Chelsea Manning Joins the Army—Of Whistleblowers

Considering the enormity of the truths that Chelsea Manning made accessible to us, it was somewhat disappointing how modest were the demonstrations in her support, in Europe as well as in the United States, though millions more were sympathetic who stayed at home. This was the case when she was being tortured in prison, and the protesters were not many more when she went to court to face her accusers. From the first, it was evident that her personal dignity was unshaken, her decisions were consistently sensible. All of this was extraordinary considering what she went through, which could have undermined, unbalanced, or at least demoralized most of us. An example of good decisions was her choice to plead guilty but to the “right” things—this seemed the best that could have been done—and the way she handled her coming out as a woman, especially the timing. We who admired her for what she had done despite what that would cause her to face, were won over to pride and love by the apparent equanimity with which she faced all her persecutors threw at her.

The support crowds were small because the movement itself has been flat for some time. This doesn’t mean that people are not struggling and organizing—we have to; survival often depends on it. It does mean that people are uncertain about facing up to the powers that be if not absolutely necessary for that survival. And if they do collectively protest, they are often nervous not of the result—you never know that until you confront—but of whether their initiative will become a battleground against the politically ambitious who may try to take over for their own purposes. We never know how much of those internal fights are promoted by the infiltrators that governments organize. (We in the U.K. are enjoying the spectacle of an ex-police agent speaking out about how it works and how much of it there is.) But there is enough political ambition native to the movement.

In fact, the movement’s relative quiescence has been the terrain challenging the whistleblowers. This quiescence is reflected in the absence of any organized opposition among elected officials generally, and in the absence of national media that can be relied on to tell even half of what they know (and not bother to dig too deep for the rest). Whereas journalists in some parts of the world risk their lives to tell our story, we see only the exceptional broadcaster and editor ready to risk career prospects in the “free West.” In this climate, whistleblowers are even more crucial to knowing what is really going on. The accountability to the public that individual whistleblowers have displayed is what we hope for in points of reference of social movements, which we have seen so little of.

The response of the establishment has been not only to persecute the truth-tellers, but to also misinterpret their motives, accuse them of immorality if at all possible, and take the public’s eye off what they have risked so much to reveal to us.

In the U.K., the first of the recent series of truth-tellers was Craig Murray, career diplomat. In 2002, while British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Murray began to send memos denouncing torture by the Karimov government. The U.K. ultimately responded by charging him with 18 accounts of misconduct, including “hiring dolly birds [pretty young women] for above the usual rate,” and removing him from his post in 2004. Fighting his case, after a near fatal pulmonary attack, he referred to himself as a “victim of conscience.” He was finally exonerated of all charges.

None of this seems to have thrown him off course. Murray has been a staunch supporter of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame, and has written brilliantly in Assange’s defense without a hint of self-referentialism. Assange was himself accused of rape under dubious circumstances. If the British government wanted to prosecute rapists, they have only to ask Women Against Rape for help, in some cases for names and addresses. But the purpose...