WikiLeaks' pernicious legacy -- empty lulz, bothsidesism and moral flexibility
Not long ago, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was considered a lionhearted champion of civil liberties and government transparency.
In 2007, he helped expose human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay. In 2009, Amnesty International gave Assange one of its Media Awards for exposing a police massacre in Kenya.
In 2010, he was Time magazine readers’ choice for Person of the Year. In 2011, he won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. An article in Forbes in 2012 likened him to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and called his detractors “cowards.” In 2013, he won the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts.
In fact, before Assange was known for his romance with the Kremlin, and his shady contacts with scurvy Trumpites like Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr., he was a punk idol, a hacker god. For years, he seemed like an opener of governments who could disinfect the Earth with the sunlight of his tech virtuosity and his eccentric radiance.
It’s possible that the Assange still captivates the imagination of enough romantic anarchists that he’ll slip the knot of public condemnation once again.
But, like many online high-fliers of the aughts, Assange lacked a moral imagination equal to his skills as a technologist. Instead he soared along — a Byronic heartthrob to budding anarchists — on that era’s mandate: Do it for the lulz.
Over the past decade, the lulz — the laughs — have curdled.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-assange-stone-20181103-story.html
Yes, I'm taking my victory lap here... I think I'll be taking another one when Greenwald meets his demise, which could be in the near future.
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