I am dismayed to inform people that today, war was officially declared on open source journalism and various bloggers and vloggers across the internet. The warning that this was in the making was first explored when Alex Jones of Infowars was banned from various technical platforms online. There were others that had controversial views that were also banned or blocked.
After these first steps were made in controlling controversial speech, Julian Assange was arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act.
While many civil libertarians are alarmed at what his prosecution could signal for journalists, national security hawks have been saying Julian Assange got what he deserved. Despite Assange’s role in upending the 2016 election by publishing Democratic National Committee emails as well as longstanding conspiracy theory that he himself is a Kremlin asset, the grounds for his indictment by the U.S. government center on having “conspired” with whistleblower Chelsea Manning for hacking into a Pentagon computer in 2010, before publishing the findings via WikiLeaks.

Originally Broadcast On 6/5/2019