The Nation joins the campaign against Julian Assange (tags)
“Feminist opinion—as the Assange case and the Polanski affair before it have demonstrated—has become one of the means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents, and of changing the subject from the great social issues, above all, class oppression and social inequality, to stale and self-pitying concerns. Those supervising the attack against Assange are no doubt congratulating themselves on its clever design. Mounting it in the guise of a campaign against the sexual molestation of women… how else could such a filthy operation, with its threat of a sweeping assault on democratic rights, be mounted and even legitimized today? The powers that be know the Pollitts of this world, and the Nation. The magazine’s editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is, after all, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading ruling class think tank whose membership has included numerous CIA directors, along with dozens of US generals and admirals.”