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What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as

What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a “real” Australian, and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints, looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?

contingencies 2y ago
Oz is like most places, there's a large number of people for whom thinking for themselves from an even vaguely informed position presents too much of a logistical challenge (re. literacy, education, breadth of interest, pretense to regular reading, range of sources, adequate life experience to judge bias, ready echo chamber availability, swamp of familiarity, etc.). The minority of people who are educated, do hold broad enough interests and are capable of critical thinking are almost all in support of Wikileaks, IMHO. Some of them have been done in by the smear campaign, unfortunately.
- lazyeye 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - contingencies 2y ago
    Naturally. I'd suggest that - not in a hard-line way but in a soft centrism kinda way - there's certainly a core set of moral perspectives that one can really hold with any critical integrity, if really living with any awareness of one's surroundings, and many thinking people tend to converge on that set of morals through some avenue or other, and that tends to drive their take on the world above inane factors like nationalism and religion. It's not a superior or single view per se, but it's probably a set of closely aligned views tempered by a greater breadth of thinking in terms of not being totally stuck in an isolate ghetto spacetime wallow / populist moshpit.
    - lazyeye 2y ago
      Yes I also think that everyone that disagrees with me is stupid and easily manipulated.... (not smart like me). Just expressing it in a few less words...
      - contingencies 2y ago
        So just to be clear: let's have a constructive discussion on the internet by assuming bad faith. Let me know how that goes for you. I'll stick to assuming ignorance, and await evidence to the contrary.
        lazyeye 2y ago
        When people make such wide-sweeping generalisations as you have, whilst flattering yourself at the same time, I dont immediately assume good faith. But as you say, I must be ignorant then (not smart and heroic like you).
        contingencies 2y ago
        Correct. You're a fast learner.
        lazyeye 2y ago
        Yep.
- corimaith 2y ago
  People are only capable of informed decisions in their specific area of expertise. Outside of that the difference in opinion between a university educated and a working class is irrelevant. When the people whose specific jobs and lives revolve around the topic have a contrary opinion you should probably take more seriously. Those who don't and elevate their opinions are what we call cranks.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    What is your area of expertise that facilitates knowing the truth of all of your claims here today?
  - contingencies 2y ago
    The entire earth is affected by Assange's revelations, and the legal wranglings thereafter. It is unclear which specific subset to which you refer, but I don't think their opinion is any more valid than others'. Further, perhaps it is unwise to place much faith in the relevance of formal education to matters of complex political and technical insight deeply mired in populist information warfare and wiser to consider education level to be generally quite independent of formal training in most cases?
jgord 2y ago
He is a much beloved gentleman rogue. Invariably well-informed and well-spoken, even if somewhat self-centered or arrogant at times. For him and his family, Im glad hes free. Five years seems a pretty harsh sentence for publishing leaked information about governments behaving badly - isnt that what good journalists are supposed to do ?
- tim333 2y ago
  The argument against is he conspired with the leaking.
  - Draiken 2y ago
    Does it really matter? We argue semantics around incidents like this when it comes down to: people doing bad stuff and trying to hide it. If anything, these laws are completely broken. People should never be punished for exposing bad actors, period. Imagine if that ever happened. Maybe governments and companies would think twice before acting illegally/immorally. Governments do not want these incidents to happen because they want to keep doing it in secrecy and they enact laws to make uncovering these schemes illegal. Arguing if that's illegal or not is missing the whole point. It will never be legal in a corrupt society like ours.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    He has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act, it's no longer an argument, he's admitting it in court. He's going to go to a US court in one of our tiny pacific island territories to plead. He directly participated in stealing a bunch of classified information with Manning.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      A guilty plea faced with the choice of continued imprisonment in inhumane conditions or the risk of extradition to a country that might jail him for life or execute him does not end the argument of whether or not he is guilty of anything. It's a coerced plea. It only ends the argument of whether or not there is still a legal case against him.
salty_biscuits 2y ago
I'd say a fairly large percentage would be disappointed that we let a citizen get treated like that and we did nothing as a country to assist, independent of anything else. Maybe I am out of touch though.
h0l0cube 2y ago
Just googling around it seems Assange had support of the overwhelming majority of Australians (going by a 2023 poll conducted by a Sydney newspaper) > 79 per cent of people said the Biden administration should drop its pursuit of Assange. Only 13 per cent disagreed. Eight per cent were unsure
Maxious 2y ago
> Mr Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, was part of a group of politicians across the political spectrum who had long campaigned for Mr Assange's release and visited the US to lobby legislators there on the matter. > "There were so many people who were part of this process, and what it showed was people from both sides of politics, for different reasons, arrived at the same place," Mr Joyce said on Tuesday morning. > "I don't agree with what he did, and I won't, but it wasn't illegal," Mr Joyce said. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-encouragement-julian-assange-on-plane-joyce/104018352 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-encouragement-j...
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  Fascinating. Here’s an equivalent snippet from the BBC, who are doing a good job of making it look like Stella is his only supporter: > Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a journalist. > “We can now… say he was guilty of a very serious offence," he tells the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. > “Most people in Australia would agree it’s not appropriate to steal national security information and publish it - governments have to have some degree of privacy in their communications." > He adds: “I don’t think many Australians have sympathy for him. Just because he’s Australian doesn’t mean he’s a good bloke.”
  - gearhart 2y ago
    The BBC has a laudable goal of trying to be "balanced" which unfortunately is often poorly implemented as giving equal credence to both sides of an argument, even when doing so paints a wildly innaccurate picture. If you look at the totality of the BBC's coverage, it's clear that the general consensus is that he did a good thing for humanity that hurt some powerful people, and he's been unjustly punished for it, but that there is a small cohort of people (including some very vocal, powerful ones who get headlines) who disagree with that opinion and think that he did something negative and was justly punished for it. The trouble is that when you summarise that argument, you lose the "general consensus" and "small cohort" bits and you just get the two points, which together make a rather different story.
  - 2y ago
caf 2y ago
The Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom is apparently flying with him today, so that should give some indication. (It is probable that if those politicians had been particularly in touch with the views of Australians, they wouldn't have ended up in exile!)
shric 2y ago
I live in the center of Sydney. Every Friday in the city for as long as I can remember there's been a small but dedicated group of peaceful protesters gathering outside Town Hall. They must be over the moon today.
cryptica 2y ago
I think he is viewed very positively. Australians appreciate law and order but we also love to see a rebel break through and restore common sense once in a while. Australia has been a loyal US ally historically and so our politicians avoid criticizing US as not to jeopardize that relationship. It's been a thorny issue in the relationship though as it has made our politicians look weak/cowardly whenever the topic of Assange was approached.
starspangled 2y ago
Politicians and corporate journalists lie to you, and they hate Assange because he exposes their lies. That pretty much gives you your answer -- he is not universally hated by normal people at all.
sandworm101 2y ago
>> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even informal exile only normally happens between countries that do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or tax reasons.
- golemotron 2y ago
  It might be turnabout. The settlers of Aus were exiles from England.
- michaelt 2y ago
  This is meant jokingly. Sometimes when a public figure fucks up their career in their home country, they'll move to another country where people don't know about the fuck-up. This isn't a literal exile, it's figurative.
highcountess 2y ago
Could you clarify for me how he violated people’s privacy?
arrowsmith 2y ago
> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. Who are those? I can't think of any Australian politicians who are prominent in UK discourse, on Assange or any other topic.
RoyalHenOil 2y ago
My general impression is that Australians vary between neutral (they don't know and don't care what he did) to positive toward him. Where I live (way out in the boonies), many people have told me that they have a lot of admiration for him. In some spaces in Melbourne, he seems to almost have a cult following. I am sure he has his detractors in Australia but, so far, I have either not met any in person or they have kept their opinions to themselves. I think politicians are more likely to dislike him than the general public does, which makes sense; after all, he targeted politicians and policy decisions.

contingencies 2y ago

Oz is like most places, there's a large number of people for whom thinking for themselves from an even vaguely informed position presents too much of a logistical challenge (re. literacy, education, breadth of interest, pretense to regular reading, range of sources, adequate life experience to judge bias, ready echo chamber availability, swamp of familiarity, etc.). The minority of people who are educated, do hold broad enough interests and are capable of critical thinking are almost all in support of Wikileaks, IMHO. Some of them have been done in by the smear campaign, unfortunately.

lazyeye 2y ago
[flagged]
- contingencies 2y ago
  Naturally. I'd suggest that - not in a hard-line way but in a soft centrism kinda way - there's certainly a core set of moral perspectives that one can really hold with any critical integrity, if really living with any awareness of one's surroundings, and many thinking people tend to converge on that set of morals through some avenue or other, and that tends to drive their take on the world above inane factors like nationalism and religion. It's not a superior or single view per se, but it's probably a set of closely aligned views tempered by a greater breadth of thinking in terms of not being totally stuck in an isolate ghetto spacetime wallow / populist moshpit.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    Yes I also think that everyone that disagrees with me is stupid and easily manipulated.... (not smart like me). Just expressing it in a few less words...
    - contingencies 2y ago
      So just to be clear: let's have a constructive discussion on the internet by assuming bad faith. Let me know how that goes for you. I'll stick to assuming ignorance, and await evidence to the contrary.
      - lazyeye 2y ago
        When people make such wide-sweeping generalisations as you have, whilst flattering yourself at the same time, I dont immediately assume good faith. But as you say, I must be ignorant then (not smart and heroic like you).
        contingencies 2y ago
        Correct. You're a fast learner.
        lazyeye 2y ago
        Yep.
corimaith 2y ago
People are only capable of informed decisions in their specific area of expertise. Outside of that the difference in opinion between a university educated and a working class is irrelevant. When the people whose specific jobs and lives revolve around the topic have a contrary opinion you should probably take more seriously. Those who don't and elevate their opinions are what we call cranks.
- mistermann 2y ago
  What is your area of expertise that facilitates knowing the truth of all of your claims here today?
- contingencies 2y ago
  The entire earth is affected by Assange's revelations, and the legal wranglings thereafter. It is unclear which specific subset to which you refer, but I don't think their opinion is any more valid than others'. Further, perhaps it is unwise to place much faith in the relevance of formal education to matters of complex political and technical insight deeply mired in populist information warfare and wiser to consider education level to be generally quite independent of formal training in most cases?

jgord 2y ago

He is a much beloved gentleman rogue. Invariably well-informed and well-spoken, even if somewhat self-centered or arrogant at times. For him and his family, Im glad hes free. Five years seems a pretty harsh sentence for publishing leaked information about governments behaving badly - isnt that what good journalists are supposed to do ?

tim333 2y ago
The argument against is he conspired with the leaking.
- Draiken 2y ago
  Does it really matter? We argue semantics around incidents like this when it comes down to: people doing bad stuff and trying to hide it. If anything, these laws are completely broken. People should never be punished for exposing bad actors, period. Imagine if that ever happened. Maybe governments and companies would think twice before acting illegally/immorally. Governments do not want these incidents to happen because they want to keep doing it in secrecy and they enact laws to make uncovering these schemes illegal. Arguing if that's illegal or not is missing the whole point. It will never be legal in a corrupt society like ours.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  He has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act, it's no longer an argument, he's admitting it in court. He's going to go to a US court in one of our tiny pacific island territories to plead. He directly participated in stealing a bunch of classified information with Manning.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    A guilty plea faced with the choice of continued imprisonment in inhumane conditions or the risk of extradition to a country that might jail him for life or execute him does not end the argument of whether or not he is guilty of anything. It's a coerced plea. It only ends the argument of whether or not there is still a legal case against him.

salty_biscuits 2y ago

I'd say a fairly large percentage would be disappointed that we let a citizen get treated like that and we did nothing as a country to assist, independent of anything else. Maybe I am out of touch though.

h0l0cube 2y ago

Just googling around it seems Assange had support of the overwhelming majority of Australians (going by a 2023 poll conducted by a Sydney newspaper) > 79 per cent of people said the Biden administration should drop its pursuit of Assange. Only 13 per cent disagreed. Eight per cent were unsure

Maxious 2y ago

> Mr Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, was part of a group of politicians across the political spectrum who had long campaigned for Mr Assange's release and visited the US to lobby legislators there on the matter. > "There were so many people who were part of this process, and what it showed was people from both sides of politics, for different reasons, arrived at the same place," Mr Joyce said on Tuesday morning. > "I don't agree with what he did, and I won't, but it wasn't illegal," Mr Joyce said. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-encouragement-julian-assange-on-plane-joyce/104018352 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-encouragement-j...

madaxe_again 2y ago
Fascinating. Here’s an equivalent snippet from the BBC, who are doing a good job of making it look like Stella is his only supporter: > Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a journalist. > “We can now… say he was guilty of a very serious offence," he tells the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. > “Most people in Australia would agree it’s not appropriate to steal national security information and publish it - governments have to have some degree of privacy in their communications." > He adds: “I don’t think many Australians have sympathy for him. Just because he’s Australian doesn’t mean he’s a good bloke.”
- gearhart 2y ago
  The BBC has a laudable goal of trying to be "balanced" which unfortunately is often poorly implemented as giving equal credence to both sides of an argument, even when doing so paints a wildly innaccurate picture. If you look at the totality of the BBC's coverage, it's clear that the general consensus is that he did a good thing for humanity that hurt some powerful people, and he's been unjustly punished for it, but that there is a small cohort of people (including some very vocal, powerful ones who get headlines) who disagree with that opinion and think that he did something negative and was justly punished for it. The trouble is that when you summarise that argument, you lose the "general consensus" and "small cohort" bits and you just get the two points, which together make a rather different story.
- 2y ago

caf 2y ago

The Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom is apparently flying with him today, so that should give some indication. (It is probable that if those politicians had been particularly in touch with the views of Australians, they wouldn't have ended up in exile!)

shric 2y ago

I live in the center of Sydney. Every Friday in the city for as long as I can remember there's been a small but dedicated group of peaceful protesters gathering outside Town Hall. They must be over the moon today.

cryptica 2y ago

I think he is viewed very positively. Australians appreciate law and order but we also love to see a rebel break through and restore common sense once in a while. Australia has been a loyal US ally historically and so our politicians avoid criticizing US as not to jeopardize that relationship. It's been a thorny issue in the relationship though as it has made our politicians look weak/cowardly whenever the topic of Assange was approached.

starspangled 2y ago

Politicians and corporate journalists lie to you, and they hate Assange because he exposes their lies. That pretty much gives you your answer -- he is not universally hated by normal people at all.

sandworm101 2y ago

>> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even informal exile only normally happens between countries that do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or tax reasons.

golemotron 2y ago
It might be turnabout. The settlers of Aus were exiles from England.
michaelt 2y ago
This is meant jokingly. Sometimes when a public figure fucks up their career in their home country, they'll move to another country where people don't know about the fuck-up. This isn't a literal exile, it's figurative.

highcountess 2y ago

Could you clarify for me how he violated people’s privacy?

arrowsmith 2y ago

> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. Who are those? I can't think of any Australian politicians who are prominent in UK discourse, on Assange or any other topic.

RoyalHenOil 2y ago

My general impression is that Australians vary between neutral (they don't know and don't care what he did) to positive toward him. Where I live (way out in the boonies), many people have told me that they have a lot of admiration for him. In some spaces in Melbourne, he seems to almost have a cult following. I am sure he has his detractors in Australia but, so far, I have either not met any in person or they have kept their opinions to themselves. I think politicians are more likely to dislike him than the general public does, which makes sense; after all, he targeted politicians and policy decisions.