WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire

[unhappycamper]

WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire
by: Francis Shor, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Sunday 02 January 2011

While empires try to maintain their hegemony through economic and military prowess, they must also rely on a form of ideological legitimacy to guarantee their rule. Such legitimacy is often embedded in the geopolitical reputation of the empire among its allies and reluctant admirers. Once that reputation begins to unravel, the empire appears illegitimate.

The establishment of the US empire in the aftermath of World War II built upon its economic and military supremacy. That empire created an architecture of financial and geopolitical institutions that served not only its own interests, but also those of global capital and international legal and democratic structures. There were, of course, myriad contradictions that materialized throughout the earliest cold war period, but much of the West accepted the general framework and ideological legitimacy of the empire. While a crisis of legitimacy emerged around the Vietnam War and the undermining of the Bretton Woods agreement by the Nixon administration, it was not until the end of the cold war and the development of reckless unipolar geopolitics over the last decade that a real decline in US hegemony became apparent.

Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising. However, it is instructive to note the response of those in the West to such "displays (of) imperial arrogance and hypocrisy" as reported by Steven Erlanger in The New York Times. Erlanger cites an important editorial from the Berliner Zeitung that underscores the question of ideological legitimacy: "The U.S. is betraying one of its founding myths: freedom of information. And they are doing so now, because for the first time since the end of the cold war, they are threatened with losing worldwide control of information."

Commenting in The Guardian on the hypocrisy of the United States, British columnist John Naughton points to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's January 21, 2010 address about Internet freedom and the remarkable subsequent about-face in denouncing such freedom as practiced by WikiLeaks. Naughton does not spare other officials in the West who have been clamoring for curtailment of such freedom of information on the Internet. As alleged by Naughton: "What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. … And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger."

The abuses heaped on Julian Assange and the threats against him, especially, but not exclusively, from politicians in the United States, reflects this hollowing out of democracy and a fear of the new virtual world of free speech. Writing in the December 11, 2010 issue of the Melbourne Age, Assange's Australian attorney, Peter Gordon, opines:

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[lunatica]

2. kick'd and rec'd

The mere mention of wikileaks brings the unrec crowd out. I wonder if they even bother to read the OP.

[malaise]

3. K & R

for truth.

[Odin2005]

4. Great article!

[bemildred]

5. K&R.

What is most stunning to me is that the US' ruling elites are so intent on destroying their own legitimacy, there is a cluelessness about it that is dumbfounding. I mean PR and propaganda is what they do, and yet ...

[kgnu_fan]

6. .

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, unhappycamper.

[sabrina 1]

8. I watched a program on PBS last night

about the role of the U.S. in South and Central America and the training of assassins and future brutal leaders of some of those countries at the School of the Americas. Much of how the U.S. became an Empire, what was done to human beings in other countries, was not generally known to the American people.

But watching the horrors being exposed by a few brave activists back then and the reaction of the U.S. government even when it became clear that those 'students' they were training were found to be have been involved in almost every atrocity that took place over the course of many years. Like Hillary Clinton, on the one hand expounding on 'freedom of information' while at the time condemning it when it reveals eg, her own alleged illegal orders to use the State Dept as a spy ring, back then despite the evidence of the murders and torture done by U.S. trainees, the U.S. continued to declare themselves to be the biggest defenders of human rights in the world.

Torture, I am learning eg, has been a U.S. for decades. I admit to believing that we were the 'good guys' and only the 'bad buys' like the Soviet Union eg, were guilty of such crimes. As more information is available about exactly how the U.S. became an Empire, it is only natural that the image becomes more and more tarnished.

We had a chance with the election of this president to begin to end the cold war policies, but as the Wikileaks revelations demonstrate, not only are we unwilling to prosecute torturers and war criminals, we are actively protecting them and denying justice to the victims of those crimes.

While governments may be willing to turn a blind eye to these crimes, ordinary people, now in possession of these 'secrets' are and should be outraged.

If there had not been so many secrets over the past several decades, the evils that were perpetrated in our name could have stopped.

Hopefully, rather than continue to throw temper tantrums over being exposed as hypocrites, especially when it comes to issues of human rights, some level heads, if there are any, will begin the process of dealing with these crimes. To do so can only strengthen this country but to allow the evil to continue, will surely have consequences as victims never forget injustices, as history shows. South America is now finally dealing with some of our brutal allies who carried out, we now know, their vicious crimes against humanity with the knowledge of U.S. officials.

How many times have we been told when we complain about the government spying on US, that if 'you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about'? Private individuals do have to worry when their government is spying on them. But governments in democracies should have few secrets from their own people. The fear and anger and rage directed at Wikileaks shows how necessary a truly free press is.