Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
The image of London police dragging Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy was so disturbing and resonant on so many levels, one hardly knows where to begin. First, this person, this Moreno, has disgraced and degraded himself beyond historical repair. His name will be forever synonymous with betrayal of the most abject, vicious, and cowardly sort. Paul Craig Roberts has called him Judas, and the comparison is apt. Indeed, to see Assange carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy was to witness a contemporary crucifixion, complete with smirking Centurion and a smattering of curious, if not bloodthirsty, onlookers.
But another association comes to mind, and that is rape. As Harold Pinter famously noted in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, which should be required reading in US high school civics’ classes—it certainly would be in mine, if I were still teaching—the US (used to) carry out its imperial depredations with a kind of wicked panache, disguising its true predatory intentions with clever language and even a certain wit. But no more. With a brief, somnolent interlude for the reign of the smiling assassin (who, above all, was skilled in the arts of public relations, an exemplar of the Pinter model), we have had, since the reign of Bush the Lesser, unapologetic, snarling, in-your-fucking-face, imperial barbarity. Now, with our very own fascistic goon, our Mussolini (another comparison, between Assange and Gramsci, is also…