 Netflix to launch WikiLeaks smear job three days before Assange court date. Netflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange's fight against extradition to the United States on October 27th. You can stream We Steal Secrets, the story of WikiLeaks on Netflix starting Sunday, October 24th, 2021, at 12 a.m. Pacific Time, 3 a.m. Eastern Time, Netflix's schedule reports. We Steal Secrets was a documentary that is now so outdated beyond its 2013 release that one of its central characters, Chelsea Manning, is referred to by a dead name throughout its entirety. Why choose this specific moment to release it? Well, it doesn't make much sense at all if the timing wasn't deliberately geared toward damaging Assange's reputation in the nation whose government is trying to extradite him for exposing its war crimes. Assange's October court date was set way back in August, and Netflix didn't announce its plans to begin streaming this film until two weeks ago. After all, We Steal Secrets was so egregious in its spin that not only did WikiLeaks supporters like World Socialist Website and journalist Jonathan Cook pan it as a smear at the time, but WikiLeaks itself went to the trouble of publishing a line-by-line refutation of the Mountains of Propaganda distortion heaped on the narrative by filmmaker Alex Gibney. The title, We Steal Secrets, the story of WikiLeaks is false, WikiLeaks writes at the beginning of its response. It directly implies that WikiLeaks steals secrets. In fact, the statement is made by former CIA NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of U.S. government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks. This is irresponsible libel. Not even critics in the film say that WikiLeaks steals secrets. Gibney's latest release, We Steal Secrets, the story of WikiLeaks is just something else again, World Socialist Website wrote in 2013. The 130-minute feature is a political hatchet job against Julian Assange and dovetails with the media and U.S. government campaign against WikiLeaks' website. Whether Gibney has shifted to the right or simply revealed the fatal limitations of his liberal oppositional views is a matter for a separate discussion. In any event, his newest work is an effort at disinformation. The job of a good documentarist is to weigh the available material and then present as honest a record of what it reveals as possible. Anything less is at best polemic if it sides with those who are silenced and weak and at worst propaganda if it sides with those who wield power, critiqued Jonathan Cook at the time. This would not be the first time Netflix has helped circulate narratives that advance the interests of the U.S. empire, or the second, or the third, having already run blatantly propagandistic documentaries advancing imperial interests in nations like Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, and multiple ones about Syria. Netflix has also signed deals with the Obamas and with British royalty. So they're not exactly looking out for the little guy, which from a company worth an estimated $229 billion should come as no surprise. Still, such open facilitation of the world's most powerful government in its campaign to imprison a journalist for inconvenient journalistic activity is a special kind of reprehensible.