Secret sharer
When the August 21 New Yorker arrived I flipped through it as usual, pausing over Raffi Khatchadourian's profile of Julian Assange. "Do I want to read twenty-two pages about this schmuck?" I asked myself before proceeding to Alex Ross and Anthony Lane. Then I put it aside.
Yesterday I decided it was time to wade in, and it was mostly absorbing (I may have skipped some of the eyeball-glazing details of cyberhacking). Almost at once I became dizzy with deja-vu. Khatchadourian describes a man who is narcissistic, paranoid, afraid someone will poison his food, and self-aggrandizing to a comical degree. (He compares himself to Nelson Mandela because he once spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison.) He prefers the kleptocratic Russian dictatorship to the flawed Western democracies. He hates NATO, journalists, and women, especially Hillary Clinton. He is exceedingly rich, mostly from the small donations of ordinary people who think he lives in near poverty. He displays a total lack of concern for anyone but himself, from collaborators like Chelsea Manning ("Anti-interrogation training probably kicked in immediately") to the hundreds of Afghanis who fought with US forces and whose names he couldn't be arsed to redact from the State Department cables that put WikiLeaks on the map. (The fates of many remain unknown.) I seem to remember that Manning attempted suicide at least once; Assange would never do that, he's far too important to the world. Twitter and lawsuits are his favorite recreations.
Is it starting to come into focus? This physical coward who threatens others with violence? (Wired magazine "needs a bullet," he snarls, not that he would ever accept blame for a Charlie Hebdo-style massacre. Journalism "has to be ground down into ashes" to be replaced with something better, like, well, WikiLeaks.) Does it help if I add that the article shows him posing for a giant oil painting of himself -- a diptych yet? Yeah, just what the planet needed, a younger, smarter Trump without the time-wasting golf.
Why does Assange never criticize Trump? Because others do. The author finds this "inexplicable." "His stated intent for WikiLeaks was to advance truthful political discourse. How could he not criticize Trump for his serial lying? 'It feels weak to me...we're not saying anything new, therefore we are just aping the conventional view -- therefore it has no intellectual basis.'" Even Trump couldn't formulate something that morally slippery. If the "conventional wisdom" says Nazis are bad and Trump calls them "fine people," which side are you on? Perversity for perversity's sake is not brave or attractive. Or does he really believe that climate change is a hoax and coal can be "cleaned" because it's not conventional wisdom? Sometimes the opposite of conventional wisdom is galloping bullshit.
Assange hides in the Ecuadoran embassy because he fears a country under American control -- and really, aren't most of them? -- will ship him here to face charges under the Espionage Act. ("I love WikiLeaks!" his hero proclaimed last summer, long before he became obsessed with leakers. Not so much now maybe.) Well, why not take a chance? He's beloved by the alt-right, and Steve Bannon, who also wants to blow up the world to make it better, is back at Breitbart and positioned to make him into St. Julian the Martyr. His pivotal role in creating the Seth Rich conspiracy has earned him a plenary indulgence, not to mention his possible complicity in Pizzagate. Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin adore him. Even if convicted of something, he can count on an instant pardon and maybe an office next to Ivanka's. Law and order is another hoax, am I right, Sheriff Joe?
Khatchadourian concludes:
"Standing up to the powerful is one thing. Facilitating conflicts among the powerful is another. To argue that it makes no difference is a license for impunity. Assange created WikiLeaks to diminish institutional abuse. But there is no way to be certain that a broker for geopolitical influence campaigns among states would not increase the over-all levels of abuse...or start a war. Or provide states that are more powerful, more skilled in secrecy, with a way to become even stronger...State-sponsored information warfare is nothing like what activist hackers and whistle-blowers do. The latter take personal risks -- with their freedom and their reputation -- to release information that matters to them. For a state there is no personal risk..."
On second thought, let Assange stay where he is. He should never be closer to state power than he is right now, addressing the multitude from the embassy balcony like an albino Mussolini. And if someone does season his pasta with polonium, what a dandy conspiracy theory it will make!
Yesterday I decided it was time to wade in, and it was mostly absorbing (I may have skipped some of the eyeball-glazing details of cyberhacking). Almost at once I became dizzy with deja-vu. Khatchadourian describes a man who is narcissistic, paranoid, afraid someone will poison his food, and self-aggrandizing to a comical degree. (He compares himself to Nelson Mandela because he once spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison.) He prefers the kleptocratic Russian dictatorship to the flawed Western democracies. He hates NATO, journalists, and women, especially Hillary Clinton. He is exceedingly rich, mostly from the small donations of ordinary people who think he lives in near poverty. He displays a total lack of concern for anyone but himself, from collaborators like Chelsea Manning ("Anti-interrogation training probably kicked in immediately") to the hundreds of Afghanis who fought with US forces and whose names he couldn't be arsed to redact from the State Department cables that put WikiLeaks on the map. (The fates of many remain unknown.) I seem to remember that Manning attempted suicide at least once; Assange would never do that, he's far too important to the world. Twitter and lawsuits are his favorite recreations.
Is it starting to come into focus? This physical coward who threatens others with violence? (Wired magazine "needs a bullet," he snarls, not that he would ever accept blame for a Charlie Hebdo-style massacre. Journalism "has to be ground down into ashes" to be replaced with something better, like, well, WikiLeaks.) Does it help if I add that the article shows him posing for a giant oil painting of himself -- a diptych yet? Yeah, just what the planet needed, a younger, smarter Trump without the time-wasting golf.
Why does Assange never criticize Trump? Because others do. The author finds this "inexplicable." "His stated intent for WikiLeaks was to advance truthful political discourse. How could he not criticize Trump for his serial lying? 'It feels weak to me...we're not saying anything new, therefore we are just aping the conventional view -- therefore it has no intellectual basis.'" Even Trump couldn't formulate something that morally slippery. If the "conventional wisdom" says Nazis are bad and Trump calls them "fine people," which side are you on? Perversity for perversity's sake is not brave or attractive. Or does he really believe that climate change is a hoax and coal can be "cleaned" because it's not conventional wisdom? Sometimes the opposite of conventional wisdom is galloping bullshit.
Assange hides in the Ecuadoran embassy because he fears a country under American control -- and really, aren't most of them? -- will ship him here to face charges under the Espionage Act. ("I love WikiLeaks!" his hero proclaimed last summer, long before he became obsessed with leakers. Not so much now maybe.) Well, why not take a chance? He's beloved by the alt-right, and Steve Bannon, who also wants to blow up the world to make it better, is back at Breitbart and positioned to make him into St. Julian the Martyr. His pivotal role in creating the Seth Rich conspiracy has earned him a plenary indulgence, not to mention his possible complicity in Pizzagate. Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin adore him. Even if convicted of something, he can count on an instant pardon and maybe an office next to Ivanka's. Law and order is another hoax, am I right, Sheriff Joe?
Khatchadourian concludes:
"Standing up to the powerful is one thing. Facilitating conflicts among the powerful is another. To argue that it makes no difference is a license for impunity. Assange created WikiLeaks to diminish institutional abuse. But there is no way to be certain that a broker for geopolitical influence campaigns among states would not increase the over-all levels of abuse...or start a war. Or provide states that are more powerful, more skilled in secrecy, with a way to become even stronger...State-sponsored information warfare is nothing like what activist hackers and whistle-blowers do. The latter take personal risks -- with their freedom and their reputation -- to release information that matters to them. For a state there is no personal risk..."
On second thought, let Assange stay where he is. He should never be closer to state power than he is right now, addressing the multitude from the embassy balcony like an albino Mussolini. And if someone does season his pasta with polonium, what a dandy conspiracy theory it will make!
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 12:16 PM
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