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The belief in freedom and the rule of America are irreconcilable, for American hegemony has globalised the power structure of serfdom and by means of corporate domination of technology has protected it with surveillance architectures. If there is a necessary symbol of Liberty, it is Wikileaks, which subjects American power to the discipline of transparency and gifts the public with a revolutionary technology that provides a check and balance on national security elites.
The idea of accountability is central to theories and practices of democracy. It is an argument for increasing public control over government, inimical to tyranny. One cannot equate the secretive governance of the national security state with democracy. It violates the constitution. For example, during the war on terror, extraterritorial jurisdictions have appeared all over the world in which American power egregiously violates common human rights ethics.
In our own time, however, Wikileaks, a political movement to render the hegemon accountable, has gained momentum, a far reaching development in the attempt to reconcile mass media to progress. With a light that could scare a thousand kings, Wikileaks re-established the ideals of the Paris commune within the context of the information age, democratically redistributing power within the political economy of communication.
Wikileaks has not been met with the understanding and respect it deserves. Public discourse on its activism has degenerated into an echo of propaganda enforced by the intelligence community, whose irrational privileges it threatens. Instead of being celebrated as a benevolent civilisational gift, Wikileaks is wrongly maligned as a malicious, cynical conduit of Russian power. Ad hominem attacks on Julian Assange have become an instrument of policy for elites, who manage media narratives.
Julian Assange has assumed the duties of a conscientious objector, and has thus faced a concerted attempt at suppression. The whole thrust of propaganda against him has sought to discredit and destroy his reputation, as a means to undermine his alternative authority. Propaganda while being in the domain of ideas is nonetheless the use of the force, the force of organised lies against the public imagination. America’s militant force against transparency activism gives lie to democracy.
Wikileaks is a spanner in the mechanics of tyranny. It is a highly sophisticated counter strategy against imperialism that has shown American power to be incompatible with democratic legitimacy and norms of civility. The general development of society in the age of the internet relies on revolutionary applications of technology and in very many ways Wikileaks has fulfilled this promise.
By creating a database immune to error, Wikileaks has created a superior point of reference for research, in which consists its special utility. In Wikileaks, the media has acquired a rival as the primary reference point for knowledge of issues that go beyond oneself.
In a true democracy oppression would be impossible and power universal and thus it is impossible to establish a relationship between contemporary American power and democracy without distortions and betrayals of logic.
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