You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 75: Gabriel Shipton - Assange & Fighting for Freedom

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

My guest today is Gabriel Shipton, an Australian filmmaker and the half-brother of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. Gabriel has been a tireless advocate for his brother's release and a powerful voice for press freedom, free speech, and the right to dissent. From the Ecuadorian embassy to a maximum-security prison, Julian's 14-year ordeal became a global symbol for the criminalization of truth-telling. While his release was a major milestone, Gabriel warns that the fight is far from over, while reflecting on the emotional toll of Julian’s imprisonment and the bittersweet terms of his release, which involved pleading guilty to the very act of journalism. We explore the dangerous precedent this sets for free press worldwide and the need to secure a full pardon. We also dive into Gabriel’s connection to the Bitcoin community, a movement that stood firmly behind Julian, both financially and ideologically, and stress decentralized platforms such as Bitcoin & Nostr as freedom enablers.► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS --►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn ►► Join me on June 19-21 at BTC Prague! Code EFRAT = 10% discount: https://pages.btcprague.com/ambassador-efrat-fenigson -- SPECIAL OFFERS –►► Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat ►► Enjoy the Little HODLer products, learn about sound money while having fun! use code EFRAT for 10% off on non-sale items: https://thelittlehodler.com/ ►► 10% off on all books & accessories at the “Bitcoin Infinity Store” - use code EFRAT►► Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Gabriel’s Twitter: https://x.com/GabrielShipton Gabriel’s npub: npub1dcgppk89h9flnffrznvhhj2vt9a0ym23ht5gk07l9j8m6l5k95qsze06js Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Telegram: https://t.me/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –0:00 Coming Up…1:05 Intro to Gabriel Shipton2:20 Stella Assange & Westminster Declaration [& Censorship]5:00 Julian Assange’s Release and Ongoing Legal Battle7:30 The Fight for a Pardon, Trump’s Role & Political Shifts in Julian’s Case12:20 USAID Exposé, Deep State, NGOs Funding & Journalistic Integrity16:17 When Was Gabriel’s Introduction to Bitcoin?18:00 Political Power of Bitcoiners and Their Ethos20:30 Navigating Between Political Engagement and Technological Freedom22:30 Gabriel’s Mission and Projects of Media and Speech24:30 Freedom of Speech as a Human Right28:00 The Power of Decentralized Protocols, inc. Nostr30:30 Julian’s Homecoming & Public Support32:45 Gabriel’s Words of Hope

What Julian had to do to secure his freedom was plead guilty to journalism, to investigative journalism, and he was convicted and was given a sentence, and the sentence was time served, but it's still five years in prison for publishing truthful information. Free speech is not something that is given to us by a government. It's something that we all have, that we are all born with as human beings. We can say what we want, we can think what we want. It is part of our humanity and when we start to say, well, you can't say this or you can't say that, you're actually depriving each other of our humanity.

If you have a protocol where you can essentially say what you want and you can't be deplatformed or silenced and you own your identity there and no one else can switch off your account because you own the account, that is one massive power. hello and welcome to another episode of you are the voice i'm flat here in sydney australia at bitcoin live and i have the great pleasure of sitting here with gabriel shipton hey gabriel hey thanks for hanging out with me no it's good to be with you we met in el salvador a month ago or so i think yeah that's right it's like the other side of the world and now we're here and it's like yeah we sat together at dinner and i'm like uh can we talk in mo in sydney and you said yes so i'm just really grateful for the fact that we can fly around and be in all these places and conferences and meet like amazing people yeah it's good isn't it there's bitcoin

is everywhere i mean it's so good so for those of you who don't know gabriel and gabriel is an australian movie maker and a half brother of julian assange um which is the wiki leaks founder um i'm sure you know julian and and gabriel and your father right you often advocate for um julian's release and which is now successful which is so amazing you know i think many of us were not sure whether that's going to happen so that's amazing i have met stella in amsterdam about a year and a half ago at Bitcoin Amsterdam. And we didn't have a chance to do an interview together yet. But right after we met, she signed me up on the Westminster Declaration

because I'm a journalist as well, independent journalist. And I spoke out when October 7th happened and spoke about the fact that it must have been a false flag because there were too many things that didn't add up. And I was heavily silenced by, you know, people, mostly people in Israel, but also Jewish people around the world and called names and, you know, the whole, the whole classic treatment that you give someone who steps out of line. And so I guess she saw that and she was like, I want to sign you up on that declaration

as well, which for those of you who don't know, it's on my blog. There was a declaration by, I don't remember how many, but many, more than a hundred, I I think, independent journalists and scientists and doctors and many different people who were silenced in the last few years. And that declaration was supposed to be like a free speech declaration. We stand for free speech no matter what. And it's a whole long article, which is, I mean, it was so nice that so nice and so important that they did that.

And I was honored to be there, one of those people that signed this declaration, because obviously I did not go through anything like what Julian went through. But, you know, I've decided to put my convenient life on the line when I decided to speak out when it started with COVID and then later on expanded to other topics. But I'm a dissident voice to the government and especially in Israel with a war right now. It's not easy, you know. And you've got to be very careful with what you do because you could end up in jail if you say the wrong thing or do something that they don't like. So I was following closely what Stella is doing, what you guys were doing and what Julian is doing, because I think we are in jeopardy right now with freedom of speech and for journalists specifically around the world where Julian's case is so important. He has been released, which is amazing, but he hasn't been pardoned. And so they still have him as guilty for the crimes that...

Of telling the truth. Of telling the truth and doing his journalistic work. So let's start with that. How do you see the result of what has happened? Obviously, we're all super excited that he's back. But how do you and him and the family see the result? Well, Julian was in jail for a very long time, five years in a maximum security prison and then seven years before that in the Ecuadorian embassy in central London. uh so his his persecution has been going on for 14 went on for over 14 years for publishing

uh truthful information about about um u.s wars abroad in iraq afghanistan but also um you know a vast trove of uh diplomatic cables all all uh you know original source material from within the u.s government that was leaked to him uh so i think for julian it's very positive that he can be free again can uh you know have a semi-normal life uh do normal things that we take for granted yeah um you know he's now just in the bush in the australian wilderness and connecting with nature, which I think is having a really healing effect on me. Amazing. Yeah, after being in jail for that long.

So there's that aspect, his freedom, which is absolutely incredible for us, for our family, but the trade-off, what Julian had to do to secure his freedom was plead guilty to journalism, to investigative journalism. and he was convicted and was given a sentence and the sentence was time served but it's still five years in prison for publishing truthful information. And so now there is a prosecutorial pathway in the United States where a prosecutor and the FBI can investigate journalists and publishers

and potentially look at getting a five-year prison sentence if they publish something that embarrasses them or publishes evidence of a crime or something like that. So there is this precedent that has been sent that is very worrying. And you've had figures come out from Human Rights Watch, these big human rights organizations, Committee to Protect Journalists, who have said just that, that this is concerning for journalists and for publishers everywhere.

Even Stella herself said it as he was released. I remember that night where everyone was watching him being released. She said, she spoke out after, I think, the lawyer and said, guys, this is not over. Like, this is still dangerous and we need to ask for pardon. That needs to be the next frontier of the battle. Yes, that's what we're doing now is advocating for a pardon for Julian with the Trump administration. And she said, because it's for all of you. it's about freedom of speech

and freedom of journalism we'll give Julian some more freedom to work into the future but it's about unwinding this horrible precedent and making sure that everybody who pursued Julian knows that if you do do this

we're just going to undo it all so don't waste your time trying to go after people who publish information about your crimes and I think with the Trump administration I think we're seeing a lot of These figures who were involved in Julian's persecution over the years, people like Mike Pompeo, who had in the lead up during the Trump campaign, Trump came out and said, well, I'm not going to give him a position because he wanted to be Secretary of Defense.

And, you know, it was very clear at that point that there is a shift within the Trump administration away from that first term that he had because the prosecution actually originated under President Trump. Jeff Sessions, as Attorney General, was the one who pushed forward with the indictment against Julian. And Mike Pompeo, in 2017, he declared war on Julian. And his first speech as CIA director came out and said, I'm going to go after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and we're going to make it our number one priority to destroy them. And that's when things got really bad for Julian and eventually ended up with his time in prison. But now people like Mike Pompeo have just had his security detail withdrawn from him by President Trump. Isn't that unreal, what's happening? Yeah, well, and so it's these people who pursue Julian are now on the, you know, sort of political garbage heap in a sense. So I think that's very encouraging for, you know, for Julian and for the potential for a pardon for Julian, that these characters are no longer in that circle. And then they've been replaced by people like Tulsi Gabbard, who was an amazing advocate for Julian when she was in the Congress.

And RFK Jr., which I know was also speaking in favor of Julian. Yeah, so these voices around President Trump now outweigh the, I guess, old deep state influence that was there in the previous administration. So we're hopeful that, I guess, you know, I guess Trump could choose a moment where he needs a distraction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he'd pull that card. Yeah, pull out a pardon for Julian and everyone will look another way. Go, oh, Trump, great, Trump again. Yeah, you may do that. It's a political move for him.

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with 200-plus speakers on four stages, 100 Bitcoin companies presenting at the expo and 10,000 like-minded Bitcoiners and freedom lovers from all around the world. There's a great emphasis this year on the freedom movement. So if you're a freedom maxi like me, you don't want to miss this event. I'm excited to attend once again as a speaker and to interview the best and brightest for my podcast.

In fact, BTC Prague is where I conducted my epic interview with Michael Saylor. The event runs for three days with a developer's day, pitching contest, panels, presentations, and parties. ticket prices increase on the first of each month so make sure to get your ticket now use my code flat for a 10 discount and see you in prague what do you make of the usa dismantling that we're seeing these days yeah it's incredible yeah i think it's incredible uh for a long time um uh we've known that it is an arm of the cia essentially that they're working hand in glove uh in their information campaigns and yeah it's incredible that uh

that you know that was all exposed yeah they've been exposed and um i mean some of the stuff coming out about how they were just trying to ship billions of dollars out in the final days It's incredible. It's incredible to, you know, sending billions of dollars to NGOs who don't even have a plan because they just wanted to ship the money out. It's absolutely incredible. But I think, you know, you can trace for a long time, there were these laws in the United States where the CIA's influence campaigns couldn't be pushed back onto the United States. So their influence campaigns would take place overseas, but there was laws preventing that coming back into the United States. So I think what's happened is there's been an overreach where these influence campaigns have started to come back and influence domestic politics. And that's why the administration has gone so hard on winding it down, because they've seen that influence, that taxpayer money goes out to influence politics back in the United States. Yeah, we also traced back, sorry that I'm bringing it back to my angle every time, but this is relevant. We saw that some of that money went also to Israeli NGOs in order to try and destabilize the administration in Israel as well. So like left-wing, like democratic money is coming into the left-wing side of Israel, the movement to try and bring Benjamin Netanyahu out, don't get me wrong, I don't like Netanyahu at all, and I'm happy for him to be out, but definitely that kind of intervention in the local politics.

Yes, a foreign influence campaigns all around the world. And I think what I find, well, you know, I shouldn't say amusing, but I find it interesting is that a lot of these organizations are coming out and saying this defunding of journalism around the world, you're defunding independent journalists. And you're like scratching your head. Hang on, are you an independent journalist if you're funded by the U.S. government?

Exactly. Exactly. And it doesn't matter how many links you have till you get to the government in the end. The fact is that that money arrived from the government to begin with. So, yeah, no one is trailing the money. They don't care. They're like, oh, I got some donation from so-and-so in the U.S., the Jewish organization. But where did they get the money and where did they get the money? Like, you don't care really where that money is coming from and how it's colored. And so I think that that's like people and that's a question of integrity, because so many people have just lost integrity completely. And as we know, speaking here at a Bitcoin conference and talking about the corruption of the fiat monetary system, that is part of the corruption where fiat is just dictating such a life where people don't care anymore, where their funding is coming from.

and everything is like kosher, right? We can use any type of money as long as it serves our ideology or purpose. Yeah, and the fiat money system enables all of this. You know, they wouldn't be able to fund it if they couldn't print their own money. Exactly. So they just print their own money

and they distribute it around the world and to do these influence campaigns. So it is a, I think, yeah, they go together, hand in hand. Yeah. what about your own journey into this space into bitcoin how did that happen through wikileaks as well through well when i joined yeah when i joined uh the campaign to free julian in 2019 we were trying to really build constituencies for julian um build constituencies of support

for julian yes and the bitcoin community uh was one that had a deep connection to julian and wikileaks and so i started advocating with them uh going to conferences speaking at conferences telling julian's story uh to people encouraging people to um you know donate to the campaign as well as take action and what did you find about this community yeah look it's um it's They're very powerful. It's a very powerful community. And I'd go to these conferences and talk at conferences, but also when we're advocating at the top levels of government,

like we did as well, we'd always come across Bitcoiners. People, they weren't necessarily loud and proud, but they would be there behind the scenes and they would be supportive of what we were doing to free Julian. so uh they were very encouraging but also a very powerful uh powerful community a lot of them i think sometimes we had challenges uh i think uh there was there was a period not so much now when bitcoiners thought uh that using bitcoin was all they had to do uh to sort of to uh check out And, you know, I've done my effort, you know, I'm using Bitcoin and that's my revolutionary act and it ends there.

And what I think now and I've seen now and I spoke a little bit about today was the sort of coming of age of Bitcoiners. They've realized their political power and the influence that they can have in the political landscape to achieve their goals. It's not influence for influence sake, it's influence to achieve the underlying ideology and goals of, you know, what Bitcoin means as freedom of speech money, as, you know, as deconstructing that fiat system. you know the decentralizing money for everyone uh that there needs to be a political element to achieve that now that's an interesting point because you know how bitcoiners come from at least the ethos is coming from a place where you want to you want to separate money and state and you want to you don't want to take part so much in the political sphere because you don't believe that that's a solution to our problems today. And the solutions lie in other decentralized

systems. And so the tides are turning these days. And as you said, you do see, you actually see the results of the political influence that the Bitcoin community can have in some place around the world. And then you start asking yourself, okay, so should I not leverage that power? Should i not make use of it but there's like this dissonance between the ethos and and what's happening now and so i totally understand bitcoiners who are on the one hand hopeful and want politics to help their their higher cause and on the other hand i also understand the other ones who say you know fuck governments fuck fuck politicians they're not the ones that are going and bring the answer and want to stay away from this but in the end of the day what's happening

is inevitable and as we know you cannot stop bitcoin you cannot not let someone participate in the game anyone can take part so it's happening whether we like it or not so where do you stand there in that in that scale right in that spectrum of uh views uh i think i you know in between when one leg in each can yeah you got to go back to the technology though right like that's that's the basis if if the technology is bad and then there's not the political possibility doesn't really exist yeah and so that underlying uh the big you know the bitcoin technology is the most important uh thing and then that is a stepping stone into the political arena and i think there's that feedback loop that you know it's not just it's not just political influence but actually

bitcoin is is affecting the state and and changing the state and changing the nature yeah of of of the state and i think that's what all bitcoiners want it yeah that's what all bitcoiners want and then so it's just building that bridge yeah uh to be able to to make that eventual outcome happen because the state always you know there's always going to be police and And, you know, the state will always have the monopoly on violence. But Bitcoin can have, I think, a positive effect on the nature of states and particularly the nature of money. And it's a transitory phase, I think, now, what we're going through now. So it's going to be super interesting to see what unfolds in the next few years with that.

okay and I know we don't have a lot of time because you have to run to the airport soon so I want to ask you about what inspires you and why I mean I asked you just as we were walking in

what kind of projects you're working on with the movies I don't know if that's part of your inspiration and what drives you yeah uh Well, I guess, you know, we were sort of on this life's journey, right? Like, and the work that we do, you know, you always want to make a difference and you want to have an impact with the work that you do.

And I think that I find that that's what I always aim to do is to make some sort of difference, have some sort of impact. and particularly around media freedom, press freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of information. I think those areas are what I think are incredibly important to our societies, the ability for us to educate ourselves, to have access to any and all information that's out there. I think that's for us to be able to make better decisions and better ourselves and better our societies I think that's really important so a lot of my work

now with filmmaking is focused on those areas as well so a lot about media a lot about journalism activism as well and what inspires people to take action I find that really interesting that is super interesting as well yeah I've been in the streets for like two or three years and I found it fascinating to see what's what's happening to me when I decided to finally go out and be consistent in going out and yelling at people with a megaphone you know it's like it's really interesting to understand the psyche behind that and um so this is super cool and you were talking about you being a freedom maximalist like in terms of freedom of speech when you were just talking now on stage you know you prefer you have

that view of let just speech be there and be said and be expressed and don't try to to silence it because that's unnatural and i prefer to have that and then to have debate or speech over that like good debate between people rather than trying to silence things i'm on your side but that is a i mean today it's considered a pretty radical view i mean it may have been like that for centuries already where we were always censored and propagandized in order to be in that safe zone but I agree with you and as much as it's hard because there is a lot of speech that is now being labeled as illegal or harmful and all that stuff I much prefer to let people speak because if you don't you are killing you're shooting yourself in the foot you are limiting

your own freedom before you know it it comes to a subject or a topic that you care about and you can't speak about that either so yeah and you're depriving i think you we deprive ourselves of our humanity free uh free speech is not something that is given to us by a government it's something that we all have that we are all born with as human beings yes uh we have we can say what we want we can think what we want um you know it's it is part of our humanity and when we start to say well you you can't say this or you can't say that you're actually depriving each other of our humanity and depriving ourselves of the opportunity to change someone's mind if we don't know what they're really thinking if we can't actually unearth some of these ideas how can

How can we evolve or go after them or say that these ideas are actually bad if we don't know that they exist? So I think countering with more speech, not less, is the right way to go. I really like the American idea where these are natural rights that we are born with. um they're not given to us by a state or or anything like that they're our natural rights that we're born that we're born with and um they're not given to us by a piece of paper or or anything like that they're just part of our humanity that's why i call this podcast you're the voice because i want to remind people they have a voice and that it matters

because we're yeah we're we just forget and that's why i decided that i do what i do because i want to inspire people to do that but and then free speech i think you know if you're on the moon and you have free speech it doesn't it doesn't really matter um so that's one aspect but freedom to communicate i think is even more important right and not being censored and deplatformed from an internet-based culture where we live in today and you were mentioning noster as one of those protocols that we can use to not be censored with our content and our speech. And I'm there too. And yes, it is mostly early adopters right now, because we are early. But that is, I think, the future of communications and communication protocols and speech. If you

have a protocol where you can essentially say what you want and you're not technically you can't be deplatformed or silenced and you own your identity there and no one else can switch off your account because you own the account that is one massive power yeah and i think that's the future of these social media platforms or protocols is uh things like nosta things like bitcoin that that cannot be stopped that cannot be switched off once they will attract these developers i think they'll attract the brightest minds because there is no you know feudal overlord who is going to introduce some unfair tax on you or kick you off your land uh it will attract these people who know uh that there are no regulations that they

can uh put all their energy into it and and keep the result of that energy yeah so i think yeah very exciting about a noster and these protocol-based solutions uh and yeah we'll see where they're going for journalists for journalists they should be totally you know they should be attractive for journalists is julian gonna be on there uh he's like watching is he yeah is he sniffing around yeah yeah he's watching he loves most stuff nice yeah yeah so um good does he like the idea yeah yeah he does yeah he's he's very cool very interested in it good yeah i'm sure the moment he joins he's gonna be zapped people gonna swap him swamp him with with the satoshis that would be so cool to see that would be amazing like everyone will be so stoked to see him there

are you there we're gonna have your end pub in the show notes i'm on there too and i remember just just as a last thing before we finish i remember you telling the little story about you going with julian to walk around in the forest you said that in el salvador and you saw these fences or gates with uh oh yeah we were actually driving yeah you were driving yeah can you tell that one oh yeah So driving around, you know, Julian's incredibly popular in Australia. It was 90% of Australians wanted him. You know, we did polling during the campaign. It was 90% of Australians wanted him brought home.

And so there were signs of support, lots of graffiti everywhere, free Julian Assange. And there was a sign outside a house that we drove past that said free Julian Assange. Someone had kept their sign up. And Julian stopped and went inside, and it was an older couple, and said thank you to them. Yeah, and actually knew my dad as well.

So they rang my dad. Were they, like, surprised to see him? Yeah, yeah, they were blown away. Yeah, they were blown away. Yeah, so that was really nice. And they rang my dad and said, you never guess who came? So, yeah, no, no, it's very cool. He was moved by what people said.

Yeah, he's very appreciative of what everyone's done for him. And from those small actions, you know, right up to, you know, the Pope and presidents. Did it give him strength as he was there, seeing, knowing, seeing? Yes, knowing that people fighting for you on the outside. Yeah. It really does give you strength. Yeah, that gives him a lot of strength to keep going. Wow.

Yeah. And is he okay physically? Yeah, he's getting much better. He's getting much better. Um, yeah, he's, yeah, I mean, in the last six months he's, yeah, I think he's, um, I've seen like a huge improvement in his, in his health since he's, um, been out of, uh, been out of prison. He's really enjoying his life as well. That's so good to hear. Yeah, yeah.

Been with his kids and Stella and, uh, been able to show the kids all the things that he grew up with, you know, in the Australian, um, outback. amazing for them to have that back as well that's so moving yeah it's good gabriel um a message of hope from you to people well i to bitcoiners and people in general uh i think you know look at what what's been achieved you know ross albrecht's free julian's free you know can be done uh yeah and uh Yeah, keep fighting for what we believe in. Yeah. And yeah, I think these key people who came under attack, there's still more people who are suffering under these attacks,

these regulatory attacks and attacks on their freedom, and that we need to keep going, keep defending them. Because yeah, it never stops. No, no, it's ongoing. I hope to live until I'm very, very old to see what's happening in the world. But we definitely live in very interesting times. Gabriel, thank you so much for taking the time. My pleasure.

Thank you. I loved it. Thanks. Thanks for being with us. Please take a minute to give this episode a like, a comment and subscribe or follow. And please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time. Thanks for watching!