Hit Pieces and Shit Pieces | The Vilifying and Dehumanizing Smear Campaign Against Assange

in #propaganda6 years ago (edited)

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Source

Campaign to Fatally Marginalize the Organization


In order to complete the nearly decade long campaign to destroy Wikileaks it is first necessary to undermine the public "trust" in the organization. This was the determination of a U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks in a 2008 report.

``The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to WikiLeaks.org cannot be ruled out. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses "trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers", the report recommends "The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the WikiLeaks.org Web site."

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/U.S._Intelligence_planned_to_destroy_WikiLeaks,_18_Mar_2008


Since the 2010 USG report, a parallel campaign has been underway to vilify, marginalize, 'other' and dehumanize its founder Julian Assange. An incessant effort to eliminate and marginalize the leadership of Wikileaks have prevailed for years up to, and after, the arrest of Julian Assange on April 11th 2019.

The goal of these ongoing smear attacks has been to chip away at the public trust in Wikileaks and in Julian.

Over the past decade, Assange and his organization have been the target of a relentless defamation campaign and character assassination.

  • Wikileaks is "non-state hostile intelligence service."
  • Wikileaks is a puppet of Putin's Russia
  • Wikileaks/Assange hacks USG agencies
  • Wikileaks/Assange elected Trump
  • Assange is an Alt. Right Trump Supporter
  • Assange is a rapist
  • Assange is a pedophile (CNN forced to retract defamatory statement)
  • Assange is dirty and unclean
  • Assange is a horrible guest in the embassy
  • Assange doesn't clean up after his cat


    Immediately following the arrest of Assange on April 11th, a total violation of international law, a coordinated media smear campaign was thrust into action the very next day on April 12th, 2019.

"Smeared Feces" Smear Campaign Echoed Through Controlled Media


I came across this Vice article first which attempted to justify to their viewership why Julian Assange had been forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Another disgusting, distasteful, and slanderous hit piece on the embattled founder of Wikileaks by Disney controlled VICE.

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Opening Paragraph:

It didn’t take long for Ecuador to spill the dirt on its most famous houseguest. From bad hygiene, to skateboarding in the halls, to insulting staff, Julian Assange really wore out his welcome.


If it's not obvious from the first couple of sentences, this shitpost (literally a shitpost as we will see) was created for the single purpose of denigrating an individual who has been under constant attack for years and unable to communicate with the outside world to defend himself.

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Yes, you read that correctly, ”putting feces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviors of that nature.” The article goes on to complain about skateboarding and claims Assange's hygiene was unacceptable.

No mention of the his human rights, no mention of the UN's ruling on arbitrary detainment, no mention of the violation of international law, no mention of the guarantees of Ecuadorian citizens under the nation's constitution, no mention of living in prison like conditions, no mention of anything worth knowing.

No, just a worthless (s)hit piece against a publisher who dared to challenge power.


The media is literally smearing Assange for allegedly "smearing feces on the walls". This is gutter journalism... This should not even be considered journalism... even from a Disney owned rag like VICE mag.


Unsurprisingly, VICE was not the only media outlet spewing this venomous drivel:

  • The Daily Caller
  • True Pundit
  • CNN
  • Vox
  • The Independent
  • The Daily Mail
  • The New York Post
  • NBC News
  • The Guardian
  • The Root

    Assange Reportedly Smeared His Poop All Over Embassy Walls  Had The Greasiest Pants – True Pundit.png

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    Julian Assange Kicked Out Embassy for Smearing Feces on the Wall  Bad Hygiene and Skateboarding Indoors  Report1.png

    All of them essentially regurgitating the same sensational and cowardly smear job.
    The Daily Mail included a few photographs that were 'leaked' by the embassy's own spy operations against their Asylee and detailing the "squalid horror" created by Assange describing his living space as a "fetid lair".

    Fetid Lair of JA.jpg

    This laughable article even claims that Julian's cat, nicknamed "embassy cat" by the public, was a potential spy threat against the staff at the embassy!

They also feared he had hidden a camera in its collar to spy on them.
‘It could go in every room – we were suspicious it may carry a device ... to spy on us.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6917341/Assange-inside-fetid-lair-squalid-horror-drove-embassy-staff-finally-kick-out.html

Can you just imagine the agonizing torment the embassy staff must have been going through? Living in such fetid squalor with a feline agent-of-terror stalking and recording your every move?

Did we mention the "EXCREMENT" stuffed with "EXCREMENT"?!


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Ecuador’s UK Ambassador Jaime Marchan, 72, said: ‘When Assange wanted to be unpleasant he put excrement on the walls and underwear with excrement in the lavatory. We had to remind him to flush the toilet and clean the dishes'


The VOX piece was equally asinine, here's an excerpt.

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VOX

Propaganda


As we know, this is part of a campaign to marginalize and dehumanize Julian Assange in the eyes of the general public. This is what is known as 'othering' of the enemy. Julian Assange exposed US war crimes, CIA hacking tools, collusion between the DNC and the media, DNC efforts to thwart Bernie Sanders, TPP secrets, HRC's pay-to-play corruption, and countless other revelations. He became enemy #1 of the USG and they have pursued him ever since for revealing the truth - in their own words. Therefore, he must be silenced - permanently silenced.

In order to take down Assange they need to 'other' him first. They need to vilify Assange in the eyes of the public so they go along with his mistreatment at the hands of empire. This technique, as Noam Chomsky would put it, is to manufacture consent of the masses whose tacit approval is necessary to accomplish their objective. In this case, the silencing of a journalist/publisher in the name of national security. By vilifying and dehumanizing Assange their goals or more easily achieved. The average citizen is drawn a picture of a appalling house guest covered in excrement designed to evoke feelings of distaste and disgust towards the target. This depiction is amplified throughout the media and repeated again and again so that it becomes associated with the individual.

These tactics are common place and often we accept these narratives they spin for us without questioning their validity. The success of these campaigns rest on the effectiveness of the propaganda itself.

Yet there are signs that even while attempting to force the repetitive narratives on to an unsuspecting public, the propagandists are met with stiff resistance. This is likely the case with Wikileaks and Assange, the general public's trust in institutional media is at an all time low. At the same time, the intelligence agencies that wish to destroy Wikileaks are finding it more resilient than they anticipated. They have failed to marginalize Wikileaks. The people still trust Wikileaks more than any other publisher.

Pushing Back Against the Propaganda



If the comment sections of these smear pieces are any indication it would seem that the public is not going to passively swallow this heaping turd of lies and allow the continued attacks against Assange to go unanswered.

VICE comments on Twitter

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VOX comments on Twitter


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The Daily Fail


Assange inside his fetid lair  The squalid horror that drove embassy staff to finally kick him out    Daily Mail Online1.png

#FreeJulian





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It's blatantly obvious to any able to competently consider factual reality that the outlets running this ball are no more than paid propagandists, as more than one commenter pointed out.

My favorite though, was @stikeDC: 'I'm thinking Pulitzer here.'

Maybe a Nobel for Lenin Moreno? After all, he's defending Ecuador from bioterrorism.

The sad thing is the segment of the population that yet retains any credulity for the enemedia. Some people are so dependent on their membership in what they perceive as their ingroup that only existential threat at the hands of that very group might cause them to even consider whether to be in that group. What's saddest about it is that those people are most certainly not in that group. They're nothing more than tools. For people with such great need to be in a group, that is a tragic fate indeed.

The far more credible allegations against JA have been successfully dispelled long years ago, and those manufactured charges dropped. This literal smear campaign is a glaring tell of desperation to dehumanize him because what he has done has strongly challenged war profiteering, genocide, and crimes against humanity that impugn rich and powerful gangsters that need hanging.

Like censorship, it's a gross signal of the weakness of that group, and like censorship, it's going to backfire on them and do them far greater harm than JA ever could. After all, the only thing Assange ever did was reveal their crimes. All they blame on him, they did to themselves. Anyone that does not see this propaganda and the outlets sullying bandwidth with it for who and what they are aren't of any use to free people struggling against oppression anyway. Only actual thugs use those who are non compos mentis as tools, and folks incapable of grasping these facts need guardians, not abusers.

Thanks!

I'm patiently waiting the 'discovery' of his porn stash, especially since all his belongings were sealed for 'investigations'. Saddam Hussein was revealed to be obsessed with sex, Bin Laden watched porn, God only knows what the 'investigation' might discover on Julian Assange's laptop.

LOL Perhaps new pics of Pamela Anderson are soon to be released.

Didn't The Guardian try to smear Gore Vidal with pedophilia charges, too? I'm working right now on an article responding to a Guardian "explanation" of the roots of factory farming in the US. Not surprisingly, their explanation is deceptive and misleading.

Pathetic, what a joke .. and some of these are the state-sanctioned voices of reason and bastions of truth and democracy that we're told we should all be listening to and allowing to shape our perception of the world? Yeah right! We should keep a journal of all these shitty (pun intended) spun media stories and relay them anytime someone tries to lecture us over "fake news".

Yes it's a demented reality we find ourselves in. All of these media outlets give us the illusion of diversity of opinion but they're all stenographers reading from the gov/military/intel scripts. It's obvious to those that are paying attention but for the masses that simply read a few headlines in their favorite propaganda rag from time to time, they'll just pick up the tidbits in the titles. "Assange is a the house guest from hell (which the average person probably can relate to in their personal lives) and he's covered in buckets of shit... and so is his cat - so yeah you totally understand why we had to kick him out, right?"

I'd love to keep track of this trash/propaganda but I'm afraid that i would need my own cloud server to store all the endless lies. And YES they should be constantly reminded of their heinous and ridiculous smears of journalists and dissenters.

The US government has many tentacles indeed with one for a character assassination against Assange @v4vapid I hope that Assange has a lot of plan B's against his arrest but I think he is done for.

I'd give a more in depth comment regarding your post @v4vapid , but I was just in the middle of being pissed on by Russian prostitutes while I artistically smeared excrement on the wall. Besides...I have to return an email response to Putin after this session is over with, regarding our colluding to affect the next U.S. general elections...

I think Assange is in great position to go to trial, the publicity will surely bring out some of WikiLeak's finest moments back out in the public forum.The DNC hacks, Podesta files etc. What we call the mainstream media is probably worse off demographically than we all could imagine, the truth maybe that mainstream support is so low to non existent that they are all secretly kept on life support by our government's to maintain the illusion of the government's false narrative's. That would explain why journalism is so far down the shithole of government written propaganda. I would imagine the legal team for Assange will be a pretty high caliber considering the publicity, and I would imagine crowd funding should help out Assange considerably. I would bet that so much dirty laundry about the elite will come out that they will actually regret bringing him to trial.

I can only partially agree with this assessment.
He will not get a public trial in the US, he'll be brought in front of a secret grand jury were the outcome is predetermined. I think Chris Hedges' description of what awaits Assange is sober as it is horrible. He will be hooded and shackled and taken to a military/cia blacksite where he will be tortured and interrogated relentlessly without any legal rights (information terrorist) like many Muslims in Guantamano Bay - they will break him and he will dissapear. I think the only hope is that the UK parliament is FORCED by the UK public and world opinion to back down from extradition.

So, I don't believe he'll get a trial certainly not a fair trial even with a high powered legal team. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that if/when he's rendered to the US - they'll release the 'insurance files'. (I'm sure they'll make it illegal to possess those documents like the Christchurch shooter video.)

The msm is truly worse off than we think. The legacy press institutions are cozzied up to power, the one's who they're suppose to hold accountable. They go to the same parties, they date one another, they're friends. They protect one another. They all would like to keep their status and positions within the structure so they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Curated for #informationwar (by @thoughts-in-time)

Ways you can help the @informationwar!

in the world of politics incredible things happen, there are even sad and inhuman things, I live in Venezuela and I see that power can blind even fundamental values, human rights? it is usually manageable.

Watch the exceptional George Galloway direct to the point words about Assange:
https://steemit.com/dtube/@arabisouri/wsxoc6lw

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