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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Julian Assange and the new McCarthyism
There are parallels between the red-baiting years of the 1950s and the treatment of the Wikileaks founder today, argues HELEN MERCER
A protester outside Belmarsh prison, where Julian Assange is being held

“IF WARS can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth”: Julian Assange, publisher.

Nearly 70 years ago, in 1951, the founder and director of International Publishers Ltd, Alexander Trachtenberg, was one of a group of communists arrested and indicted under the 1940 Alien Registration Act, known as the Smith Act. 

Indictments under this Act formed part of the general process known as McCarthyism which effectively succeeded in its aim of disarming and immobilising the CPUSA. 

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