The latest twist in the Assange saga is just the culmination of the long and slow well-orchestrated campaign of character assassination
But that’s not all: the threat to our freedom disclosed by whistleblowers has even further systemic roots. Assange should be defended not only because his acts annoyed and embarrassed the US secret services. What he revealed is something that not only the US but also all other great (and not so great) powers are doing, to the extent they are technologically able to do it. His acts provided a factual foundation to our premonitions of how much we are all monitored and controlled. Their lesson is global, reaching far beyond the standard America-bashing.
The true target of Assange’s revelations is average hypocritical liberals who are aware of what state apparatuses and big companies do discreetly but prefer to ignore it. Publicly, we protest, at least from time to time, but silently we know that somebody must do the dirty job.