No, it's pretty well known that Assange claims to have a vendetta against HRC. The details of that vendetta don't make much sense. It's clearly easier for him and his supporters to claim that they're acting out of enmity towards Clinton --- a minor figure in virtually all of Assange's dealings with the US --- than to simply cop to the fact that they are aggressively and overly supporting Donald Trump.
Nerddom and the left (and I'm somewhere in the overlapping circles on that Venn diagram) have a powerful rooting interest in Julian Assange and Wikileaks, who many of us see as a vanguard of an effort to disrupt politics and the media, both of whom we as a demographic have little respect for. The simple fact is that Assange is campaigning for Donald Trump. But that's very hard for us to admit, regardless of the amount of evidence we're confronted with.
> The simple fact is that Assange is campaigning for Donald Trump.
One possible explanation for this is that Assange will support the candidate that he believes will hurt US interests most.
I am absolutely OK with stipulating that.
Assange/Wikileaks nemesis is secrecy and corruption, not HRC specifically. Now if they view her as the most corrupt, they would naturally be against her, and inevitably that supports Trump. But that is not the same as the rabid right wing supporter of Trump.
Assange is savvy enough to know their position inevitably supports Trump, but there isn't any reason to think if they viewed Trump as more corrupt they would be against him. So it is possible they take a principled position while wrongly accused of having a preference in who wins the election.
This argument depends on Trump being "less corrupt" than HRC. If you believe Trump is the anti-corruption candidate, you can plausibly argue that Assange is somehow justified in supporting a candidate who is calling for the death penalty for leakers. It won't be a strong argument, but it'll be coherent.
But very few observers of US politics believe Trump is the anti-corruption candidate. A more widely held belief is that he's the most corrupt major party nominee in the history of US politics.
I hear people saying the 'most corrupt candidate ever!' about both candidates. More about HRC than Trump though. For some reason I doubt both assertions.
Look, if you're a Trump supporter, I exempt you from criticism about support for Wikileaks. As a Trump supporter, your support for Wikileaks is totally coherent.
Widely held beliefs are not necessarily correct; it's strange to hold to that as the standard of what is a reasonable argument for Trump.
You write as if Trump is just as dirty as Clinton and Assange is simply choosing to not release that information. It is possible that Clinton is, as Trump says, the dirtiest candidate in the history of politics. She's been hit with scandal after scandal. And before you say those scandals are a result of partisan witch-hunting, Obama never had these scandals that Hillary did.
Thank you for making my point for me.
The Republicans have spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars investigating Hillary and so far, nothing has stuck. She may actually be the cleanest candidate in the history of politics.
Interesting. I was under the impression that it was mostly a vendetta against Clinton, not support of Trump. I don't pay that much attention to Assange or Wikileaks to be honest, I personally find quite a lot of what they do distasteful.
FWIW, he's said he'd be happy to publish damaging info regarding Trump, too.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/291763-assange-wikileaks-very-happy-to-get-trump-info http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/29176...
And I'm sure, were his sources to give him a cache of (ostensibly) damaging documents about Trump, he'd drip-drip it out along with teasers and editorialized (and falsely contextualized) snippets, too.
Of course, that's not what's going to happen, because Wikileaks is in effect if not design a propaganda organ of the Russian Federation.
> The simple fact is that Assange is campaigning for Donald Trump.
This is classic US politics. This A vs B mentality is what leads to such a fierce two party system.
If you don't support choice A, then you are assumed to support choice B. Any attack on Hillary is viewed as support for Trump and vice versa.
I don't think that's a fair interpretation.
You're entitled to think whatever you want, but I am entitled to remind you that 2 + 2 = 4. We have an "A vs B mentality" because that's the design of our political system: it is structured to favor two dominant parties, which are themselves coalitions of interests.
Assange is many things, but "stupid" isn't one of them. Running Wikileaks as a year-long oppo research firm for Trump has the obvious impact of helping Trump, which is why the Trump campaign claims to coordinate with him.
That is really dangerous way to view people. I hope we have more common sense when we view security researchers that publish security vulnerabilities, rather than see them as campaigning for the competitor. Every published security vulnerability for windows is not an advertisement for apple, or vice versa. "If you are not in favor of Microsoft, you are in favor or Apple" is unhealthy way to view the world.
And it's not because I think security experts are stupid and don't realize the obvious commercial impact that a security vulnerability has.
I mean, you've made it clear how you feel, but not so much what that feeling has to do with the facts of this election. The choices are Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. To oppose Clinton is to support Trump. It is a zero-sum contest. If Assange wishes a pox on both parties, he could stay out of the election altogether. But of course, that's not what he's doing.
Could you link to statements where Assange is given praise to Trump and encouraging people to vote for Trump, you know like quality comments do that make assertion about peoples intentions. It would be a nice change to the many political opinions being thrown around here that assume that people can't just hate both political figures and view them both as corrupt and harmful.
This is one of those weird arguments I hear all the time from WL supporters that I don't understand why I'm supposed to even take it seriously; it's gaslighty in the same way Mike Pence's claim that Trump hadn't said those things about Syria and Russia are.
Obviously, he doesn't have to say anything positive about Trump at all to support him, and in fact the kind of support he's offering (a drip-drip feed of the products of Russian hacking calculated to create an "October Surprise") is far more valuable than any verbal support he could give Trump directly.
I mean here to be dismissive without being too disrespectful. But I'll be candid: people who say Assange isn't supporting Trump sound pretty silly. Like, the claim says more about them than it does about the election.
What possible reason could Assange have to support Trump?
You'd have to ask him. But that is clearly what he is doing.
Assange is stuck in an embassy in the UK. Any normal, rational person would want to leave that situation.
Hillary has made it quite clear that would never happen however Trump has been far more supportive of Assange especially since Wikileaks has been his biggest asset.
He could imagine (perhaps justifiably) that by serving as Putin's pawn and supporting Trump he could secure a better venue to seek asylum from Swedish rape charges than the Ecuadoran embassy, whether at the hands of Putin or Trump.
Trump hasn't made "jokes" about droning him. [1]
Secondly, and with a little more convoluted reasoning: it seems to be a truism that Republican/Conservative presidencies are harder economically for people living in poverty. Republicans are less socialist, in other words. I think it's pretty clear that Assange would like to see a revolution in the US, and revolutions tend to happen when the people don't have enough to eat. Hoping for Trump to win could be seen as hoping for a revolution in that light.
1. http://truepundit.com/under-intense-pressure-to-silence-wikileaks-secretary-of-state-hillary-clinton-proposed-drone-strike-on-julian-assange/ http://truepundit.com/under-intense-pressure-to-silence-wiki...
No, Trump hasn't joked about drone-striking Assange. He has joked about torturing suspected terrorists and stated his intention to see Edward Snowden executed. But he didn't make a tasteless drone joke, that's true.
Q: do you believe that there is a need for workers to seize the means of production?
If the answer is "no", you're not part of the left and you're likely more of a liberal then.
This is completely tangential to the OP, but what do the "means of production" mean nowadays? It's more and more about intelligence, intelligence property, knowledge and brain power. The latter is clearly owned by the workers who have brains; how do you socialize or nationalize them? And how do you nationalize IPR?
It means power -- power to the people in the interest of constitutional equality and liberty, not a tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, or bad democracy.
Aristotle said there are 6 kinds of government, 3 good ones and 3 bad ones.
The bad ones are where the ruler rules in their own interest. The good ones are where the ruler rules in the public interest.
How many people rule:
In Tyranny - 1 person rules in their own interest
Monarchy - 1 person rules in the public interest (a good tyrant is a monarch)
Aristocracy - a few people rule in the public interest
Oligarchy - a few people rule in their own interest
Democracy - all people rule in the public interest
Bad Democracy - all people rule in the interest of the majority and oppress the minority
>“We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” Mr. Assange said on Fox News. “I mean, from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second of the day.”
>http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/08/26/assange-trumps-everyday-comments-likely-more-controversial-than-any-trump-leaks/ http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/08/26/assange-trumps-ever...
" than to simply cop to the fact that they are aggressively and overly supporting Donald Trump."
This is hard to swallow.
There is nothing in Wiki/Assange past behaviour that would indicate they would like to support Trump.
Unless: They like 'whoever is against Hillary'
OR
Wiki is getting a lot of support from Russia, and they may be indirectly leaning towards conspiring with them for political favour etc..
Putin just might have enough pull to eventually get Assange out of his prison.