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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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The guardian on Assange and Biden considering to drop the charges.

Should Biden decide to drop the Assange prosecution it would bring him into line with the previous Democratic administration of Barack Obama. It held back from charging the WikiLeaks founder for fear of infringing freedom of the press rights under the first amendment.

The 18 charges against him were ultimately brought under the presidency of Donald Trump.

To my surprise, this is actually a take echoed by Glenn Greenwood:

So Obama ended eight years in office without indicting Assange or WikiLeaks. Everything regarding Assange’s possible indictment changed only at the start of the Trump administration. Beginning in early 2017, the most reactionary Trump officials were determined to do what the Obama DOJ refused to do: indict Assange in connection with publication of the Manning documents.

The facts go like this:

  • In 2010, Assange fled from Sweden to the UK because he was concerned that his prosecution for some alleged sex crimes was a pretext for extraditing him to the US.
  • In 2012 he took asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK, citing the same concerns.
  • In May 2017 the Swedish prosecutors dropped their charges
  • In April 2017 the Trump DOJ announced that they wanted to prosecute Assange
  • In 2019 he was arrested in the embassy and has been mostly greenlighted for extradition to the US by now.

The Guardian/Greenwood narrative would have to go like this:

  • When Assange stated that he was afraid that Sweden would extradite him to the US in 2010, he was a poor delusional paranoid, because the Obama DOJ valued freedom of the press and all that. None of the prosecution he faced until 2017 was anything different than what any random citizen of Australia accused of similar crimes would have faced.
  • When the evil Trump DOJ took over, they promptly decided to prosecute Assange, suddenly turning his paranoid delusions into reality and putting pressure on the UK to extradite him for his Wikileaks work.
  • When Joe Biden took over, he just forgot to stop his DOJ from further prosecuting Assange.

My narrative would go something like this:

  • Assange was right that the US was out to get since 2010. The sex crime allegations were played up for political reasons. Sweden would have totally extradited him to the US. The DOJ simply kept their mouths shut because there was no advantage for them to admit they intended to prosecute him while he was out of their reach, and playing the freedom of the press champion made Assange look like a paranoid fool.
  • When the Swedes finally dropped their charges, Assange was still wanted in the UK for skipping bail. For some reason (probably something internal, possibly related to the administration change) the US decided to finally put their cards on the table instead of waiting until he was in UK custody.
  • After Biden took over in 2021 he did not drop the prosecution because getting hold of Assange had been a goal of the US (especially the intelligence community) since 2010, not a partisan Trump pet project.

I took Greenwald's comment mostly as a reminder that it was Trump admin who did prosecute Assange, since Greenwald has a lot of followers/fans who love Trump and also love Assange, and since Trump fans have often demonstrated a particularly remarkable talent for ignoring actual stuff that Trump does/did (which isn't that different from your standard "swampy" Republican) and supporting Trump on the basis of some fantasy version of Trump in their heads.

Greenwood's

I raised an eyebrow at OP's misspelling of his name as some sort of funny-only-to-him joke, but I'm a bit surprised to see you go along with it. Anyway, yeah, the idea that Greenwald in any way supported the narrative that Assange was too paranoid is ridiculous.

and supporting Trump on the basis of some fantasy version of Trump in their heads.

I suppose, but as a counterpoint this entire argument seems to rely on a fantasy version of how politics works. Presidents aren't absolute monarchs, they still have to form coalitions, man positions with actual people, not programmable NPC's, etc. That the Republican establishment, which was the pool he had to draw from, were completely hostile to Assange is not a surprise. Trump himself probably doesn't care one way or another.

Ugh, I thought that there was something wrong with that spelling but didn't bother to check. To be honest I haven't followed or thought about Greenwald for some time.

Trump himself probably doesn't care one way or another.

Even that would be quite a different stance from those who somehow think that Trump and Assange are on the same side (against the globalists or whatever).

Even that would be quite a different stance from those who somehow think that Trump and Assange are on the same side (against the globalists or whatever).

Not too different, or at least it makes the idea of voting Trump to bust out Assange a not-terrible one, it's just that you have to put actual pressure on him, instead of hoping he'll do it on his own initiative.

Ultimately this is the reason why I consider Trump to be easily the best option americans have had in a long time. Of course a wise and devoted to the population's well-being president/king would be best, but at least a vanitous president is a lot easier to keep aligned with the population's wishes than the puppet of a PMC that believes they should be the one deciding what the population should desire. The former just has to be reminded that the population will love him if he does what they want. The only thing that seems to motivate the PMC to go along or pretend to go along with the population's wishes is the threat of losing to a populist who could undo their long term sociocultural engineering projects.

Unfortunately, I don't trust the population's wishes either.