"Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions," she writes. "But he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt."
Dismissing claims that WikiLeaks is covered by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, Feinstein continues, "Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell "Fire!' in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security."
The Espionage Act invoked by Feinstein has a long and reactionary history, used to jail the legendary workers' leader Eugene V. Debs in 1918 along with thousands of members of the Industrial Workers of the World and other working class militants.
The senator articulates the same kind of police-state, lynch-mob spirit that animated that wave of repression. According to the Orwellian logic of the current vendetta, an "agitator" who exposes the crimes of a government engaged in armed aggression and torture is a criminal. And the right to free speech can be suspended by the mere invocation of "national security."
This will not end with Assange and WikiLeaks. A frontal assault on core democratic rights is being prepared by a ruling elite that lives in fear of the people, concealing its actions and aims because it knows that the policies of social reaction at home and war abroad enjoy no popular support.
The attack on WikiLeaks has been aided and abetted by the cowardly media and by corporations ranging from Amazon to MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, all of which swung into line at the first sign of government intimidation, joining in the campaign to silence the Internet organization and cut off its funding.
Success in this act of state repression would set the stage for a more far-ranging drive to suppress freedom of the Internet as a whole, shut down other web sites that oppose the policies of the US government, and impose an even tighter veil of secrecy over the operations of the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House.
The financial aristocracy and its political representatives feel an urgent need to impose a stranglehold on the flow of information. They know that the crisis of their economic system and their attempts to impose its full weight on the backs of the working class, both at home and abroad, are creating the conditions for an eruption of class struggles. Depriving such a movement of free information and political perspective is seen as vital by the ruling elite.
This is what makes the launching of an international campaign in defense of WikiLeaks a life-and-death question for working people in every country. Mass protests and movements of solidarity must be organized to demand the immediate release of Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning and an end to the campaign of intimidation and repression against WikiLeaks.
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