The reaction of most U.S. politicians and their media toadies to Julian Assange’s receiving political asylum from the Ecuadorian government, is telling. After Cardinal Mindszenty had been convicted of “treason” by the Soviets — for his high crime of being opposed to communism! — Mindszenty spent 15 years in political asylum in the American embassy in Hungary. My recollection from that time is that offering the political equivalent of “sanctuary” was the morally-correct thing to do. Today, however, such sentiments do not prevail. The Soviet mindset has been adopted by the ruling establishment of the American Empire. The comparative decency of one era has done a 180 degree turn: Those who speak what is inconvenient to the established order must be hunted down and punished or killed.
My latest book, The Wizards of Ozymandias, is dedicated to “the memory and spirit of Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose,” a group of young German men and women who insisted on speaking truth to those living under Hitler’s regime. For their efforts, Sophie and Hans were beheaded by Nazi officials with the same dispatch with which modern American conservatives and many liberals express bipartisan support for the killing of Assange!
