Julian Assange is still an enemy of America, even if he has helped Republicans.
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This sort of thinking is downstream of tribalism. The essence of tribal thinking boils down to: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the friend of my enemy is my enemy.”
Politics has its own kind of tribalism as well, bending facts and principles to partisan loyalties.
The clearest sign that one has given over to a kind of tribal partisanship is when someone — or whole groups of people — cannot countenance inconvenient truths.
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Donald Trump and many of his supporters are having a hard time acknowledging the following: Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is an avowed enemy of the United States who has openly admitted — and acted on — his animosity toward America. A onetime TV host for Russia Today, a Vladimir Putin–directed propaganda network, he is, if not in the employ of Russia, then objectively in service to it.
The government of Russia, through surrogates and proxies, meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much as it has done in numerous other countries. The Russians used WikiLeaks as a very effective tool for their mischief. That mischief probably had some effect on how the election played out. Russia, under Putin’s authoritarian rule, seeks to undermine the legitimacy of American and Western democracy and to weaken NATO.
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Trump and his subalterns have found themselves in the position of rehabilitating Assange as some kind of heroic truth-teller, because they feel it necessary for political reasons.
In 2010, Sarah Palin rightly described Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.” This week, she apologized.
In 2010, with a bit of hyperbole, Newt Gingrich declared: “Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.” This week, Gingrich told Sean Hannity (one of Assange’s most prominent fans these days) that Assange is a “down-to-earth, straightforward interviewee.”
In 2010, Michael Moore put up $20,000 for Assange’s bail — he’d been charged with rape in Sweden — because “there is a concerted attempt to stop . . . anybody that is trying to do the job of telling us the truth.” Now, Moore says Trump has no right to be president because of Russia’s use of WikiLeaks’s truth-telling.
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Of course, people are allowed to change their minds when new facts present themselves. But those facts should be relevant.
The problem is that the most pertinent facts — about Assange, Russia, etc. — have not changed. The only truly relevant new fact is that Assange is a useful tool for Republicans, and all other facts must be bent — on the left and right — to fit that new reality.
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Julian Assange “is, if not in the employ of Russia, then objectively in service to it.” https://t.co/eHvIV3tWIu
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) January 7, 2017
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