The Paradox of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

schnell writes "The New Statesman is publishing a new in-depth article that examines in detail the seemingly paradoxical nature of WikiLeaks' brave mission of public transparency with the private opaqueness of Julian Assange's leadership. On one hand, WikiLeaks created 'a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account' when nobody else could or would. On the other hand, WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.' If WikiLeaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter? Or are the ethics of the organization and its leader inseparable?"

Comments

A lot of this BS is just Daniel Berg's fiction

[crazyjj]

Julian Assange may be a bit cocky, but keep in mind that a lot of this "Cult of Assange" shit and a lot of the infighting reports came from Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a person of VERY questionable motives and honesty--to say the least. His dubious book is the source of many of these reports.

Now personally, I've always strongly suspected that Domscheit-Berg was an intelligence plant at Wikileaks (working for the CIA, BND, or take your pick). He started to physically sabotage the organization pretty much from day one, acted a lot like an agent provocateur when he was there, destroyed some 3,500 unpublished whistleblower communications as he was leaving, immediately went on a campaign to discredit Wikileaks and Assange after he left, and then unsuccessfully tried to set up a leaks site himself that sounded suspiciously like a honeypot to me (send us your leaked documents and trust us to maybe release them to the press--or maybe just send some FBI agents to kick down your door). And apparently Assange suspected this too.

Re:A lot of this BS is just Daniel Berg's fiction

[crazyjj]

Yeah, those rapists.

I remember a guy who made a speech calling for a global currency to challenge the dollar. Turns out he became a rapist too, just a few months after making that speech in fact. Well, he was a rapist for a while anyway. The DA later admitted that the previously "rock solid" case against him was completely bogus--exactly three days after his successor at the IMF took office. Coincidental timing, I guess.

But then I guess I would be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat if I suggested that there was anything suspicious about the timing of some rape charges.

One can't be 100% transparent

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikileaks and all of the people working for it are OBVIOUSLY going to need to obfuscate details about themselves. Look at the absolutely living nightmare of a shitstorm that Assange has been dragged through. Look where he is now.

But no, hey, let's be transparent. How about all of the contacts at Wikileaks post their full contact information. SURELY nobody on earth has any axe to grind against them, and they will remain in perfect harmony and safety.

Re:propaganda

[dkleinsc]

It's incredible how anti-Assange the US media is. They even try to create this pseudo-opinion of "I am really progressive and don't like war and all that, but Assange is just not right not to come clean about this."

The US media is anti-Assange because the US government is anti-Assange. US news organizations have basically declared themselves tools of the government. Some examples of this:
- There was recently a dust-up over the New York Times revealing the existence of a drone base in Saudi Arabia, a drone base that several news organizations had known about for 2 years but never reported on, even though its existence had been covered in other media. In other words, there was no legitimate reason to keep its existence secret, because any bad guys would have been able to find out about it using a sophisticated tool known as "Google", but media organizations in the US didn't say a word about it because the government asked them to keep it a secret.

- Cenk Uygur was hired at MSNBC because of his successful online news program. He does a few shows, but then one of the network execs pulls him aside and tells him that some politicians in Washington don't like his reporting, so he needs to change it. Cenk didn't change it, and was promptly fired.

- Several news organizations sat on a story that provided significant evidence of a massive illegal domestic surveillance program run by the Bush administration. For a year and a half. For the sole reason that the Bush administration had asked them to. It just so happened that that year and a half gave Bush enough time to be re-elected in the interim.

Also, there's no major news organization that doesn't like war. War is exciting and entertaining. War draws in viewers and readers. War sells ads for the armed forces and cool guns and fast cars and action-packed movie extravaganzas. Remember, if it's white and bleeds, it leads (not-white and bleeds may be acceptable if no white victims are available).