The Guardian is brutal on Julian Assange’s new talk show:

The most insidious aspect of Assange’s show is not what is in it, but what isn’t. Russia Today – now styled RT – is state-owned and Kremlin-controlled. It is remarkable for how little reporting it devotes to what is going on inside Russia today. There is no mention, for example, of top-level corruption, Vladimir Putin’s alleged secret fortune – referenced in US embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks – or the brutal behaviour of Russian security forces and their local proxies in the north Caucasus.

Instead, the channel offers a shiny updated version of Soviet propaganda. The west, and America in particular, is depicted as crime-ridden, failing, and in thrall to big business and evil elites. RT’s favourite theme is western hypocrisy: “How dare you criticise us when you do the same?” The English-language channel portrays itself as “anti-mainstream”. In reality it reflects Putin’s own conspiratorial, touchy and xenophobic world-view while staying mute about Russia’s own failings. [...]

US cables released by WikiLeaks in December 2010 paint a dismal picture of Putin’s Russia as a “virtual mafia state”. Has Assange read them? It seems extraordinary that Assange – described by RT as the world’s most famous whistleblower – should team up with an opaque regime where investigative journalists are shot dead (16 unsolved murders) and human rights activists kidnapped and executed, especially in Chechnya and other southern Muslim republics. Strange and obscene.

This really is just about the final nail in the coffin. Assange is a self-styled opponent of empire and hegemony, and oppressive government, who sees no problem going into business with one of the most anti-democratic regimes going. But he’s got a public profile to keep up, for pete’s sake!

Admittedly, I find it tedious when people turn themselves into one-man crusades against censorship. Jello Biafra never cut a good record after he became obsessed with fighting free speech battles, to name an example. After a certain point, it gets impossible to tell where the serious concern about issues ends, and where the martyrdom and self-aggrandizement begins. To be fair, Assange had to negotiate forces much more powerful than the former Dead Kennedys frontman ever did. But while there might initially have been some tinge of idealism in what he did, I don’t think the endpoints were that different. In any event, it seems clear at this point that Assange’s anarchist tendencies were just posturing.