Chris Gardiner, The Australian as Fellow Traveller, and finding a use for useless idiots ...

Quick, someone give Chris Mitchell a call, and let him know that The Australian has become a fellow traveller.

Usually we like to call it lick spittle fellow travelling - can't get enough of that cold war paranoia and name-calling - but there it was in print, this Tuesday morning, as The Australian's editorialist preened and posed and sounded as pleased as punch in Why WikiLeaks needs a filter.

The one line summary for those too tired to tread through the murky prose?

If the WikiLeaks saga proves anything, it is that the world still needs so-called "old media".

Now read on:

The 250,000 documents would have excited attention if they had just been dumped on the WikiLeaks site, but they may not have made much sense. It is their publication in newspapers that has turned the US cables into the media sensation of the year, probably of the decade. Julian Assange is many things, but he is not a fool and the WikiLeaks founder understands the need to involve mainstream journalists in order to extract value from the volume.

Yes, extract the value, as if WikiLeaks is a private equity partner or perhaps a great goldmine, but you need an experienced prospector to track through the quartz to the seam of sparkling gold (no iron pyrites for the mob at the lizard Oz).

Beware of false and phoney prospectors, like the wretched Paul Sheehan or the mob of chooks at Fairfax:

The amount of material has made filtering tricky, even for journalists. We would have loved the leaks given to Fairfax papers, but we note the problems they have had sieving wheat from chaff.

Oh those dumb Fairfax chooks, can't peck out the wheat, and most likely have no idea of the difference between a hawk and a handsaw.

Indeed, there seems to be a cargo-cult mentality at those papers, with editors happy on occasion to publish material that may not have got such extensive treatment in another situation. Still, Assange could not have done it alone, no matter how widely he is seen as the new messiah of investigative journalism.

No, indeed, Assange couldn't have done it alone. Each day he must bow down to his portable altar and thank the western media for its help, especially the invaluable help offered by the extremely insightful minions working for Murdoch. I don't think it's an understatement to say the wretched hippie owes it all to investigative journalists of the old school, clucking happily as they dig through the rich, worm-laden soil.

Ah, but there's the tragedy.

That's what makes them filthy, perverted, lickspittle fellow travellers, the most dangerous of the most dangerous, or so I'm told in the punch-drunk Punch, as Chris Gardiner revives fond memories of J. Edgar (where's my frock, dammit) Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy in WikiLeaks heralds the birth of Fellow Travellers 2.0:

If you are sympathetic to work of Julian Assange, stop and think: am I at risk of becoming a Fellow Traveller?

I do so love the caps. It's important for young folk to remember that if you're going to be a fellow traveller, it's most important to be a Fellow Traveller.

Yes, out of their own mouths, proud, and boastful and preening, the minions of Murdoch are exposed as Fellow Travellers. And as a result, they're busily engaged in bringing down western civilisation as we know it:

The issue with WikiLeaks and the Fellow Travellers being invited onto his information superhighway is the harm they will do to the political good guys in our world and the benefit they will provide to the bad guys.

Yes, exactly, it's all these bloody western journalists, out there prancing gleefully on the superhighway, doing damage to the body politic.

What we need is a return to the good old days of the D Notice, so all this information and the insights it offers can be banned from newspapers only too pleased to revel in the farmyard muck.

Otherwise the consequences will be dire:

WikiLeaks sees the birth of the Fellow Traveller 2.0. The enemy is once again the US, its allies, and their systems of democracy and economics.

Once again, intentions matter naught. What matters is that it is the US and its international leadership and diplomacy that is the lone target of the idealists, and that it is a coterie of undemocratic states who benefit.

Uh huh, that will be a relief to Australian politicians, paranoid enough to imagine they might be taking collateral damage. The lone target of the idealists is the United States! Who'd have thunk it, seeing as how the minions of Murdoch work for a citizen of the said States, but there you go, you only have to look under a rock to find a Fellow Traveller worthy of a Senate enquiry and perhaps a black ban ...

Now some may object that WikiLeaks has started with the US, but is committed to transparency and challenging the State across political and ideological boundaries.

But the problem will be the same as during the Cold War – who will risk leaking the kind of material that can be leaked in the West, in countries like China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, or in non-government organisations like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, when the result is not the loss of your job, some bad publicity, or at worst, a jail term for breaching State secrets, but the loss of your life?

Yes, and so we must immediately begin the work of naming and shaming these quislings, preferably by becoming as much like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as possible, and wherever possible act like terrorists to instil fear and loathing, using bombs if our hysterical rhetoric isn't up to the job ...

I propose immediate internment for boastful Murdoch journalists, shameless in the way they've enhanced the impact of WikiLeaks with their intrepid work. We should be able to get the Woomera IRPC dressed up in a flash, and after a series of show trials, the wretches can be incarcerated, or if they repent, perhaps they can be offered jobs as street sweepers - provided they sign an affidavit declaring they'll never go online again, and will limit themselves to reading the offline thoughts of 1.0 Fellow Travellers.

Let's face it, the whole dang lot are as useful as a bunch of howling alley cats.

The issue with WikiLeaks is not whether or not Assange has the personal morals of an alley cat. As someone who hacked under the nom-de-hack of Mendax – “nobly untruthful” – it’s not even his confused ethics.

Indeed. Thankfully, there's no confusion in Chris Gardiner, as he issues a clarion call to the young, explaining the concept of Fellow Travellers, and what a useful way it is to approach WikiLeaks and quisling "useful fools".

As early 20th Century Marxist Trotsky wrote of the Fellow Traveller, the question is sometimes asked “how far will he go”. But as Trotsky observed, the real issue is less his personality than the objective impact and trend of his actions.

Sssh, whatever you do, don't ask the other question: how far will modern day hysterics go in their pursuit of Reds under the Bed, now it seems, without benefit of sanitary pads turned into Leaks under the bed? What we must now do is observe the objective impact and trend of actions of The Australian's Fellow Travelling ...

Yep, they're ruined everything. Enough said. It's time to act.

Surely the period of McCarthyism was one of the finest moments in American history, and the sooner we re-introduce the capacity to demonise and humiliate people on the basis of their activities, the sooner we'll all be safe.

If you have a quixotic view of the world and are thinking of coming alongside Assange in his fight against the US and what you see as its corporate proxies, think again – there are countries and malevolent causes looking for useful idiots.

Indeed. Useful idiots are everywhere, but you know, sadly I simply can't find a use for Chris Gardiner.

I guess some idiots aren't particularly useful ...

Unless of course he's proposing to shut down the vainglorious Australian, and other venues that have published stories arising from WikiLeaks - including The Punch of course - and stand guard over the deviants locked up at Woomera. That would indeed be useful work for a useful idiot ...

Meanwhile, what a pity that Gardiner had neither the wit nor grace to acknowledge his source for the Term Fellow Traveller, as expertly defined by J. Edgar (no not that frock, I want a frock with style) Hoover in his seminal 1958 work Masters of Deceit as he explained the five classes involved in the overthrow of the United States:

1. The card-carrying Communist, one who openly admits membership in the Communist party
2. The underground Communist, one who hides his Communist party membership
3. The Communist sympathizer, a potential Communist because of holding Communist views
4. The fellow traveller, someone not a potential Communist but nevertheless who may hold views shared by Communists
5. The dupe, a person who is obviously not a Communist or a potential Communist but whose views may coincide with some of the American Communists. Examples are a prominent religious leader who opposed increased military expenditures and war, or a prominent jurist who opposed red-baiting tactics on civil liberty grounds

At least we now know that The Australian is run by lick spittle Fellow Travellers and Dupes ... as bad as a bunch of churchies or prominent jurists getting upset about red-baiting. The nerve of these quisling hippie churchie intellectuals ...

(Below: women of Australia, beware, whatever you do, don't fall in love with a commie spy, a Wikileaks nerd, or a Fellow Travelling Australian journalist. They never come to their senses. Instead of a useful fool, why not marry a useless fool instead, there generally being only two categories of men?)