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>Meanwhile since 2016 I have been wondering why in the world Assange would have so obviously been in the bag for Donald Trump. I somehow missed the confusion a

>Meanwhile since 2016 I have been wondering why in the world Assange would have so obviously been in the bag for Donald Trump. I somehow missed the confusion around Assange. His M.O. has been so consistent. When the cables came out, it was what I expected from the organization I read about years prior on slashdot back in highschool - back when it was new and only a curiously to the tech press. I remember very well listening to NPR in 2010 and struggling to understand why NPR struggled to understand who this Assange guy was. And how they took the scraps of his personal history they managed to find, and were so bewildered that they weren't able to create a more romantic story about his motivations than the plainly expressed ones. When the emails came out in 2016, I had smartened up to the way the media could only ever understand him as a power broker, and wasn't surprised by the confused coverage. But wikileaks actions were still within my expectations from the organization I read about on slashdot back in highschool. I like to think I know better than to be suckered in by an official line, but the quality of unprovable explanations can be judged by their predictive accuracy. Wired Magazine, 2016: Want to Know Julian Assange's Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endg... >I get wanting change and there are a lot of bad things you can say about the current powers that be, but if you want revolution you have to offer something better than the status quo. Part of the idea of democracy as we understand it today is that speaking truth to power is itself helping make the world a better place. Even if Team Edward has worse policy than Team Jacob, that doesn't mean choosing not to expose Team Jacobs's flaws when the opportunity presents itself.

api 6y ago
An interesting take but I am not sure it holds up in the post-truth world of “firehose of falsehood” tactics. Speaking truth to power assumes that truth can be recognized as such and that it will be comprehended rationally. What we saw with the email leaks was that the fact that a leak occurred was used as a “hook” to spin a massive network of falsehoods. To this day nobody remembers anything about that leak except “pizzagate.” Was there anything of legitimate truth-to-power interest in there? Maybe, but it was instantly drowned in the ocean of bullshit that is social media. Other far more damaging leaks have occurred but nobody remembers them. They are messages in a bottle bobbing somewhere out there in that vast ocean of shit. You see... you can lie with the truth. Just twist it and tack on falsehood. The small amount of truth there makes the lie more powerful. Maybe that was the establishment’s response: “flood the zone.” If so it worked. If Assange isn’t a fascist in the bag for fascists, he is naive. Personally I still lean toward him being in the bag for the fascists. He strikes me as someone too smart not to see what I outlined above and how the current tactics of his organization play right into it. Wikileaks tactics cannot work unless we can drain the real swamp, namely social media, and get people talking like facts and reality matter. In the present climate leaks are ineffective or worse actually enable more deception.

api 6y ago

An interesting take but I am not sure it holds up in the post-truth world of “firehose of falsehood” tactics. Speaking truth to power assumes that truth can be recognized as such and that it will be comprehended rationally. What we saw with the email leaks was that the fact that a leak occurred was used as a “hook” to spin a massive network of falsehoods. To this day nobody remembers anything about that leak except “pizzagate.” Was there anything of legitimate truth-to-power interest in there? Maybe, but it was instantly drowned in the ocean of bullshit that is social media. Other far more damaging leaks have occurred but nobody remembers them. They are messages in a bottle bobbing somewhere out there in that vast ocean of shit. You see... you can lie with the truth. Just twist it and tack on falsehood. The small amount of truth there makes the lie more powerful. Maybe that was the establishment’s response: “flood the zone.” If so it worked. If Assange isn’t a fascist in the bag for fascists, he is naive. Personally I still lean toward him being in the bag for the fascists. He strikes me as someone too smart not to see what I outlined above and how the current tactics of his organization play right into it. Wikileaks tactics cannot work unless we can drain the real swamp, namely social media, and get people talking like facts and reality matter. In the present climate leaks are ineffective or worse actually enable more deception.