishing 
documents which could have affected the outcome of the Trump/Clinton 
race, while there is no such excuse now. Because, currently, Assange’s 
“meddling” in international relations consists only of publishing on the 
web his opinions about the Catalonia crisis and the Skripal poisoning 
scandal. So why such brutal action now, and why did it cause so little 
uproar in the public opinion?

As for the second question, it is not enough to claim that people simply 
got tired of Assange. Rather, a key role has been played by the long and 
well-orchestrated slow campaign of character assassination which reached 
the lowest level imaginable two months ago with the unverified rumors 
alleging how the Ecuadorians want to get rid of him because of his bad 
smell and dirty clothes.

In the first stage of attacks on Assange, his ex-friends and 
collaborators went public with claims that WikiLeaks began well but then 
it got bogged down with Assange’s political bias (his anti-Hillary 
obsession, his suspicious ties with Russia, etc.). This was followed by 
more direct personal defamation: for instance, he is paranoiac and 
arrogant, obsessed by power and control. But now we have reached the 
direct bodily level of smells and stains.

Manipulating Motives

They say Assange is paranoid? How could anyone who lives permanently in 
a flat which is bugged from above and below, a victim of constant 
surveillance organized by secret services, not be? As for him being a 
megalomaniac? When the (now ex-) head of the CIA says your arrest is his 
priority, does this not imply that you are a “big” threat to some, at 
least? And the trope where Assange behaves like the head of a spy 
organization? But WikiLeaks IS a spy organization, although one that 
serves the people, keeping them informed on what goes on behind the 
scenes.

Yet, they say Assange is a refugee from justice, hiding in the 
Ecuadorian embassy to escape judgment. But what kind of justice is this 
which threatens to have him arrested when the case has already been 
dropped?

    Human Rights Watch General Councel on placing Assange into 
isolation: https://t.co/XbEVUOXpeC
    — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 2, 2018

So let’s move to the big question: why now? I think one name explains it 
all: Cambridge Analytica – a name which stands for all Assange is about, 
for what he fights against; the disclosure of the link between the great 
private corporations and government agencies.

Remember what a big topic and obsession the Russian meddling in the US 
elections was – now we know it was not Russian hackers (with Assange) 
who nudged the people towards Trump, but instead the West's own 
data-processing agencies which joined forces with political forces. This 
doesn’t mean that Russia and its allies are innocent: they probably did 
try to influence the outcome in the same way that the US does in other 
countries (only in this case, it is labeled "democracy promotion"). But 
it means the big bad wolf who distorts our democracy is not in the 
Kremlin, but walking around the West itself – and this is what Assange 
was claiming all along.

Covert Rule

But where, exactly, is this big bad wolf? To grasp the whole scope of 
this control and manipulation, one should move beyond the link between 
private corporations and political parties (as is the case with 
Cambridge Analytica), to the interpenetration of data processing 
companies like Google or Facebook and state security agencies.

We shouldn't be shocked at China but at ourselves who accept the same 
regulation while believing that we retain our full freedom and that 
media just helps us to realize our goals (while in China people are 
fully aware that they are regulated). The overall image emerging from 
it, combined with what we also know about the link between the latest 
developments in biogenetics (wiring the human brain, etc.), provides an 
adequate and terrifying image of new forms of social control which make 
the good old 20th century “totalitarianism” seem a rather primitive and 
clumsy machine of domination.

The biggest achievement of the new cognitive-military complex is that 
direct and obvious oppression is no longer necessary: individuals are 
much better controlled and “nudged” in the desired direction when they 
continue to experience themselves as free and autonomous agents of their 
own lives. And this is another key lesson of WikiLeaks: our lack of 
freedom is most dangerous when it is experienced as the very 
manifestation of our freedom. Because what can be more free than the 
incessant flow of communications which allows every individual to 
popularize their opinions and forms virtual communities at the user's 
own volition? This is why it is absolutely imperative to keep the 
digital network out of the control of private capital and state power, 
i.e., to render it totally accessible to public debate. Assange was 
right in his strangely ignored key book on Google (When Google Met 
WikiLeaks, 2014) in his understanding of how our lives are regulated 
today, and how this regulation is experienced as our freedom. Meaning, 
we have to focus on the shadowy relation between private corporations 
which control our commons and secret state agencies.

People Power

Now we can see why Assange has to be silenced at exactly this moment 
when the topic of Cambridge Analytica is everywhere in our mainstream 
media. At a time when all the effort of those in power goes into 
reducing it to a particular “misuse” by some private corporations and 
political parties – but where is the state itself and the half-invisible 
apparatuses of the so-called “deep state”?

No wonder that the Guardian, which extensively reports on the Cambridge 
Analytica “scandal,” recently published a disgusting attack on Assange 
as a megalomaniac and fugitive from justice. Now, as far they are 
concerned, write as much as you want about Cambridge Analytica and Steve 
Bannon, just don’t dwell on what Assange was drawing our attention to: 
that the state apparatuses which are now expected to investigate the 
“scandal” are themselves part of the problem.

Assange characterized himself as the spy of and for the people: he is 
not spying on the people for those in power, he is spying on those in 
power for the people. This is why the only ones who can really help him 
now are we, the people. Only our pressure and mobilization can alleviate 
his predicament.

One often reads how the old Soviet secret service not only punished its 
traitors even if it took decades to do it, but also fought doggedly to 
free them when they were caught by the enemy. Assange has no state 
behind him, just us, the public – so let us do at least what the Soviet 
secret service was doing, let’s fight for him no matter how long it 
takes!


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