© Newscom
Just in time for Christmas, the cult of Julian Assange has reached a Messianic crescendo.
As millions of Christians give praise to the man-god they consider to be "the way and the truth and the life", so radicals, who are normally so sniffy about anything that looks or sounds like religion, are bending their collective knee to that "truth teller" Assange.
Here's a man who simply wants to reveal to us The Truth, we are told, yet who is persecuted and even imprisoned for doing so.
"Truth in chains" is how one WikiLeaks-loving hack described Assange's temporary imprisonment in Britain for alleged sexual offences committed in Sweden, as if Assange himself is truth, the physical embodiment of all that is right and real.
The pursuit of Assange by law enforcers represents the "persecution of truth itself", an American journalist says.
Just as Christmas is tinged with sadness for Christians because they know where this newborn babe of truth will end up at Easter time, so the Assange apostles warn us that their "truth teller" could end up dead, too, killed by the jealous and furious authorities as surely as Christ was.
We are witnessing the "secular crucifixion of Julian Assange", says one blogger.
A contributor to the Huffington Post in the US says, "For our sake, he's being crucified to satisfy right-wingers' bloodlust."
The liberal worship of Assange is speedily becoming embarrassing and creepy. The respectable New Yorker looks on him as an otherworldly, spiritual force come to save us -"with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes and expansive forehead, like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth".
This idea that Assange is the great revealer of "hidden truths", like Moses descending the mountain with the commandments or Jesus offering pearls of wisdom on a hilltop, is widespread in the liberal media.
Veteran left-wing journalist John Pilger continually refers to him as "the truth teller", which is a spectacularly naive and trusting approach for a supposedly critically minded journalist to take to one individual.
Many WikiLeaks worshippers seem to believe Assange's motives are unimpeachably pure, utterly decent, as if there is no hint whatsoever of self-love or celeb-lust in his promotion of himself as a one-man army against the Great Satan that is the US.
Journalists who are normally cynical about everything are slavishly unquestioning of the politico-celebrity that is Assange.
Running with the religious theme, Britain's The Guardian praises Assange's "missionary zeal" to "reveal the truth". Forbes magazine refers to him as a prophet: "the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency".
And, like Jesus, this is a prophet who is not accepted in his own home town. Australian supporters have protested under banners simply saying "TRUTH".
In a cult of personality that will soon rival that of Kim Jong-il, they hold up black-and-white photos of Assange's pensive face while slating Julia Gillard for failing to welcome back and protect this son of Oz, this modern prophet, St Julian of the Whistleblower.
Geoffrey Robertson, the QC who loves justice almost as much as he loves the sound of his own voice, is representing Assange in his British-Swedish extradition case. It is the same Robertson who wrote a shrieking pamphlet called The Case of the Pope in which he argued for hauling Benedict XVI into an international court so the Pope could be tried for allegedly covering up crimes of priestly pedophilia.
Now Robertson will end the year by defending Assange, a David to the American Goliath, according to Britain's Independent. To modern ridiculers of religion, the Pope is a cruel and false god, whereas Assange is the real deal, a prophet put on earth to "deliver humanity some hidden truth", deserving even of righteous Robertson's backing.
It took an eccentric online journalist in the US to say out loud what the more respectable liberal press has only hinted at.
On AboveTopSecret.com, a cranky conspiracy theory site whose belief system is not a million miles away from WikiLeaks', a contributor wrote: "Just like Jesus of Nazareth, Julian Assange had a mission to reveal the truth. Now, just like Jesus, he faces persecution and/or death on false and trumped-up charges."
The idiotic idolisation of Assange reveals a great deal about what passes for liberal-left politics today. It shows that the flipside to profound cynicism is an equally profound naivety.
So in one breath Assange-backers indulge in the most bizarre breed of conspiratorial thinking, describing the West, and the US in particular, as a vast coven of wicked and faceless bureaucrats who act as puppeteers controlling politics and even our everyday lives from behind the scenes.
Yet when it comes to Assange, cynicism goes out the window, and the white-faced warrior for truth is treated in the most fawning fashion imaginable.
The secular beatification of Assange reveals the profound weakness of the left-wing political project today, which puts its hopes and aspirations into one man, who might - let us pray - deliver us into light. It's a straightforward saviour complex dressed up as radical agitation.
Strikingly, it shows how utterly degraded the idea of truth has become. In celebrating Assange as a "truth teller", as a prophet of truth, as a being who has arrived to "deliver humanity the truth", the WikiLeaks worshippers are reverting to a pre-Enlightenment view of truth, to a view of truth as something that is revealed to us by powerful entities rather than as something we discover through political engagement, public debate and critical thinking.
This is truth as a religious-style revelation rather than truth as the endpoint of thoughtful interrogation. It reduces us to passive beings waiting to have our eyes opened and our heads filled by the heroic truth-revealer Assange.
In reality, it is only through engaging with the world and its problems, through gathering facts and objectively analysing them, that we can arrive at any truth worth its name.
It is through the process of investigation that the truth is uncovered and formulated, revealed by the critical act of discovering and thinking rather than by some mythical, external "truth-holder".
Waiting for the truth to be revealed is always a fool's errand.
All those whose critical faculties are still intact, and who care about real truth and real knowledge, should stand up and loudly blaspheme against the new secular religion of Assange and his apostles.
Comment: SOTT.net is collecting these articles because they are important for keeping track of what may be going on behind the scenes as well as in the court of public opinion. SOTT's official view can be found here. SOTT supports Julian Assange and Wikileaks fully, and hopes to see his legal troubles come to an end and the future of global leaking of evil secrets assured.