We should not allow WikiLeaks to be stifled out

                                                  Sukumaran C. V

WikiLeaks has exposed a range of suppressed facts and unethical practices in a manner and scale never before seen. It has changed the rules of the game for newspapers.—The Hindu. 

                                                           Julian Assange

When I finished reading the U. S government’s concerted efforts to stifle out WikiLeaks after the not-for-profit media organization revealed ‘rare insider accounts of U.S. diplomacy across the world, angering and embarrassing Washington’ in The Hindu on October 25, 2011 (WikiLeaks fights back in the face of financial blockade and arm-twisting) I searched in my collection of books for a long forgotten work—The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels.

In the book Engels writes: “In most of the historical states, the rights of citizens are, besides, apportioned according to their wealth, thus directly expressing the fact that the state is an organization of the possessing class for its protection against the non-possessing class.” 

WikiLeaks revealed the terrible manipulations and anti-people activities of the possessing class of the world’s greatest democracy to the people all over the world. It has also revealed an incredible number of skeletons in the cupboards of other countries—both the democratic and non-democratic.

Until Julian Assange started WikiLeaks, the states could conceal their nefarious and ugly business from the people. WikiLeaks made it impossible. It helped people to view the un-democratic ways of the democracies. When its ugly side is fully shown to the people, the State stands embarrassed and sheds all the pretexts of democracy and the rule of law.  The witch-hunt starts. First it was fabricating a sexual harassment case against Assange, then arm-twisting and unlawful and arbitrary financial blockade! 

Let’s return to Engels: “The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split… Society which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe.”

The activities of the State again and again prove what Engels said by analyzing the states of his time, but his prophecy of  the State being  put into the museum still remains as a beautiful dream. The states don’t show any willingness to be seated by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe. They become stronger and stronger and the non-possessing class becomes more and more hapless and disoriented. Against this bleak scenario, the media organizations like WikiLeaks are a necessity to strengthen and orient the dispossessed millions. The state knows the role and commitment of such organizations more clearly than anybody else and wants to crush them.

The U.S which imports democracy to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other ‘uncivilized’ countries and wax eloquent on freedom of expression has savagely been stifling WikiLeaks ever since it started publishing the confidential cables exchanged among American diplomats worldwide, and it is now forced to suspend work! The most ‘liberal’ and the most ‘perfect’ democracy of the world arm-twists Julian Assange just like the Medieval Roman Catholic Church arm-twisted John Wycliffe and John Huss.

We the people should not allow WikiLeaks to be stifled out. It represents the interests of us the non-possessing class. We are in desperate need of whistle-blowers. We want someone to speak out that violations of people’s rights are rampant in the name of democracy. Even if we may not be able to put the State in the museum, we want at least to make it something which looks after the interests of the non-possessing class too. Therefore, let’s contribute as we can to save WikiLeaks from being stifled out. Let’s twist our weak arms together on behalf of the not-for-profit media organization. Many weak arms twisted together will make a strong arm and it will help the organization to fight back and to continue its praiseworthy work. 

The witch-hunt of the ‘democratic’ U.S with the help of ‘liberal’ Europe against WikiLeaks reminds me of the intolerance of the ancient democratic Athens towards Socrates. Addressing his accusers and judges who told him that if he promised to give up his discussions with people and changed his ways they would let him go, Socrates said: “If you propose to acquit me on condition that I abandon my search for truth, I will say: I thank you, O Athenians, but so long as I have breath and strength I will never cease from my occupation with philosophy.”

Socrates still lives in the hearts of the people worldwide, but nobody knows the names of his accusers and judges who trialed and condemned him to death for the ‘crime’ of his discussions with people. It will be better for those who try to smother WikiLeaks to keep this truth in their minds.