
The Nihilism of Julian Assange - irickt
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/07/13/nihilism-of-julian-assange-wikileaks/
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neaden
"“Well they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to
them. They deserve it,” Leigh and Harding report Assange saying to a group of
international journalists. And while Assange has denied making these comments,
WikiLeaks released troves of material in which the names of Afghan civilians
had not been redacted, an action that led Amnesty International, the Open
Society Institute, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, and the
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to issue a joint rebuke" This
really sums up Assange for me. I don't know if he is an idealist who believes
in what he's peddling or an opportunist but either way he's someone willing to
let people die.

~~~
laretluval
Very convenient unsubstantiated quote there.

~~~
neaden
It doesn't really matter if the quote is real. He released the information
when it was obvious it put peoples lives at risk. There is a reason why
responsible journalists wanted to redact that information. Julian seems to
just want to put everything out there and destroy privacy and I don't want to
live in a panopticon.

~~~
laretluval
> There is a reason why responsible journalists wanted to redact that
> information.

Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful
moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.

As far as I know, there are no documented cases of deaths due to the Wikileaks
leaks at issue in the unsubstantiated quote: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-
o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2017/feb/01/john-mccain/mccain-says-taliban-murdered-people-
because-chelse/)

~~~
zzalpha
_Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful
moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model._

Oh this is just beyond ridiculous.

They bring it up because _people 's lives were put at risk_. I won't go so far
as to claim people actually died, but that absolutely was a risk and Assange
very consciously chose to take that risk.

Who cares if the "old media" also happens to see WikiLeaks as a "threat to
their business model"? That's literally 100% beside the core point, here,
though it's a mighty fine deflection on your part.

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carsongross
The author buries the main point under a lot of kvetching about Assange's
personality and motivations:

 _This is where censorship begins. No matter what one thinks of Julian Assange
personally, or of WikiLeaks’s reckless publication practices, like it or not,
they have become the litmus test of our commitment to free speech. If the
government successfully prosecutes WikiLeaks for publishing classified
information, why not, then, “the failed New York Times,” as the president
likes to call it, or any news organization or journalist? It’s a slippery
slope leading to a sheer cliff. That is the real risk being presented here,
though Poitras doesn’t directly address it._

We are all Julian Assange.

~~~
zzalpha
"Main point"?

That's _a_ point among many.

This is a documentary about Assange himself. By definition that means a study
of the man, not strictly a study of the issues. So "kvetching about Assange's
personality and motivations" _is exactly the flipping point_.

Now, pivoting to the issues for a moment: the situation with WikiLeaks is
_complicated_. To distill it down to a simple slippery slope fallacy without
acknowledging that complexity is, at best, pretty shallow thinking.

It would be dishonest to claim that the kind of radical transparency WikiLeaks
espouses has no downsides. Again, the potential threat to Afghani informants
is a pretty damn good example.

Is that cost worth the 100% censorship free society that WikiLeaks seems to
want? Personally, I don't know... because, again, it's actually pretty damn
complicated.

------
crdoconnor
"And then this spring, it emerged that Nigel Farage, the Trump adviser and
former head of the nationalist and anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP)
who is now a person of interest in the FBI investigation of the Trump
campaign’s ties to Russia, was meeting with Assange. To those who once saw him
as a crusader for truth and accountability, Assange suddenly looked more like
a Svengali and a willing tool of Vladimir Putin"

 _Why_ exactly is meeting with the bumbling though reprehensible idiot Nigel
Farage clear evidence that Assange is a tool of designated state enemy #1?

~~~
vixen99
To call Farage 'reprehensible' is fair comment though not a view I share.
However calling him a 'bumbling idiot' is simply ludicrous.

After giving up a successful lucrative career in the city of London, Farage
has after innumerable campaigns across the country, fulfilled what he sees as
Margaret Thatcher's dream of separating Britain from Europe. Few would demur
from the view that Brexit would never have happened but for Farage who
meantime has been merely an MEP in the European Parliament not an MP in the
UK.

