}

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Julian loves Donald

This US presidential campaign has already been the most bizarre ever, something that belongs in a cheap e-book novel, not real life. Yet here we are, with the Republican candidate exhibiting severe narcissistic personality disorder, backed by the Russian dictator, and helped by a narcissistic, self-righteous Australian advancing his personal grudges. This is all far too bizarre to be real—but it is real, and it could all work to elect Donald.

Julian Assange who has been hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in order to avoid criminal prosecution for sexual assault, has long been arrogantly self-righteous, someone who—just like Donald—is convinced that he alone can save us all. Which means that, just like Donald, he’s delusional. By itself, those character flaws would be irrelevant, but they simply cannot be focused to do good things.

Julian hates Hillary Clinton—despises her, actually. He’s used a few ultra leftist buzzwords here and there, words and concepts the Far Left picked up from Karl Rove and the far right, where they originated. But buzzwords, slogans, propaganda, and feelings are not facts—they’re merely lame excuses he uses to try and justify his grudge against Clinton.

Julian hates Hillary because, he’s convinced himself, she pushed for him to be indicted over his role in the Manning leaks. I used to have sympathy for Julian, and at first I even wondered if the rape allegations against him could be political. I’ve come to realise over the years that Julian is just an arsehole, and he absolutely should face justice for the rape charges against him.

Julian’s WikiLeaks is grossly irresponsible in its actions. It doesn’t censor out purely personal information—“curating”, it’s called—putting innocent people in harm’s way. For example, the Democratic National Committee emails the Russia government hacked and gave to Julian contained personal information of donors, including credit card information, passport numbers, and social security numbers, making those people vulnerable to identity theft and forcing them to cancel their credit cards and all the hassles that go with that, all because Julian has a grudge against Hillary.

Moreover, Julian has never explained why a child’s voicemail is “vital” for voters to know about. It isn’t, of course, but he doesn’t care who he hurts or victimises in his personal grudge campaign.

Edward Snowden attempted to gently point out how irresponsible WikiLeaks has been. He Tweeted: “Democratizing information has never been more vital, and WikiLeaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.” Julian/WikiLeaks responded with typical arrogance: “Opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows”.

As reckless as Julian and WikiLeaks routinely are about the releasing the private information of innocent people, their recklessly cavalier attitude to the quality of the leaked information is even worse.

The Russians hacked the DNC because Putin wants Donald to win (Putin has interfered with the leadership campaigns in numerous countries, as has been well documented). Julian says that he doesn’t know the source of the leaked information because their systems are set up to make sure they don’t. Perhaps he’s telling the truth. But they made no effort to find out, nor did they make sure the emails weren’t altered in any way, and there’s apparently some evidence of tampering, at least.

Because Julian was blinded by his hatred of Hillary Clinton, he didn’t really care about the agenda of the state-sponsored criminals who stole the information, nor did he care if any of it was actually real or true: All that mattered to him is that it might damage someone he considers an enemy.

Julian’s group also released the names and identifying information of a Saudi Arabian gay man, rape victims, including male rape victims, putting their lives at risk in the brutally repressive Arab feudal society. Julian couldn’t possibly care less, or about any harm he does to innocent people.

Julian makes frequent trips down that road of ignominy.

He groomed and led Chelsea Manning into stealing and leaking secret information that Julian later released, and if Manning ends of spending he rest of her life rotting in a US military prison for it, well, Julian got some fame out of it, so it’s all good, right? What should Julian care what happens to anyone else?

Now, Julian claims he’s got more “damaging” stuff to leak, which, like the DNC leak, he’s trying to time so it causes maximum damage to Hillary Clinton. This isn’t “journalism”, it’s not “democratising information”, it’s cyberterrorism designed to “get” someone Julian considers an enemy in the hope it will get Donald elected president.

The DNC leaks were all a lot of nothing, though Julian still keeps trying to spin it as if it was some sort of “bombshell”. While perhaps his hatred of Hillary Clinton has led him to be blinded to reality, it’s more likely that he’s simply trying to sell his snakeoil and pretend it’s more than that.

However, the cold hard reality is that whatever he’s plotting to release next doesn’t actually have to be real or accurate or even relevant: There will be people who will be prepared to swallow the Russian bait hook, line, and sinker, and even if, like the DNC leak, it’s all a lot of hype and smoke and nothing more, the spin from Julian will nevertheless create doubt about Hillary Clinton, and that might even be enough to elect Donald, just like Putin and Julian clearly want to happen.

I have grown to have only contempt for Julian, and he did that all on his own. His arrogant narcissism has destroyed whatever good his WikiLeaks once did, and has turned what once a sort of noble-ish idea into something that’s now merely the tool of a vile, arrogant man out for personal revenge.

There’s a need for an honest broker, an entity that can receive leaked government information and release the relevant—curated—parts that are truly in the public interest. In the past, those honest brokers were called “journalists”, a word that Julian spits on. WikiLeaks is not and cannot be an honest broker because it’s the tool of a vindictive, arrogant narcissist out for personal revenge, a man who couldn’t possibly care less about the harm he causes to innocent people who get hurt in his vindictive, self-centred and self-righteous campaign of personal revenge.

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