Assange: Hillary Clinton Whipping Up 'Neo-McCarthyist Hysteria' To Suppress The 1st Amendment

Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, is accusing Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign of "trying to whip up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria" in an attempt to silence her political and media opposition. Assange made the accusation during his Thursday interview on The Sean Hannity Show.

In an earlier interview with The New York Times, Assange had accused the "American liberal press" of "erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins the election" by defending Clinton and failing to thoroughly cover the mountains of evidence of the Democratic nominee's corruption.

During Thursday's interview with Sean Hannity, Assange clarified his somewhat cryptic remark.

"The Democrats are always speaking about how terrible McCarthyism was, and it was in many ways," Assange told Hannity. "But at least the USSR actually existed then and there were actually Russian-influence campaigns which were serious. What we're seeing now is Hillary Clinton and her campaign trying to whip up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria."

Assange went on to say that Clinton's new McCarthyism is based around the spurious notion that her political opponents, both left and right, are all in league with Russia.

"She claims Donald Trump is effectively an agent of the Russians," Assange continued. "That WikiLeaks is an agent of the Russians. And where her campaign has also implied that Jill Stein, the Greens' leader, is a Russian agent. And the Intercept, which is an American publication, are effectively Russian agents."

In recent days, Democrats have indeed tried to paint Trump as a Russian sympathizer, if not an outright agent of Vladimir Putin. Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon has gone as far as to claim a "direct link" between Trump and the recent hacks of the DCCC and other high profile Democratic organizations.

One could be forgiven for seeing irony in Democrats' fear of a vast Russian conspiracy considering their chortling at Mitt Romney's 2012 insistence that Russia was the United States' chief geo-political threat.

Assange went on to explain that the Clinton campaign's end-game is a chilling of free speech and criticism should she ascend to the presidency.

"What kind of press climate is going to exist afterwards, especially if Hillary Clinton is elected?" Assange asked. "It will be perceived to be a validation of that hysteria, and so the press afterwards will be cracked down upon and online publishers and people on social media, you know, it will lead to a very harsh climate where the first amendment will be very significantly eroded."

Listen to Julian Assange claim that Hillary Clinton is whipping up "neo-McCarthyist" hysteria on The Sean Hannity Show:


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