What, the world’s most ardent defenders of freedom want to know, has happened to Julian Assange? Just a few years ago, he was such an earnest fellow, who spoke all truth to power. Well-known liberals gave him airtime, centrist trade organisations gave him membership and middle-brow humourists gave him plaudits and harbour. Now, all that the honourable can offer him is their disgust. He’s a Russian collaborator, a spiteful traitor, a pussy-grabbing narcissist whose leaks on Clinton place him in precisely the same deplorable basket that emits the stink of Trump.
Julian. WikiLeaks used to be so nice. What happened?
Actually, save for concerted state efforts to keep the organisation from publishing evidence that the world’s systems have begun to fail, little has changed at WikiLeaks at all. It does the same stuff in the same way. This always low-cost, formerly big-impact publisher is going about its dangerous business as it always has. If anyone has changed, man, it’s us.
One of the dominant criticisms of Assange in recent years is that he’s a prick; that he’s arrogant and his ambitions exceed those that can be hoped for by a mere mortal man. Who knows? Maybe he is a prick. But — and, please, let’s just leave the matter of the largely dismissed Swedish allegations to this reliable account — this ought not to be our concern.
Persons in the business of shifting history’s course, for better or for worse, are not often known to be sweethearts. To apply pop psychology — did Julian grow up in a cult? Does Julian have a problem with the ladies? — to an engine of change like WikiLeaks is a bit like understanding the worst excesses of bureaucracy as the fault of its middle managers. WikiLeaks, as was always intended, has a life force all its own and, with or without Assange, it will continue to knock away at the locks on the iron cage of the world’s most influential systems.
[Clinton or Trump, the political is personal]
The Icarus narrative was, perhaps, inevitable. We love it when a guy flies too close to the sun and is undone in all his hopes for flight. If this were anyone else but Assange, he’d go on Ellen and apologise for his hubris. But, this guy, who has always rejected the liberal news cycle of self-improvement and redemption, won’t do that. Instead, he just releases his medical records.
Another dominant criticism is that he is so cruel and mad for power, he doesn’t care who he hurts. Maybe he even seeks to hurt everyday people. Where, people want to know, are the redactions? Of all the critics of this admittedly brutal oversight, Glenn Greenwald is the best. But WikiLeaks, an organisation whose funds have been actively blockaded by financial organisations, has rarely paused to meticulously cross out names. We’re cranky that some nice folks in the DNC had their email addresses leaked, but we were never so worried about the fate of the citizens of Afghanistan. This is not to endorse the potential WikiLeaks has caused for private pain — even though there is no proof that such a thing has occurred. It’s just to say that this is egg-breaking business as usual.
And then there are those claims that Assange is in league with Putin. These are out-and-out bullshit. Moreover, these accusations, now made by many individuals who believe themselves to be independent experts on international relations, feed the Russophobic propaganda so central to the Clinton campaign. I mean, seriously. The Russians are Coming. I’m old enough to have heard this one before and it feels to me as though Noam Chomsky has drawn a cartoon about how to manufacture consent, and the West has mistaken it for reality. In efforts to find a palatable electoral substitute for Islamophobia, Clinton, whose record as Secretary of State is just as interventionist as Putin’s, has us looking for Russians under the bed.
[It’s not easy to love Putin, but Clinton is no better]
One of the more curious criticisms is that WikiLeaks just isn’t releasing explosive documents any more. There’s this end-of-history view that liberal democracy under Clinton will be perfect once more, and aren’t we glad that Hillary has been exposed only as the hard-headed inspiration to the world’s working women she is. I have not yet read the documents published overnight, but those previous releases were “explosive” to some of us. Or they confirmed, at least, our worst suspicions. That Clinton has said to leaders of the financial sector that there is one story that she will tell to them and another she offers the people is “explosive”. That Clinton maintains her faith in Wall St as the site for universal prosperity is “explosive”. That Bernie Sanders never had a chance is also “explosive”.
Actually, some of Clinton’s own comments, including those in her own writing and on TV, are explosive. This is a politician who has been ardent in her support for the TPP, who has chosen a running mate who was still ardent about the TPP days before his selection and who has celebrated the brutal assassination, which included rape, of a leader whose absence has resulted in nothing but bloodshed. I guess if none of this publicly available stuff is “explosive”, nothing that WikiLeaks can offer can be.
WikiLeaks hasn’t changed. It’s still holding power to account. But, as we’ve now largely decided that the next President is a sassy lady whose hawkish foreign policy is not bad but only “just as tough as the boys!” and whose commitment to the financial sector is not just an extension of her husband’s disastrous policy but “the economy, stupid”, we’ve decided that WikiLeaks has gone bad.
No. We have.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The same goes for Julian Assange in his power prison of his own making manipulating his dangerous acolytes, (Crikey writers included) who continue to believe that his vigilante cyber-terrorism is a freedom beacon for the world.
Unchecked vigilante justice throughout history has always proved to be a wild and dangerous beast, creating more havoc than the so-called “good” it brings. That this pathetic, unelected man-child continues to receive such slavish devotion, especially from women, makes me repulsed at the so called progressive left.
Theft? Manipulation of information for their own cause? Placing private citizens in danger? Hiding in an obscure Embassy instead of facing charges and clearing your name? Oh Wikileaks-Julian, what a foul stench you emit.
I can’t wait for the day somebody breaks into Helen Razer’s home and steals all of her information without her permission and broadcasts it the world over in the name of “Freedom.” I will schade the freuden all night long.
Roni, you write about a foul stench as if it is something you have actually experienced. But you haven’t experienced anything with Wikileaks have you? Your name hasn’t been dropped, your emails haven’t been hacked and no one you know has ever had any connection to the organisation. So what is your bitch about? Do you hate the fact that the American (or any other) military was once able to do whatever it liked in the Middle East but now it is not sure that it can keep its own secrets? Are you disappointed that our armies are just as capable as the terrorists in inflicting terror? Are you grief-stricken to discover that sometimes politicians are liars and lickspittles and you had no idea about that before damned Assange and Wikileaks spread it all over the internet? He taught you something eh?
Perhaps if Assange actually had any charges against him he may choose to face them as you suggest.
Meantime Sweden casts a murky shadow over Assange’s character while lacking the substance (but definitely not lacking the system) to pursue him. Justice, where art thou?
Roni, I feel sorry for whoever paid you to write that. And if no one paid you to write that then I guess I feel sorry for you. How many potential rapists do you think Sweden has chased around the world? Have you ever heard of any country worrying about a potential rapist escaping justice to the point where they had to imprison themselves in an embassy in another country as if “Sweden” were waiting outside with a sniper rifle?
You’re not only wrong, you are the opposite of right.
Except for the part about being repulsed at the so called progressive left.
“Theft? Manipulation of information for their own cause? Placing private citizens in danger? Hiding in an obscure Embassy instead of facing charges and clearing your name?”
1) “Theft” – Wikileaks didn’t steal anything. They are an information conduit.
2) ” Manipulation of information” – Wikileaks have also released data from China & Russia. Example?
3) “Placing private citizens in danger?” – Even the U.S. agree that nobody has been physically harmed as a consequence of Wikileaks – unlike the two Reuters reporters who were shown being machine-gunned by the U.S. in “Collateral Murder”
4) “Hiding in an.. Embassy instead of facing charges” – He hasn’t been charged: he’s wanted for questioning, which he’s agreed to do via video link. He also asked the Swedish authorities whether the situation had been settled before leaving Sweden in 2010. The Swedish police also had weeks (or was it months?) to question him, after the two women contacted the police requesting that Assange be forced to have an STD test (not legally possible), but before Assange left Sweden.
That’s 4/4 false claims. I suggest you read something about this case before volunteering an opinion.
Nothing like a bit of criminal incitement to get the righteous juices fizzing, eh, Great and timely HR. Assange/Wikileaks (and satellites) are about the only crew who grasp the challenge/truth of our info-times – that the unfiltered release of raw information – all of it – is the only epistemological weapon against all and any such ‘manipulation of information to [anyone’s] cause’. I knew we were cyber-f**ked a cyber-decade or so ago, when Time made Zuckenberg, not Assange their Man of the Year. Kind of like choosing Disneyland’s ‘It’s a Small World’ pavilion over the UN HQ.
Roni, don’t incite crime, you odious doof.
This goes to the nub of the matter: … ” the challenge/truth of our info-times – that the unfiltered release of raw information – all of it – is the only epistemological weapon against all and any such ‘manipulation of information to [anyone’s] cause’” – I’ve never seen it put quite that way before.
Hear hear!
I don’t particularly like Assange but Wikileaks is Wikileaks, it’ll go on publishing leaks its given until there is nothing left to leak.
Here’s hoping some disgruntled repubbie scum leaks RNC emails or something after the election. It’ll be funny watching Liberals and Conservatives do a switch on praising/condemning Julian Assange.
Bingo
this
I have an anti-messiah complex Helen, so never put Assange on a pedestal to be knocked off. I never thought that the work of Wikileaks was one man, although it may have been his idea or energy who gave it impetus. His time in an embassy has only further suggested to me that wikileaks can and will survive without him, although any intelligent government will no longer commit to paper what they would have years ago, and perhaps they might not indulge in torture so readily.
Yeah, I doubt there will be any great revelations about Hillary. There is enough in her record to dislike her politics intensely while still hoping she wins, but god how much good could Bernie have done in 4 or 8 years.
So Roni, no devotion to Julian from me, but what is it you are so repulsed about? Your post is the second blathering, manic outcry on crikey’s boards I have read in two days. Not just not well researched or put together, well over the line of blathering mania. Is there a secret sect out to get Crikey. Can’t we hopelessly gullible lefties be left with one little corner of the world?
And finally Roni, someone is breaking into Helen’s home and stealing all of her information every day, and they are doing it to me too. They are known as the Government. You should reserve your anger for real issues that really affect real lives of real people. Just a suggestion. Cheers
Well said, Dog’s.
In a Lateline interview last Friday Kevin Mitnick (the world’s most infamous hacker) stated that our Census information is not protected by encryption, it is ‘in the clear’. This means it’s available to any skilled hacker to steal. So, Roni should stop sweating about Wikileaks tripping up & embarrassing the occasional super power or politician & be more alarmed about the legal erosion of privacy & insidious invasion at home.
Except it is not the occasional superpower Zut it is mainly the USA or western powers and it seems to not be anyone, but only Hillary as far as the current leaks are concerned. Wikileaks is a political player with an agenda and is subject to the delusions of power that poor Julian exhibits. He is a pawn in a game he fails to understand.
My exposure to Assange has been limited to the edited key-hole views of our media, with their special interests.
As for those who would defend our government’s right to carry out their covert practices, in our name, in secrecy (in “the national interest” as defined by party politicians), that might be all right, up until those machinations bite us on the arse.