With the reach of U.S. surveillance now global — and with the U.S. military deployed all over the world — anger at President Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers who disclose the U.S. government’s abuses and crimes has gone international, as this Norwegian opinion piece by Victor Wallis shows.
By Victor Wallis
The more extreme the crimes of state, the more the state seeks to shroud them in secrecy. The greater the secrecy and the accompanying lies, the more vital becomes the role of whistleblowers — and the more vindictive becomes the state in its pursuit of them.
Whistleblowers are people who start out as loyal servants of the state. Their illusions about the state’s supposed moral agenda — and the wholeheartedness of their own patriotic commitment — make them all the more shocked when they discover evidence of the state’s wrongdoing.
Poster in support of Pvt. Bradley Manning, posted in Washington D.C.’s Metro system.
Given the extreme concentration of weaponry (as well as surveillance capabilities) in the hands of the state, and given the disposition of the state to apply such resources even against nonviolent mass movements, the type of defection practiced by whistleblowers — an option available to military and intelligence operatives at all levels — is crucial to any eventual triumph of popular forces over the ruling class.
Whistleblowers thus not only embarrass the government, disrupt its policies, and (assuming adequate diffusion) educate the citizenry; they also are harbingers of a broader crumbling of the capitalist state and the order it defends. Acting largely in isolation and at great risk to themselves, they embody the conviction — or at least the hope — that basic decency has a more universal grounding than does any possible scheme of oppression.
Whistleblowing’s principal near-term function is educational. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the regime whose secrets it lets out; it is thus an essential ingredient of investigative journalism. The documents it brings to light reach the public through those who practice such journalism, whom the government then threatens with prosecution unless…