As I write this, demonstrations around the world are taking place in protest of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange's
arbitrary detention and
silencing by the US-centralized power establishment that has been
actively pursuing his destruction for over a decade. The demonstrations will be well-attended, but not a fraction as well-attended as they should be. They will receive international attention, but not a fraction as much attention as they should.
This is because the manipulators and smear merchants who have made their careers paving the way for oligarchic agendas have been successful in killing off sympathy for the plight of Assange. As
we discussed yesterday, sympathy is key for getting narratives to take hold in public consciousness.
This is why western corporate media will circulate pictures of dead children all day long when it's in the interests of advancing longstanding imperialist agendas, but never when those children were killed by western weapons. If you can tug at someone's heart strings while telling them a story, the story you tell them will slide right in with minimal scrutiny. And it works the other way, too: if you can prevent someone's heart strings from being plucked while hearing about a legitimately heartbreaking story, you can prevent that story from taking hold. Kill all sympathy for a dissident journalist and you kill all belief in his side of the story.
And Assange's side of the story is indeed devastating to the preferred narrative of the US-centralized empire. A journalist (
yes, journalist, per
definition) who publishes 100 percent authentic documents exposing the inner mechanics of power structures all over the world, who was forced to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid extradition by the same government which
brutalized Chelsea Manning, is on its face a highly sympathetic story.
And it does tremendous damage to the narrative that America and its close network of allies are freedom-loving democracies whose systems of government are nothing like those naughty, oppressive regimes they seek to topple.
So they smear him. As often as possible, using whatever they can, they smear his reputation. Because if they can kill all sympathy for him and his outlet, it's as good for their agendas as actually killing him.
Comment: See also: Japan gives up on total indoor smoking ban despite coercion ahead of Olympic games in 2020