Free for a Year
Almost forgotten is the example the West made of Julian Assange, yet the spirit of his oppositional journalism lives on. Backstage
Hardly anything was heard over the past year from the man who had previously spent 14 years deprived of his freedom, first in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then in the high-security prison Belmarsh. It almost seems somewhat surreal to see Julian Assange in public, as recently at the film festival in Cannes: a completely ordinary, free human being. Yet the deterrent effect his fate was meant to have on other critical journalists remains in memory as a constant reminder to his professional colleagues: Don’t go too far. As sad as Assange’s story may seem, it is just as encouraging that he is now actually free again. Fortunately, there are journalists who still feel committed to the professional ethos for which he took all those hardships upon himself. He himself, too, has now spoken out politically again, if only indirectly.
Not often does one have the good fortune to campaign together, across borders, on nearly every continent, for something that then actually leads to the desired result. For many years people have campaigned for the release of Julian Assange — whether with loud protest, concerts, interviews, essays, or vigils (special thanks here go to Almut Stackmann, Thilo Haase, and Raja, who for years, in all weathers, stood every two weeks in front of the U.S. embassy in Berlin and, without limelight or applause, drew attention to the Assange case). Around the world people stood together to point out the loss of press freedom.
And with a large portion of mainstream journalists that has worked well, too. One gets the impression that clean, thorough research is done ever more rarely. Exactly that was confirmed once again by the reporting following our peace procession in Dresden on Good Friday 2025. It was claimed, among other things, that a neo-Nazi with a criminal record had spoken at our event — which was a lie. The criminal complaint we filed at least led to a partial victory. The Regional Court in Cologne, under threat of a 250,000-euro penalty, prohibited t-online from spreading that and other false claims. FAZ, Focus, and Die Welt spread similar nonsense.
A large part of the corporate media has by now become an accomplice of an unbridled politics. They support the government’s insane course toward war with their reports, interviews, and talk shows, which is not only negligent but downright dangerous, since they hardly ask any critical questions anymore, keep pouring gasoline on the fire, and thus affirm the warmongers instead of taking them to task for their war rhetoric.
All the more important, then, are the free journalists and publicists who precisely do not let themselves be deterred by the Assange case and who, for that, must repeatedly accept reprisals and defamation. Patrik Baab, who in his books offers a completely different view of the situation in Ukraine; Ulrike Guérot, who over the past five years has casually published seven books and hundreds of videos; Kayvan Soufi-Siavash, who for years has been getting to the bottom of the machinations of the Deep State; Milosz Matuschek, who with reliable regularity offers assessments of the state of the world on his portal Freischwebende Intelligenz that are usually a little ahead of their time; Jens Berger, Tobias Riegel, and Florian Warweg of the Nachdenkseiten, who at the BPK never stops putting his finger on the sore spot; Eva Schmidt of Radio München, who broadcasts a large selection of essays and, in addition, like her colleagues Walter van Rossum, Jasmin Kosubek, Markus Fiedler, Michael Meyen, and Flavio von Witzleben, conducts outstanding interviews; Paul Schreyer, who with his platform Multipolar reports on so many topics and shows what clean, serious journalism can look like; Uli Gellermann (initiator of the first solidarity concert for Assange in Berlin), who with his Rationalgalerie gets things to the point with utmost brevity; Giovanna Winterfeld, who in her refreshing manner also appeals to young people; Hermann Ploppa with his skillful historical contextualizations; Roland Rottenfußer, Nicolas Riedl, and their team at Manova, Epoche Times, Demokratischer Widerstand, Die Freien — not to mention the wonderful foreign journalists such as Whitney Webb, Glenn Greenwald, Efrat Fenigson, Max Blumenthal, Yama Wolasmal, Kim Iversen, and many more — the list could go on forever. They do exist, the unbent ones — but ever fewer of them in the mainstream media.
With his revelations on Wikileaks, Julian Assange did free journalism an enormous service. That he has now withdrawn for the time being, in order to come to terms with years of the torture of solitary confinement and to finally be able to spend time with his wife and children, is more than understandable.
The world’s rulers have not managed to eradicate courage, love, truth, solidarity, and humor — even if they would dearly like to and will keep trying. A dull, unempathetic, and immature populace is simply easier to govern and steer. Let us make sure that they will not succeed in the future either.
We, the 99 percent, are here – and we will stay until they, the 1 percent, are gone.
To mark the anniversary of his release, we want to show you excerpts from the last of the six solidarity concerts for Julian Assange that we organized in Berlin. My thanks go to all the artists and publicists who supported and enriched the event over the years with music and speeches. Special thanks go to Jens Reule-Dantes of the Musikbrauerei — without him and his team, this would not have been possible in this form.
