This One Isn't Very Funny

Are we entering a new era of totalitarianism? A history of the Espionage Act, and why people who favor civil liberty should oppose it.

This one might not be very funny, because quite frankly I’m having a difficult time finding the humor in it.

Rand Paul, congressman from Kentucky, is getting dragged through the mud on twitter right now. Now, I don’t much care about someone dragging a politician through mud, but the reason why doesn’t make any sense. They’ve even pulled McCain out of his grave to call him an agent of Putin. Why you ask? Rand Paul wants to repeal the Espionage Act, and it’s an inconvenient time for him to raise his objection to the act. The Espionage Act was used in the recent search of former President Trumps Mar-a-Lago, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. We’re here to talk about the Act itself.

So, what even is the Espionage Act? The short answer: it’s political expediency. For the longer answer, well we need to go back to 1915, before the act was even signed.

We will start in particular with two speeches by Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Espionage Act. On December 7th, 1915 Wilson gave a state of the union address in which he pleaded:

”There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue ... I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with.”

As you can see, it was immigrants, who at the time were referred to as “hyphenated Americans,” that this act was initially aimed at. We see this again when Wilson says the following in another speech given during his presidency:

"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

It would take two years before the act was ready to sign; going through revisions, some of which included harsher censorship, that was later removed. Before signing, though, Woodrow Wilson was quoted as saying:

"Authority to exercise censorship over the press....is absolutely necessary to the public safety"

With the passing of the act in 1917, post masters were allowed to report suspicious materials. These suspicious materials were defined as “written materials urging treason.” This was used against Charles T. Schenck, a socialist, in Schenck v. United States to charge him with actions that “obstructed the recruiting or enlistment of service men” during World War 1. What was Schenck’s crime? Distributing leaflets and literature advocating that the draft was a form of involuntary servitude. This also led to the act being expanded, and in 1918 the Sedition Act was born, which added defining terms to include “speech critical of the war." Three years later, the Sedition Act itself would be repealed. Yet the Espionage Act still remained.

The Espionage Act would be used more throughout the years. In 1919, Frohwerk V. United States, in which Frohwerk wrote dissenting editorials about the US’s involvement in World War 1. Then again during the 40s and 50s, to root out communist influences during the Red Scare. Senator Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover would use the Espionage Act to suppress the opinions of their political opponents.

This leads us to the 21st century, which has seen an expansion of the use of the Espionage Act, particularly concerning whistleblowers. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning were all prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Julian Assange’s case is particularly interesting, especially when considering how his indictment could be used against the modern press.

• Julian Assange being arrested in London at the Ecuadorian embassy, at least let him take his skateboard

In May 23, 2019, a federal grand jury from Virginia issued an indictment against Julian Assange, the co-founder of Wikileaks, with 17 counts of violation of the Espionage act. The beginning reads:

This is, EXACTLY what reporters for places such as the New York Times or Washington Post etc. ask their sources to do. If you go to their website, they will have a page for confidential tips, as well as provide you with advice on how you may disseminate that information. Of course, I’m not against them doing that; quite the contrary, its something I highly approve of. After all, a free press is counter productive to authoritarian regimes. Yet, it makes me wonder why the government is now so gung-ho about using the Espionage Act to silence those they disapprove of and why the corporate media is anti-Assange?

It seems to me we are entering a new McCarthyism like era, where “Communist” has been replaced with “Russian agent”, and your only loyalty lies to the party.

Ironic really, and that’s the joke.