Great to See Him Back

He's back @JulianAssange pic.twitter.com/scTh8nnvjI

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 17, 2026

Russiagate was really the moment lawfare entered public consciousness, at least for that part of the public that was not suffering from TDS, because all of the elements were suddenly there in one place. You had totally made up allegations, naked political motives, abuse of state… https://t.co/QvvWao1EGl

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) September 18, 2026

… and intelligence power, selective investigations and prosecutions, and then the indispensable media pile on that took whatever the state was doing and turned it into presumed guilt.

But there were important precursors and Julian Assange is one of them, perhaps even the first great lawfare victim of the modern era.

His offense was exposing the state and embarrassing some of the most powerful institutions in the world. Once he did that, the machinery started moving against him. First there were the Swedish rape allegations, which were endlessly used to smear him despite the fact that he was never convicted of anything and the whole thing was ultimately dropped. Then came the years of confinement, the effort to prosecute him under the Espionage Act for publishing information the government desperately did not want published, and finally jail.

That is what makes the Assange case so important in understanding lawfare. The target came first and the made up stories and legal mechanisms followed. And of course, as always, the media played a big role too. They happily feasted on WikiLeaks material when it suited them but when the order came down, they turned Assange himself into the villain. Once he had been pushed outside the boundaries of respectable opinion, almost anything done to him could be justified.

And that is really the recurring pattern. First identify the person who is politically or institutionally intolerable, then stretch the law, process, intelligence authorities, or regulatory machinery until something can be made to fit, all while the media creates the moral atmosphere in which the horrific lawfare is made to seem normal.

Russiagate industrialized that model but when I think about how we got there in the first place I often think of Assange. Great to see him back. Hopefully we can talk about these things one day.