Julian Assange and the rapid decline of liberal Democracy

globinfo freexchange
3 min readDec 31, 2022

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We are now in 2023, and after 1362 days, Julian Assange is still in prison. If you seek something to measure the decline of liberal Democracy in our days, the Julian Assange case will help you a lot.

And it’s most amazing that in the era of information overflow (with plenty of means available to transfer it almost instantly in every corner of the planet), there are still many people who are unaware of the Assange case.

The origins of this deterioration go back in 1968 when the Left made a disastrous compromise with the powers of the establishment. Since the early 70s and after Nixon’s shock, the cultural domination of neoliberalism paved the way for the restriction of certain types of liberties in Western societies.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 became the perfect opportunity for the establishment to abolish instantly a significant portion of the civil liberties that came out of the 1968 compromise. The liberal Democracy in the West suffered a heavy defeat. The outcome of the 2007/08 financial meltdown came to verify the severe deterioration of Democratic institutions. Instead of paying for the crisis they created, the powers of the dominant financial capitalism became stronger (passing the bill to the working class), using the political system that is under their full control.

It could only get worse.

On 11 April 2019, something even more extraordinarily terrifying happened. The Ecuadorian government allowed the Metropolitan Police to literally invade in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and take by force the biggest journalist of our time, Julian Assange.

We are talking about a man under a condition of political asylum and with all the other charges they tried to put on him being proved false.

There are practically no real charges against Assange apart from the claims by the US imperialist apparatus that he is a threat to the US national security. All based on 9/11 legislative-status-change legacy with the severe restriction of civil liberties.

So now, we are just one step before another severe damage on civil liberties. A potential Assange extradition will essentially mark the end of Press Freedom and Freedom of Speech. From the moment Assange will be put on a plane to be delivered to the US, we will reach the point of no return concerning these two fundamental concepts for Democracy as we know it in the West. From then, we could undoubtedly officially declare the beginning of Western post-Democracy.

And that’s because after that, no journalist in the world will be protected against the US imperialist empire or any other state that will seek to bury its horrendous crimes.

The illiberal establishment put a lot of energy to downplay the Assange case, trying to almost hide it from the big audiences. Yet, the persistence of some people (among them some famous names) to protest and make speeches to make the Assange case known to the broader public, is something that annoys the establishment.

It is this action that must be continued more intensively in 2023 so that more and more people join the effort to save Julian Assange, as well as Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech. Otherwise, the dark path towards the Western post-Democracy will be inevitable.

Originally published at https://failedevolution.blogspot.com on December 31, 2022.

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