On the release of Julian Assange and the ongoing fight to defend democratic rights

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for president, I welcome Julian Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison, where he has been held for more than five years. He is finally being allowed to reunite with his family and return home to Australia.

This is a major victory, which would not have been possible without the determined struggle of Assange’s supporters throughout the world. The political climbdown by the Biden administration is no doubt related to calculations over the enormous political and legal problems that would be created by bringing Assange to the US and attempting to prosecute him here. 

Assange’s freedom, however, is not a new dawn of democratic sensibility in the American ruling class. The Biden administration, through the relentless torture and mistreatment of the courageous journalist, succeeded in wringing out a guilty plea to one charge under the Espionage Act, which sets a dangerous precedent. It refused to drop the thoroughly illegitimate charges that were used to keep Assange in confinement.

Moreover, the basic underlying factors behind Assange’s imprisonment continue and intensify. Assange has been persecuted for exposing the war crimes of American imperialism, beginning with the “collateral murder” video and continuing with the release of the Afghanistan and Iraq War logs. Along with Assange, Chelsea Manning was imprisoned and held in conditions that amounted to torture for exposing the truth.

The entire political establishment in the US, Democrat and Republican, participated in the witch-hunt. It began under Obama, continued under Trump and then under Biden. The mass media, including the New York Times, played a foul role in promoting lies and slanders. Organizations in and around the Democratic Party participated in the campaign, utilizing the false and politically motivated charges of sexual misconduct against Assange. 

The ruling class is now driving the world toward a third world war, including the genocide in Gaza and the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. And it is intensifying the assault on democratic rights. 

In Ukraine, the Zelensky regime, operating as a US-NATO puppet, has arrested socialist Bogdan Sirotiuk, on the trumped up and fraudulent charges of being an agent of the Putin government because of his opposition to the US-NATO war. Governments in the US and Europe have arrested thousands of people participating in the peaceful protests against the genocide in Gaza.

The defense of democratic rights is inextricably connected to the development of a movement in the working class, against imperialism and against capitalism. This is the essential lesson that must be drawn from the persecution of Julian Assange.