Personal and group-analytic reflections on Julian Assange’s court ruling

In 1962, Bob Dylan wrote a telling and powerful piece of lyric that still resonates today:

“… how many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”.

Blowing the whistle can be an act of humanity: letting the group (and ultimately society) know about misconduct and wrongdoing, so it can protect itself and ask for answers. But it can also be a dangerous and risky activity for the whistle-blowers, as they frequently become scapegoats who have to be punished, tormented or crucified to set an example – to teach a lesson to others, to the group.

Indeed, scapegoating is a basic concept in group-analytic theory and one of most common psychological defence mechanisms employed by groups – including governments, organizations and institutions.

More often than not, the consequences of blowing the whistle are dramatic. About 80% of whistle-blowers report very negative effects on work and wages, and nearly half report very negative effects on family life. In terms of their well-being, about 45% of them suffer from significant mental health problems such as refractory anxiety and depression, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The prevalence of these problems among whistle-blowers is about six times higher than in the average population. And the problems are sometimes comparable with the psychiatric illnesses presented by people affected by a major disaster, regarding severity and chronicity of clinical symptoms.

Looking back, it is important to remember that support for the Vietnam War began to crumble when ordinary citizens saw footage of screaming children with their clothes burned away by napalm, or became aware of the mass slaughter conducted by US forces in the My Lai massacre.

Learning from that, the argument for revealing the truth about how wars are conducted must be loud enough, without having to fear retaliation for exposing the existence of brutal atrocities. No military machine, not even the USA’s, should be allowed to operate with impunity. Innocent civilians should not be killed, neither deliberately nor as collateral damage.

How is it possible that civilian deaths from airstrikes in Afghanistan increased by more than 300% in four years under Donald Trump? Is it true that he upped the drone strikes and revoked a policy to publish the number of civilians killed by such an abhorrent method outside of war zones?

As a psychiatrist and group analyst, I welcome the decision of British judge Vanessa Baraitser that the extradition of Julian Assange to the USA to face charges of “espionage and hacking” shall not be granted, on mental health grounds. The legal basis of the judgment is that extradition would be “oppressive” by reason of mental harm. (Assange has a chronic depressive and anxiety disorder and he is a suicide risk, after many years of physical and mental oppression).

Despite the compassionate nature of this recent court ruling, I must add that I have been left with two serious concerns:

First, and strikingly, the judge considered that extradition would mean that Assange would likely be jailed in a super-maximum security prison, where procedures would not prevent him from finding a way to commit suicide. The ruling implies that the US prison system would not guarantee the safety of someone who exposed some atrocities committed by the world’s mightiest military superpower.

Second, as a mental health professional, I am also worried by a further subtle implication of the verdict that, in order to be protected as a whistle-blower, you must first suffer mental harm.

I can recall that, just over a decade ago, Chelsea Manning downloaded a video of a US aircrew laughing after they had killed twelve innocent people, including two Iraqi Reuters journalists. The aircrew dishonestly claimed to have encountered a firefight …

Manning had first approached US newspapers with the information but to no avail, so subsequently went to WikiLeaks which published the material on a website entitled Collateral Murder. Without the video we would not have known the truth. Other files showed how hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan had been killed by US-led forces. The lives of these people were not judged worthy of being covered by most media outlets.

In that kind of circumstances, whistle-blowers play a key and indispensable role in society. It can only be fair-minded to give them adequate support rather than persecution. They should not be scapegoated for revealing misconduct and murder, while society benefits from the information they have provided.

Reference

Dylan B (1962) Blowin’ in the wind. Available at Bob Dylan – Blowin’ In The Wind Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Arturo Ezquerro
Consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy and group analyst. He is honorary member of the International Attachment Network and of the World Association of International Studies.
arturo.ezquerro@ntlworld.com