For Pacifica Radio, December 2nd, 2018.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I'm the editorial director of Antiwar.com.
You can find my full interview archive, more than 4,800 interviews now, going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org.
All right, you guys, introducing Nozomi Hayase, and she is the author of this new book, Wikileaks, The Global Fourth Estate.
History is happening, and it must be good because we've been running all of her articles about Wikileaks and Julian Assange at Antiwar.com, and they are just incredible.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thank you.
Very happy to have you here.
So I'm looking at Julian Assange, modern day political prisoner, and the latest is Prosecution of Julian Assange, America's Betrayal of Its Own Ideals.
Very well put in the title and in the piece, too.
So let's talk, first of all, let's assume that our audience is just 19 and they don't know any of this history that seems like it was just yesterday to you and me.
What is Wikileaks?
How do they break onto the scene?
What are they famous for?
Who's this Assange character?
So Wikileaks actually was created in 2006, but it actually came to public prominence in 2010 with the release of Corrado Madre video, which is basically exposing the U.S. Army military airstrikes killing Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad.
And this raw footage has been kept secret, and readers, journalists who were killed requested to obtain this material by Freedom of Information Act, which was denied.
And Wikileaks published it in 2010 so that the whole world was able to see the uncensored state of modern war.
So this, basically, with this publication, Wikileaks really made its name in the U.S. and around the world.
And then ever since then, Wikileaks kept publishing materials pertaining to U.S. illegal wars or in the Middle East, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then U.S. diplomatic cables.
And then recently in 2016, of course, Wikileaks published material pertaining to Hillary Clinton campaign and revealing how the democratic establishment is corrupted at the core.
So this really changed the way liberal in America looks at this organization.
But so Wikileaks, basically, its purpose of the organization is to reveal government secrecy.
So its motto is transparency for the powerful and privacy for the ordinary people, privacy for the individuals.
And so it aimed to reveal government secrecy through publishing material that was submitted by whistleblowers around the world.
And then it utilizes the method of scientific journalism.
So Wikileaks give public primary source material and allowing each person to, out of themselves, to investigate the history and learn what has been concealed by the government over the world.
And so in many ways, I think Wikileaks is a new invention of journalism and truly living up to the purpose of free press.
So yeah, so this, Wikileaks has really changed the media landscape, but also it's challenged, I would call, challenged the Western liberal democracy, which is the particular type of governance that, you know, Western society promote.
And it's the example which actually emanated from the United States, and the United States exports this particular model of governance into the world through many different means, you know, by sort of military invasion or subverting the democratic elective process in other countries, and to many other countries to adapt to themselves to this Western style of democracy, which is, you know, which is really not about democracy.
It's the system of control.
And so Wikileaks, through the means of publishing, really challenged and exposed the true nature of Western liberal democracy and revealed that what many Americans think of democracy is not really democracy, and that especially people in the West, that we tend to think that we live in democracy and we have free press and freedom of speech.
And what Wikileaks has done through publishing corruption of the government and, you know, information that revealed corruption of the government, and also the establishment reaction to Wikileaks really revealed what this Western liberal democracy is really about.
Yeah, very well put.
And so now tell us a little bit about Julian Assange, too.
People, they either champion him or they demonize him, and both political, major political left and right factions have had their turn liking him and appreciating his work and also vilifying him as well.
Right.
Yeah.
Julian Assange, he's not a partisan.
He does not subscribe to party politics.
So he does not believe he, for instance, he defined the human struggle as individual versus institutions.
So he doesn't really, and he looked at it from that perspective.
He looks at electoral, electoral politics as a part of control, a mechanism of control.
So here we have liberal democracy and Western liberal democracy, and which is basically a managed democracy.
And so the inception of this particular governance model came from Edouard Bernays, the father of public relations, you know, somebody who created propaganda, what we know as propaganda.
And then his idea was only educated and, you know, capable men can govern themselves.
But ignorant masses, most of us don't even have ability to govern ourselves because we are too ignorant or too stupid to do that.
So his idea was elite, elite class, you know, intelligent ones, you know, those who have gone to university, those who have professional skills and knowledge, you know, they are the one who could govern not only themselves, but govern other people as well, you know.
So this idea created the current system of democracy, which is part of kind of managed, I would call managed democracy.
And so one part of this managed democracy, there are several important components that sustain this managed democracy.
And then the number one, of course, is media, right?
And the media and the journalism are deployed to sustain this facade of democracy, sustain this system of control.
And so in this system, journalists basically become gatekeeper of power, but also they are just the spokesperson for, you know, those who actually manage democracy, those who enact their own agendas and control masses behind the scenes.
And then, so we have journalists to do that.
And then also electoral politics is also another part of this control mechanism.
So these two, media and electoral politics, are very important components to sustain this illusion, illusion of democracy, and sustain this managed democracy.
So Assange, you know, with this broader understanding of what Western liberal democracy really means, you know, he doesn't really believe that we have democracy.
He looks at Western liberal democracy as a system of control.
So he, from that point of view, he looks at electoral politics is a, you know, as I said, part of control mechanism.
So he does not subscribe either left or right, or, you know, Republican or Democrat, or any other political parties, because he would, he inherently look at it as, you know, part of a control mechanism.
So if you subscribe, or if you become, you know, if you support one political party, then it's, you know, you will be sucked into this lesser, the lesser of two evils, and U.S. political duopoly system.
So from that deeper understanding, as I said, he doesn't subscribe to any political party.
And what that's, you know, then one would ask if he's political, right, that Wikileaks obviously is a very disruptive, you know, this organization is revolutionary and disruptive and challenged those in power.
So, you know, one would say he must be, he must have any political, some political philosophy, or he must have any political ideology behind it, right?
So Wikileaks, I mean, Julian Assange, as I understand it, I researched, I read many of his writings and his early essay, going back to 2005.
And what I found about him is that he, he, he's a part of Cypherpunks.
And I'm not sure if you are familiar with Cypherpunks, but Cypherpunks is an online collective.
It's an online, actually, electronic mailing list that was active in late 1990.
And they were the people who advocate privacy by use of strong technology, strong cryptography.
So they have particular ideas and particular kind of political agenda, but they kind of find a way to bypass the whole electoral arena and bypass the political system.
And then how they do is that they simply deploy technology, simply deploy privacy enhancing technology, for instance, to guarantee civil liberties.
So for instance, if you want to have privacy, instead of going through petition, instead of asking politicians for change, you know, the Cypherpunks think that they should just simply innovate a better system and create technology and deploy technology around the world.
And then later, maybe the political system would change to reflect these values.
So for Cypherpunks, privacy was very important, but also the right to free speech was also important.
And the WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, with the work of WikiLeaks, really took up that challenge to make right to free speech available to anyone around the world, regardless of their jurisdiction that they live under.
So WikiLeaks is really, you know, by using technology and creative use of cryptography and building the decentralized infrastructure.
And you know, he built a new form of journalism.
And you know, so Julian is a part of Cypherpunks who believes, you know, just to change the society without permission.
So instead of going asking for permission, you know, just do it, you know.
And this part of him has not been really understood.
And partly because many, many, many of us actually who are politically involved don't really know about Cypherpunks.
And you know, they are more caught up with this bipartisan politics and, you know, trying to, trying to fight against each other.
You know, if you are Italians, you fight against the socialists, and if you're a socialist and you fight against Italians and things like that, you know, so then you can't, you can't really see what's going on and you are being controlled by the very, you know, you're going to be sucked into the system and more and more.
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Right.
So, you know, there's this interesting, I guess it's kind of a manifesto that Assange wrote where he talks about certainly that all the worst parts of the American government, for example, the world empire, that in order to accomplish what they have to accomplish, they rely on secrecy.
And, you know, it essentially amounts, their governance amounts to really kind of, as you're saying there, it's a form of control.
It's a conspiracy against the masses, the government, and certainly the national security state and the world empire.
And so he's saying, you know, by creating a system where it's easy for people with a conscience inside the system to leak the truth out, then that will require clamp downs on secrecy and information inside the system in a way that inherently make the implementation of the empire and its goals that much more difficult because the different left hands and right hands don't know what each other are doing because so much is locked down in such secrecy in order to prevent the leaks from happening.
And so it's kind of a form of throwing a wrench in the works and sabotage there.
And, you know, a huge part of that though, as he's saying though, is it's all the nefarious stuff that has to be kept secret.
It can't really be done without everybody knowing what they're doing and making it impossible to do it in secret, really.
Correct.
I mean, so that's, you know, how I look at it is that in the past that we had colonizations, right?
And then in the past that the force of oppression was visible, you know, people who are fighting against oppression, they know they were able to see the face of oppressor, right?
But now what has changed since then is that the force of oppression became invisible.
So, you know, we tend to think that we are civilized and we have now Western civilization and, you know, we have rule of law and everything and democracy and the constitution.
So we have gone beyond this state of savages, right?
But then at the same time, I think that we only became good at deceiving ourselves.
And part of it is to use this facade of democracy and this notion of rule of law and free press or that so that we, especially people in the West, that we think because we think we live in democracy, we, you know, it's become more dangerous, right?
Because in China or in Iraq or in, you know, people under oppressive regime, they know that their government engage in propaganda.
They know they are being lied to.
And in that case, the resistance, you know, even though they have different challenges, but at least they know that they are being controlled.
But in the West, like US, that the people think that they have democracy.
So that's why they go back every four years.
They go back to electoral arena and engage in the lesser of two evil politics, right?
And then we cannot really, we cannot really build resistance if you don't know that you are being controlled.
If you don't know, you don't have freedom.
If you don't know, you don't live in a democracy.
So the part of, you know, so this transition from the naked oppression, you know, the form of colonization that we had in the past to this, you know, the different state of oppression by, you know, by the use of facade of democracy, you know, it requires secrecy.
Because if we know what our government officials are doing, then we would resist.
We would oppose, right?
We would recognize how corrupted our government is.
So they have to have secrecy.
And in order to keep secrecy, they have to have secret communication.
So that's why we have this problem of over-classification.
So, you know, for instance, in the security, I mean, the national security state, which we live in, they have a clearance system, right?
So, so the people, diplomat and, you know, the people who work inside, inside the security system, like NSA, CIA, they get clearance, you know, and then they are made to keep allegiance, to keep that secrecy.
And so they have this invisible form of governance right there, right?
And then they keep the secrecy.
And whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, Churchill Manning, Edward Snowden, what they did was they were revealing the secrecy.
They were, they saw something that was unconstitutional.
They saw something that, that how these people who are supposed to represent our interests, working detrimental to our interests.
So, so they basically engaged in the act of whistleblowing and brought information to public so that we can decide, we can hold them accountable, right?
So secrecy is a huge part of it.
And then Julian Assange, basically he came up with this idea to, you know, the best way to dismantle this secret regime is to break down their communication line.
So once, and then through the method of leaks, by releasing information, then basically they start to distrust each other.
And once they start to distrust each other, that their communication line breaks down.
And the more we, you know, the liberation happens and the distrust line breaks down, then we, you know, they cannot, they can't anymore conspire, right?
So that was the idea.
And then he created Wikileaks as a way to do so.
And certainly, you know, Wikileaks as a whistleblowing site relies on its sources and the courage of sources to release information, to let public know what's going on behind the scenes.
So, you know, the core of this liberal democracy and the control mechanism is secrecy.
And then also they have, you know, what they do is that they hide their actions.
And when their secret actions are revealed, they engage in propaganda and then they manipulate information.
They, you know, engage in perceptual management so that they can put on a facade that they could pretend that, you know, they are doing good, you know, and it's so much like that, right?
I mean, the corporations, for instance, they have this, they engage in charity and then they donate some money while they were actually exploiting a bunch of people, but they do image control, right?
So that the public only know good image of Nike Corporation or other, you know, transnational corporation.
Then they think that these corporations are a good force for the society, when in fact, that, you know, they were actually behind the scenes, they are exploiting and doing all kinds of harmful actions, right?
So, yeah, secrecy and perceptual management, these are two important components.
And another component that we don't understand is that we have secret law and we have, you know, FISA court, for instance, the secret court, you know, foreign intelligence surveillance court.
And so we don't really know, American people really don't know what's going on and how they get to keep secret, right?
And without transparency, how can we really have democracy?
We don't.
Yeah.
Now, Assange has been indicted or is being charged under the Espionage Act, apparently.
And this is huge because the Espionage Act does outlaw publishing secret information, not just leaking it.
It's only been tradition so far, and Peter Van Buren has an article in the American Conservative today about this, that it's only been tradition so far that they prosecute the leaker, but not the leaky.
And yet under Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act, they could prosecute Julian Assange or for that matter, David Sanger or Joby Warwick at the Times or the Post or whoever they wanted for publishing classified information.
And so this is a huge question for the future of publishing in America on especially national security matters.
Yeah.
And then to just clarify, it's a potential.
He might be potentially charged under the Espionage Act.
We don't know that for sure, but it's likely that the charges include the Espionage Act of 1917.
But I think that people coming out, the journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone coming out in support of Julian Assange and now saying that if Trump administration goes after Julian Assange and actually prosecute him under the Espionage Act, that ramification that he would have for the future of free press and journalism at large, I mean, that's tremendous, right?
So people are now vocally coming forward and to speak for Julian Assange.
But I also, I want to say something about this, which is it goes actually beyond the future of free press, because if you look at the Espionage Act of 1917, in the following year, 1918, there's another amendment was made to this law, which is include the Sedation Act.
And I'm not sure if you are familiar with it, but the Sedation Act basically allowed the government to prosecute anyone who, you know, engage in anti-war activities.
Like, you know, if you are against the war and if you speak up against the government or criticize mandatory military draft, for instance, or, you know, prevent people from recruiting, you know, young people going to armies, then you will be charged.
I mean, you will be punished under this law, the Sedation Act.
And in fact, the Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party, who learned for presidential candidacy, was imprisoned under this Sedation Act.
So, you know, you have to look at it.
It's not just about Julian Assange.
It's not just about the one person's life, or it's not just about journalists or free press.
It's about all of us, because then basically government would have this tremendous power to, you know, the charge anyone and put us into prison.
Right.
So, for instance, anti-war.com is a good example.
Right.
That you guys really, you know, the website really informed public about what's going on and, you know, critically engage American people, whether, you know, the words that are engaged by their own government is justifiable.
And that could be seen as, you know, threat to national security.
Then, you know, those, you know, you guys who are behind the anti-war.com or someone like me who write for the anti-war.com, we could be the next one.
You know, we could be, you know, Julian Assange could be the first one to go, you know, to be imprisoned.
And we could be the next one.
So you have to understand that larger ramification that it has for all of us, not just Julian Assange, not just the journalists, not just the future of free press, but everyone, you know.
So that's, I think, important component that we have to voice.
And, you know, it reminds me of the German pastor, you know, who wrote the poem, The Running the Lives of Naturalism.
The first day came for the socialist and I didn't speak up because I was not a socialist.
You know, then they came for the trade unionist and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist.
Then, then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up.
Right.
And in the end, he was the last one.
You know, he basically came to the point that no one there to speak up for me.
You know, it's funny, too, that this time around, first they came for the Nazis and the first people to really get kicked off of the Internet were the guys from the Daily Stormer.
And that really and nobody identified with them and so didn't say anything.
And then they came for the truthers and people went, well, those guys annoy me.
And then within just a few weeks after that, they started coming for all different people, deplatforming them from major social media and where there's a great new Taibbi article all about that at Rolling Stone.
In fact, what Twitter has been doing, you know, you know, just the blocking and and conservatives.
Right.
From I mean, because Twitter and Google, they they, you know, they are consider themselves to be liberal or they are aligned with the progressive agendas or whatever.
So they basically censor any conservative views and that's their engaging censorship.
Right.
So, I mean, it's yeah.
So I think we have to recognize, you know, that what is happening to Julian Assange, it will happen to us.
And, you know, we are already in the line to to, you know, to go to Gulag in some ways, you know, if we don't stop this and Julian Assange is on the first first one to go.
And so it's not just about, as I said, pretty press or a journalist.
It's about all of us.
And we have to stand up for each other.
And, you know, maybe we can start standing up for Julian Assange.
And that's a good place to start.
Right.
Absolutely.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time and for all your great writing on this.
I can't wait to get a look at your book.
Thank you.
That's Nozomi Hayase.
And the article, the latest two at antiwar.com are Julian Assange, modern day political prisoner and prosecution of Julian Assange, America's betrayal of its own ideals.
The book is called Wikileaks.
The global fourth estate history is happening.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, y'all.
And that's been Antiwar Radio for this morning.
Thanks very much for listening.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
Check out my full interview archive for the 4,800 interviews now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org.
See you next week.
Bye.
