Yes, Friends, Wikileaks explodes the ‘free’ and ‘civilised’ world we know
defends a new ‘beacon in often dark times’
I was thrown into a torrent of thought by a letter in the Friend (17 November) asking why there had been no voice from Friends in response to disturbing, and often horrific, information coming out of the website – Wikileaks. Hundreds of thousands of official British and American communications have been leaked to the Wikileaks website by those whose consciences have been overloaded to breaking-point and that information has now been published. These revelations have exposed, and often confirmed, lies and cover-ups at every level of elite organisations in the USA, UK and elsewhere. So why aren’t Quakers in every Meeting fascinated by the name of Julian Assange, chief spokesperson and founder of the Wikileaks website?
First, speaking for myself and many Friends I know, I would say we believe ourselves to be straightforward in our search for truth. We have had the experience of weighing up the real story against the media story, the version told by our colleague against the version told by management.
We are led to be circumspect by the advice: ‘For what we apprehend of truth is limited and partial, and experience may set it all in a new light; if we too easily satisfy our urge for security by claiming that we have found certainty, we shall no longer be sensitive to new experiences of truth.’ (Quaker faith & practice 26.39). Does such a deluge of truth seem too much for us?
Second, to put it bluntly, Friends are not used to the insidious behaviour of those who profit from spin. We hesitate to believe that the charges of sexual abuse being spearheaded by Sweden, with pressure to do so by the US, are entirely fabricated, even though Julian Assange has consistently denied them. Why do we do this when the man is clearly a champion of very dangerous truths?
We hesitate, perhaps, because Julian Assange may be perceived as strange and unusual by many traditional Quakers because he started out his adult career as a computer hacker and is a restless traveller as well as a perpetual student. Some Friends may doubt that a decent, brave, ‘speaker of truth’ could have emerged from such a chequered background; but that same Assange, interviewed for Time magazine during 2010, said: ‘Let me just talk about transparency for a moment. It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it’s our goal to achieve a more just society.’ Isn’t he discarding media-speak (which we all too readily accept from our media) in an attempt to reach something purer – more enlightened?’
I must be honest – my realisation that Assange and Wikileaks represent something very dramatic in our media-dominated, bewildering era of the ‘information society’ really only came home to me when his work was corroborated and broadcast by the journalist John Pilger in his recent ITV film The war you do not see. Pilger’s work, described by Noam Chomsky as ‘a beacon in often dark times’, is creative, fuelled by powerful and spiritually moving words, a coherent voice narrating life for real in rounded documentaries. I fear that Assange’s ‘truth’ is more fragmented, and less of an art form, but utterly true and a testament to what is really happening before our very eyes.
