Though she is best known for her role in leaking state secrets, Chelsea Manning is more engaged in what she calls “regular activism” at the moment, which in today’s America means fighting neo-Nazis.

Manning – who is about to make her first trip to Australia in September on a speaking tour – will come to our shores with warnings about the rise of white nationalism in the United States, the police state and what citizens should do to fight back.

Speaking to Guardian Australia ahead of the trip, Manning said she is organising against the second Unite the Right rally in Washington DC “where neo-Nazis – they’re barely hiding their affiliation – folks are coming here for a white civil rights rally, which is the most ridiculous thing in the entire world in my opinion.

“They stand as a legitimate threat and they have power.”

It is a warning that has resonance in Australia, days after Sky News hosted an interview with the far-right extremist Blair Cottrell, which they later apologised for and took down.

The former US military analyst, who served seven years of a 35-year sentence in military prison after leaking a vast trove of 700,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks, has already upended the world once and it sounds like, through activism, she is determined to do it again.

In multiple interviews since her release, Manning has claimed that time pressures and difficulties with mainstream outlets forced her to send the documents direct to WikiLeaks but she has never said sorry or expressed regret.

“There was literally no [other] way I could’ve done it,” she says. “I make a lot of mistakes but that doesn’t mean I regret those mistakes, because those are learning experiences as well.

“I’ve made a couple of errors since I’ve been out of prison that I’ve had to learn from because I’m navigating life again.”

Manning says her stint in prison had “a lot of long-term effects” on her but explains only elliptically because she says she does not fully understand them. “It’s been slow, it’s been very difficult for me to recognise the things going on.”

Manning’s sentence was cut short by a surprise commutation by Barack Obama and within a year she threw herself into an unsuccessful run in the Democratic primary for a Maryland Senate seat.

Manning insists that her Senate run is not on the list of errors but she talks extensively about cures for the world’s ills outside of electoral politics.



If people in the United States or Australia are afraid of the extensive powers of police and national security agencies, Manning says they can “demand more – we don’t have to be afraid”.

“The only political decisions we make in our lives are not just voting or signing a petition or going out to a protest – every single thing that we do, in essence, can be a political decision,” she says.

People can choose whether or not to do business with repressive institutions, whether or not to call the police, “whether or not we want to depend on these kinds of systems that really harm enormous amounts of people”.

Asked about her comments on Twitter that “change won’t come through any ballot” and expressing extreme scepticism about the prospect of change at the forthcoming US midterm elections, Manning clarifies she is “not saying you shouldn’t vote”.

we cant expect any change thru the upcoming elections - the primaries are rigged - this so-called "blue wave" is gonna be more like a blue ripple, or a blue drip - establishment dems always happily vote for a warmer friendlier police state - change wont come thru any ballot — Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) May 23, 2018

“We actually have power in our every day lives ... if we keep expecting that voting is going to change that we’re not going to see any change at all,” she says. “[Electoral politics] has to be in conjunction with an actual movement that has teeth.”

When asked whether the US president, Donald Trump, is a unique threat, Manning describes him as “not an aberration” but the “inevitable conclusion of a trend ... of the political system in the United States”.

“The more concerning thing for me is the fact that a single person, a single office has the power to do these things, and this has been allowed to happen.

“Because of that we have to reconsider how we structure our political system – I often ask the question, ‘Why do we even have a president?’”

Manning warns the trend to a police state is not only happening in the US. In the Australian context, Manning cites issues including “what’s happened to Indigenous folks” – who are also over-represented in prison statistics – and “the sphere of influence of Australia with migration and immigrants”.

The former prime minister Tony Abbott has recommended that Europe adopt Australia’s harsh policies of turning back asylum seeker boats, an idea gaining traction with the far right. When Malcolm Turnbull described Australia’s policy of refusing to allow even legitimate refugees who arrive by boat to settle in Australia, Trump remarked “you are worse than I am”.

In a series of three lectures in September, Manning will explore the growth of the police state and activism at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Antidote festival, and talks in Melbourne and Brisbane hosted by ThinkInc.

Manning also includes Australia in her critique of media complicity in the growing power of police and the security apparatus.



Despite Trump railing against the “fake news media”, Manning says a “cosy, symbiotic” relationship exists between the media and institutions of power to maintain access and sources even if coverage can, at times, still be unfavourable.

Journalists accept the frame given to them by politicians “even though [it’s] designed to mislead or obfuscate things”, she claims.

“I just had a very telling interview, actually, with an Australian journalist [who] weaved the words traitor, spy, criminal, smuggle [and] stole into every single question. It’s also about the framing.”

But despite that added scrutiny on her every move, Manning says her past conviction has not limited what she can do as an activist “one bit”.

“There’s been this mainstream media portrayal of things - I’ve really moved on, I’m actually much more focused on what’s happening in the US right now.

“I can’t go back and change and make any decisions differently, so I don’t do that. I don’t try to relitigate all the decisions in my life.”

Manning is appearing on Sunday 2 September at Sydney Opera House (as part of Antidote), Friday 7 September at MCEC, Melbourne, and Tuesday 11 September at The Tivoli, Brisbane. Tickets available at thinkinc.org.au.