By Caitlin Johnstone
After a certain point criticizing the
hypocrisy and contradictions of the
US-centralized empire starts to feel too easy,
like shooting fish in a barrel. But hell let’s
do it anyway; the barrel’s right here, and I
really hate these particular fish.
Russian security services have
formally filed espionage charges against
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich,
who has been detained in Russia since his arrest
last month. Gershkovich reportedly denies the
spying allegations and says he was engaged in
journalistic activity in Russia.
This news came out at the same time as
a joint statement was published by Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemning Gershkovich’s
detention as a violation of press freedoms.
“Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a
crime,” the senators write. “We demand the
baseless, fabricated charges against Mr.
Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately
released and reiterate our condemnation of the
Russian government’s continued attempts to
intimidate, repress, and punish independent
journalists and civil society voices.”
The use of the phrase “journalism is not a
crime” is an interesting choice since the most
common individual case you’ll hear it used in
reference to is
surely that of Julian Assange, who has been
locked in a maximum security prison for four
years while the US government works to extradite
him
for the crime of good journalism. Every pro-Assange
demonstration I’ve ever been to has featured
signs with some variation of the phrase
“journalism is not a crime,” and any Assange
supporter will be intimately familiar with that
refrain.
So as an Assange supporter it sounds a bit
odd to hear that slogan rolled out by two DC
swamp monsters who have both enthusiastically
supported the persecution of the world’s most
famous journalist.
“He has done enormous damage to our country
and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a
problem, we need to change the law,” McConnell
said of Assange after WikiLeaks published
thousands of diplomatic cables in 2010.
“Neither WikiLeaks, nor its original source
for these materials, should be spared in any way
from the fullest prosecution possible under the
law,” Schumer
said in 2010.
“Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I
hope he will soon be held to account for his
meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and
the Russian government,” Schumer
tweeted when Assange was dragged from the
Ecuadorian embassy in London almost exactly four
years ago. (Assange has not been charged with
anything related to Russia or the 2016 election,
and allegations of collusion with Russia remain
completely unsubstantiated to this day.)
These are two of the most powerful elected
officials in the world, puffing and posing as
brave defenders of press freedoms after having
actively facilitated their government’s attempts
to destroy those very press freedoms. Their
government is working to extradite and imprison
Assange under the Espionage Act for engaging in
what experts
say is standard journalistic activity, which
will allow them to set a legal precedent in
which any journalist anywhere in the world can
be extradited and prosecuted for exposing US war
crimes
like Assange did.
There is no greater threat posed to world
press freedoms than the one the US is presenting
with its persecution of Julian Assange, a
persecution which has been fervently endorsed by
Schumer and McConnell and all the other
Washington swamp creatures who are
melodramatically rending their garments about
Evan Gershkovich today.
Which is of course ridiculous. You don’t get
to say “journalism is not a crime” while
literally working to criminalize journalism.
Those positions are mutually exclusive. Pick
one.
It’s worthwhile to point out the hypocrisy of
US empire managers, not because hypocrisy in and
of itself is some uniquely grave evil but
because it shows that these people do not stand
for what they pretend to stand for. The US
empire does not care about press freedoms, it
cares about power and domination, and the noises
it makes in support of journalism are only ever
made as a cynical ploy with which to
bludgeon disobedient foreign governments on
the world stage.
Assange exposed many inconvenient facts about
the US empire in his work with WikiLeaks, but
none have been so inconvenient as what he’s
exposed by forcing them to come after him and
reveal their true face in their brazen
persecution of the world’s greatest journalist.
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com
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reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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