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> It is rather sleazy that they tried to portray Assange as a self-obsessed, egomaniacal cult leader of some kind. It is still sleazy if there's element of tru
by mpyne 13y ago
> It is rather sleazy that they tried to portray Assange as a self-obsessed, egomaniacal cult leader of some kind.
It is still sleazy if there's element of truth to that? Cult leader, maybe not, but his ego is visible from the ISS, and his narcissism is fairly hard to miss as well.
Likewise Assange is certainly intermingled with harm/death to Americans, if not directly involved. He claims there are higher reasons such as his effort to foist transparency on the U.S. government in particular, but you don't leak hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and still end up Doing No Harm.
Additionally it was Assange's mistakes that left the archive of unencrypted unredacted documents on a public web server in the first place. The Guardian journalist should have been just fine to publish the password years after the fact as the FTP share used to push the documents to the journalists doing the analysis was not required to be public for years! So again, although Assange is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in the responsibility.
And all of this now reaches back into why it might be appropriate to describe Assange with cult-like descriptives. You ask a U.S. Democrat and they'll probably be able to list at least 5 things they don't like about a prominent Democratic politician. Even a Republican would be able to list faults with their politicians.
But to hear people describe Assange, he is almost literally perfect, has never done something wrong, makes snap decisions that are revealed to have been 100% beneficial years later, and never suffers from normal human misunderstanding or flaws in decision-making. Where does this come from?? I screw up something at least twice before breakfast every day, but any fault people point out with Assange must be as part of a vast government and media conspiracy to discredit him? OK, sure...
- wooter 13y agoTo summarize your post: he has a big ego. he may have caused harm to someone. he made a mistake when handling blatant war crimes. you don't like that "some people" think hes literally perfect and want them to criticize him at least for the mistakes he makes before breakfast - not focus on the actual, real, concrete violations of law that he revealed. Your entire post reads like you're trying to make mud stick. Give me a break. All of that is a far-cry from what the movie portrayed and is quite intellectually dishonest.
- aeturnum 13y ago>want them to criticize him at least for the mistakes he makes before breakfast - not focus on the actual, real, concrete violations of law that he revealed. These are not mutually exclusive goals. I'm grateful for Assange's work and the changes it has affected on the world. However, I think if you were picking the front-man for Wikileaks, he would be a poor choice. Thankfully, the ideal people rarely do anything interesting, and Assange is a very interesting character (in both senses of the word). I was actually surprised by how little of the memo took issue with the film. Almost all of it is tone, and much of that tone is open to interpretation (does the film mock Assange's feeling of being watched, or do the characters in the scene mock it? The scene includes thugs following Assange.). I'm also surprised the film adds a disclaim as to its sources at the end. Wikileaks seems really upset, but it seems like the film makers could have done a lot worse. I'm sure the people in the US government have their own list of inaccuracies. What do you expect from a form of entertainment?
- belorn 13y ago> Likewise Assange is certainly intermingled with harm/death to Americans, if not directly involved. Source? In what way has he directly been involved in any harm? Second, US Brig. Gen. Robert Carr vittnessed under oath that the armies investigation could not identify a single death. Do you know something that the second largest army in the world could not prove? > So again, although Assange is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in the responsibility. I guess the architect for the World Trade Center do share some responsibility when the two building crashed in 2001. Had he built them more secure, more like a bunker, then so many people would still be alive. so again, althrough Daniel Libeskind is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in the responsibility. or maybe, just maybe I want to put the whole blame on Al-Qaeda.
- redthrowaway 13y ago>But to hear people describe Assange, he is almost literally perfect That's a shameful straw man. I don't know of many people who think Assange the man is any sort of saint, but there are many of us who think the character assassination against him is an obvious attempt to distract from the true story, just as the news stories about Manning's psychological and emotional health were an attempt to cast her decision to release those documents as anything other than a principled and moral one. I think a world without Wikileaks would be a measurably worse place, and a world without Assange would be a world without Wikileaks. Believing that requires no acts of deification or hagiography on my part. He's a flawed man doing important work.
- meowface 13y agoOriginal comment poster here. He is definitely an arrogant kind of guy, but the movie literally portrays him as having been in some kind of cult wherein everyone bleaches their hair white. That kicks him down from "arrogant asshole" to "crazy, God complex cult leader" to people watching the movie. And really, from what I can tell, he's not done anything particularly immoral. No evidence has come out that anything he leaked harmed any Americans. He sifts through all leaked material before just publishing it willy nilly.