{"id":77825,"date":"2022-02-22T00:03:27","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T06:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77825"},"modified":"2022-02-22T00:03:27","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T06:03:27","slug":"77825","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77825","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West<\/a>
\nThose who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.<\/em><\/p>\n

When it comes to distant<\/strong>\u00a0and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.<\/p>\n

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes\u00a0supported\u00a0<\/em>by the West \u2014 from Riyadh to Cairo \u2014 are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.<\/p>\n

But when these weapons are wielded\u00a0by Western governments<\/em>, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even\u00a0vaguely treasonous<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is\u00a0democracy<\/em>. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots\u00a0are\u00a0<\/a>popular<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>or even every bit as\u00a0democratically elected<\/a>\u00a0as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.<\/p>\n

As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau \u2014 the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the\u00a0numerous occasions when marred by blackface<\/a>) \u2014 invoke and then harshly impose\u00a0dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers<\/a>\u00a0is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Reuters, Aug. 8, 2019 (left); BBC, Feb. 15, 2022 (right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression \u2014 particularly the decade-long effective detention of Assange \u2014 but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of the most extreme aspects.<\/p>\n

While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder\u00a0failed to find evidence of criminality<\/a>\u00a0after convening a years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT),\u00a0succeeded in pressuring financial services companies<\/a>\u00a0such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks\u2019 accounts and thus banish them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive funds from supporters or pay their bills. Lieberman and his neocon allies also\u00a0pressured Amazon to remove WikiLeaks<\/a>\u00a0from its hosting services, causing the whistleblower group to be temporarily offline. All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks\u2019 ability to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.<\/p>\n

Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks \u2014 excluding dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to deny them internet access without a whiff of due process \u2014 have now become standard weapons. Trudeau’s government seizes and freezes bank accounts with no judicial process. The “charity\u201d fundraising site GoFundMe first\u00a0blocked the millions of dollars raised<\/a>\u00a0for the truckers and announced it would redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations when people pointed out, rightly, that their\u00a0original plan amounted to a form of stealing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo, raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts\u00a0blocked its distribution<\/a>. And it was just over a year ago when Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)\u00a0successfully pressured tech monopolies<\/a>\u00a0Google and Apple to remove Parler from its stores and then\u00a0pressured Amazon to remove the social media site<\/a>\u00a0from its servers, at exactly the time the social media alternative became the single most-downloaded app in America. (This morning we\u00a0published a new video report<\/a>\u00a0on Rumble that traces the emergence of this new anti-dissent tactic first pioneered on WikiLeaks and now widely used against dissent generally: \u201cBanishment from the Financial System: the War on Dissent”).<\/p>\n

That the U.S. and UK Governments have kept Assange himself \u2014 one of the most effective dissidents in the West in decades \u2014 in a cage for years with no end in sight by itself highlights how repressive they are. But the precipitating cause of Assange’s apprehension from the Ecuadorian Embassy has been forgotten by many and it, too, illustrates the same disturbing trend.<\/p>\n

In 2017,\u00a0mass protests erupted<\/a>\u00a0in Barcelona as part of a movement in Catalonia for more autonomy from the Madrid-based Spanish government, culminating in a referendum for autonomy on October 1. In 2019, even\u00a0larger and more intense protests<\/a>\u00a0materialized. The methods used to crush the protests shocked many, as such domestic aggression had been rarely seen for years in western Europe. Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and insurrectionists. Violence was used to sweep up Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences.<\/p>\n

About the crackdown, a protest video\u00a0proclaimed<\/a>\u00a0that Spain had just witnessed \u201ca degree of force never seen before in a European member state.\u201d While a fact-check by the BBC\u00a0failed to affirm<\/a>\u00a0that maximalist claim, it documented multiple grave attacks by the police on protesters in Catalonia. Meanwhile, \u201cSpanish police engaged in excessive force when confronting demonstrators in Catalonia during a disputed referendum, using batons to hit non-threatening protesters and causing multiple injuries,\u201d Human Rights Watched\u00a0concluded<\/a>, adding that though the protesters were “largely peaceful,\u201d some \u201chundreds were left injured, some seriously.\u00a0Catalonia\u2019s Health Department estimated<\/a>\u00a0on October 2 that 893 people had reported injuries to the authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the Ecuadorian Embassy, Assange, in both 2017 and then again in 2019, used WikiLeaks\u2019 platforms to vocally publicize and denounce the actions of the Spanish government \u2014 not to express support for Catalonian independence but to denounce the civil liberties assaults used to crush the protest movement. Assange made multiple media appearances to object to the use of violence by the state police, and WikiLeaks\u2019 Twitter account, virtually on a daily basis, was publicizing videos and other testimonial evidence of the crackdown.<\/p>\n

\n

Spain's National Police brutalize voters in Catalonia polling center (a school) today in an attempt to suppress #CatalanReferendum<\/a> vote. pic.twitter.com\/jh4xA8u8Bb<\/a><\/p>\n

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 1, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n