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Are liberals too eager to believe sex charges against Julian Assange? Yes.
September 1, 2012
What happens when the predatory interests of a national security state and those of women’s rights advocates seem to coincide, as in the case of WikiLeaks publisher and accused rapist Julian Assange? A murky witch hunt, in which some liberals forget that suspects are innocent until proven guilty, JoAnn Wypijewski writes in The Nation.
Wypijewski reminds us that Swedish police were unusually quick to initiate the process of arrest when one of the women now involved in the charges against Assange asked authorities to require that he take an STD test after the two had unprotected sex. Upon seeing the authorities’ eagerness to arraign Assange, that woman refused to give further testimony. Not long after, the Swedish prosecutor’s office withdrew the arrest warrant for rape and molestation on the grounds that the charges were not appropriate to the women’s claims. For some reason, that decision was overturned a week later, after the Swedish authorities allowed Assange to leave the country. (A detailed account of this sequence of events, with statements from the women that seem to exonerate Assange, can be read here.)
The dubious circumstances surrounding Sweden’s sexual misconduct charges—taken with Assange’s status as public enemy No. 1 in the West—suggest that the public’s legitimate desire to see officials investigate suspects of rape and violence against women is being exploited by governments looking to protect their own interests—namely, their ability to continue committing illegal acts in secret worldwide. In their eagerness to defend the rights of women, Wypijewski argues, some writers and activists, however just their cause in general, may have become unwitting supporters of a government’s malicious attempt to silence one of its ablest critics.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly. Follow him on Twitter: @areedkelly.
JoAnn Wypijewski in The Nation:
If the Swedish claims against Assange had involved anything but sex, it’s unlikely that liberals, and even some self-described radicals, would be tiptoeing around this part of the story, either by asking “So I guess he’s a bad guy?” or by arguing “Of course he needs to answer for his crimes.” If it were anything but sex, we would insist on the presumption of innocence. We have instead gotten comfortable with presuming guilt and trusting in the dignified processes of law to guarantee fairness.
“Believe the victim” entered the lexicon decades ago for historically understandable reasons. Women had been denied their own due process, in a sense—their right to make a complaint and expect justice, not vilification or worse. They are still being denied and derided, as the idiot spewings of Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin illustrate. The mutation of basic rights into an imperative for belief, and of full citizens into victims, has not made women any safer, but its cultural manipulation—particularly in high-profile cases—has struck at the foundations of civil liberty in a way that may not have been anticipated.
So here is the spectacle of Assange, as yet unindicted, bearing the dual brand of Sex Offender and Terrorist, the subhuman beings of the twenty-first century. The fusing of abuse and terror in his case thus implies two victims who must be believed, the women and the state. But the women’s claims are murky, and the state is not credible.
Liberals who confidently condemn Assange as a rapist turn my stomach. Rape isn’t a joke or a weapon and it isn’t something to be taken lightly. As a survivor of sexual violence, I find the foaming-at-the-mouth, ready to ignore facts & condemn attitudes of liberals supporting Assange’s extradition to be deplorable and disgusting.
I guess that’s why Women Against Rape DO NOT support Assange’s extradition.
For more information, see our interviews with Christine Assange.
The new face of protest: Radical, young and connected
August 13, 2012
Political scientists believe that the protest movement in Russia will undergo change with the gradual withdrawal of liberals and the appearance of new parties on the political stage. Economic factors could also play a role.
According to Igor Bunin, president of the Center for Political Technologies, Russia may soon experience the rise of a radical new breed of protester.
“On the one hand, it seems to me that the protest movement will be more radical, more social, younger and more ready for direct actions,” Bunin predicted.
Meanwhile, many members of the opposition will disappear from the street scene because they aspire to real participation in the election process.
The political opposition is made up of a mixed basket of characters, including Alexey Navalny, a political blogger and one of the leading figures of the protest movement; Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and co-chairman of the Republican Party of People’s Freedom, also known as Parnas; Sergey Udaltsov, political activist and leader of the Left Front movement; and Vladimir Ryzkhov, also a co-chairman of PARNAS and the founder of the Republican party – one of the oldest parties in the country.
Bunin believes the general atmosphere of future street protests may become more radical in nature.
“The spirit of the protest movement is now different from December 2011; this spirit is more of a spirit of social conflict and is more radical,” he warned. “The leaders are different, the liberal movement has become weak, while younger people – those who were born in the late 1980s – are now taking part in protests.”
Coincidentally, Russia is waiting for the verdict to be passed down on the members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who were arrested in February for delivering a protest song on the altar of Christ the Savior Cathedral in central Moscow.
The members of the band, all in their 20s, face up to seven years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
Another analyst, Igor Yurgens, head of the Institute for Modern development, says the number of protest participants may increase if the economic situation in the country deteriorates sharply, which, he says, seems unlikely at the moment.
“The number of protesters will depend on the economic situation,” Yurgens said. “In my view, we now don’t have a situation where a sharp deterioration is anticipated, for example, a fall in the prices of our traditional exports.”
Meanwhile, the number of opposition protesters may decrease considerably due to the creation of new parties, he said.
“New political parties have been formed, and they will help to erode the base of the protest movement,” he said.
Concerning the choice of slogans used by the protesters, Bunin said the messages are politically ineffective and obsolete.
“I don’t see any new slogans,” he said.
He also believes that the number of future protesters is not expected to increase.
“I think the number will stay the same, up to 50,000 people per protest,” Bunin said. “Udaltsov’s plans to bring many more people are not feasible.”
However, the movement will not disappear altogether anytime soon, he added.
