WikiLeaks Has Officially Lost the Moral High Ground | Hacker News Reader

WikiLeaks Has Officially Lost the Moral High Ground

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21 pointsgormo225 comments

This reads like a hit piece. They're lambasting Wikileaks for not understanding some obscure triple parenthesis nomenclature? They're anti-semitic because they're not plugged into the anti-semite culture enough to know their jargon?

That three parenthesis thing was news to me. It seems weird that people would brand themselves in such an obscure way. I guess Twitter handles can't have Unicode ?

I doubt whoever runs the wikileaks twitter account was unfamiliar with the history of the 3 parentheses thing. The 3 parentheses people are not doing this to overcome unicode issues.

Also who knows who runs the wikileaks twitter account. I find that a little creepy.

A bunch of the people attacking him, "ironically" were putting the parentheses in their names, and Assange was trying to find the pattern. that understandably upset some people, since it was meant to be a malicious "pattern", but that was neither his fault nor sufficient cause for a bunch of people to just straight up lie about him.

After he got called out on it he went into damage control, I mean seriously it would really compromise his mission to out of the blue just make an intentional overt anti-Semitic remark.

Seriously. Can someone please explain what this means/comes from?

This was a fairly big meme in media and political circles: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11853244/google-chrome-exte...

> Yesterday, Mic reported that a Google Chrome extension called "Coincidence Detector" was creating a database of Jewish people in order to notify users when they were reading the work of, or reading about, a Jewish person online. The extension placed three sets of parentheses (a symbol used by neo-Nazis) around certain names to identify them as Jewish. Now, one day later, Google has pulled the extension for violating its hate speech policy, Engadget reports.

Has the triple-parentheses ever been used to signify something previously? Kind of hard to believe that the Wikileaks Twitter account used it coincidentally: http://twitter.com/gallopingcats/status/757527227798003712/p...

Wait, so the idea is that the Wikileaks Twitter account operator installed a neo-nazi chrome extension, then forgot he had it installed and tweeted out in confusion as to why people were tagged, thus outing himself as some sort of Hitler youth with bad memory?

Calling that tweet anti-Semitic just doesn't make sense. It reads like someone trying way too hard to turn a molehill into a mountain. I'm guessing if we look through the history we'll discover that the people attacking him on Twitter had changed their usernames to include the parenthesis.

Not really. The Chrome extension has kind of catapulted the idea of "(((name))) == jew" into internet nomenclature. But since isn't quite into popular culture yet, it holds this juxtaposition of being unambiguous, but with plausible deniability.

"I didn't know this dog whistle made a sound."

If you didn't know a device was a dog whistle then that would be a perfectly valid statement.

Right. Hence the plausible deniability.

Uh. No, the Chrome extnsion had long been booted by the time this tweet came along. The meme is that Jewish folks and their allies would intentionally put "(((" and ")))" around their own names as a show of solidarity against this purported targeting. But the implicit meaning of those triple parentheses is, "this person is Jewish". Are you suggesting that the Wikileaks tweeter was just throwing that symbolism out there randomly?

That doesn't make much sense either. Certainly Jews wouldn't be itching to put a metaphorical Star of David on their usernames? Historically that was not a good thing. I can see why Neo-Nazis would jump on it, but it seems strange for members of the community to voluntarily brand themselves in such a way.

I just got why it is six parenthesis though, just like the 6 pointed star.

It's a way of fucking with neo-nazis in turn. The three parentheses were originally meant as a sort of euphemism or code: rather than be publicly anti-semitic, people would put the parentheses to highlight how often Jews were being heard from, the idea being that once you notice the amount of Jewish voices around, you'll think this can't just be a coincidence (hence the name "Coincidence Detector.") It wasn't meant to be something those not in the know would get.

Jews putting three parentheses around their own names is a way of saying "I see what you're doing. I'm onto you." And non-Jews doing it is just to mess with them.

And then, inexplicably, the WikiLeaks official Twitter account also dove straight for naked anti-Semitism.

The author, Emma Ellis, has no comprehension of the tweet in question. Understanding the background could have prevented this:

1. Neo-Nazis begin to point out to their supporters that the people they are discussing are Jews (or "Jew aiders and abettors" [sic]) by placing three brackets around their name. The subjects are often unaware and their account usernames (obviously) do not display brackets.

2. In reaction to this, numerous camps (social justice activists, evangelical Christians, civil society workers, journalists, etc.) both Jewish and non-Jewish alike begin to place three brackets around their display name to draw attention to the practice and to express solidarity with those who are being discussed in brackets, a practice sometimes revered in Western culture [1][2][3][4].

3. A subset of these self-labelled, self-bracketed individuals criticize WikiLeaks.

4. The WikiLeaks account notices that many of their critics are self-bracketed individuals expressing solidarity and wonders what type of people do this, as one might question the individuals who change their profile pictures to have a flag overlay for the tragedy du jour, and if said people are doing so for their own interest.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deputy#Historical_models [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)#.22I.27m_Spar... [4] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IAmSpartacus

Then why did the tweet start with the word "Tribalist"? Which alleged tribalism did they happen to be referring to there? The myriad tribalisms of social justice activists, evangelical Christians, civil society workers, journalists, etc. Or that of the Jews?

Maybe it's an anarchist thing? "Tribalists" being anyone who believes in the estabishment hierarchies Wikileaks wants to undermine?

I searched Reddit and found it used as a perjorative for capitalists/statists a few times.

WikiLeaks writes: "Most of our critics have 3 (((brackets))) around their names... Tribalist symbol for establishment climbers?"

Tribalist here in the sense of those who are complicit with In-Group/Out-Group dynamics [1]. Knowing that Assange is some sort of anarchist helps [2]. Such language is common within a certain political perspective that includes anarchism; these 'horizontalist' 'global citizens' envision a utopia and as they work towards it, in addition to opposing establishment climbers especially, they often look down on and view 'identity politics' or 'lifestyle politics' (and the use of ideological labels and in-group signaling all together) as base and beneath them [3]. And yes, they often practice the same things they critique and theoretically oppose.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20060712184552/http://iq.org/inde... [3] http://new-compass.net/articles/beyond-ideology

That's so much of a stretch though. If they really meant "people who self-identify with persecuted jews," they should have said as much.

Then again, when you say it like that, it looks just as bad.

A cute theory. Now please explain "have black-rim glasses" part.

WikiLeaks account looks up the profile pictures of many of its critics and notices that they all wear black-rim glasses, which strikes WikiLeaks admin as bizarre?

"Black-rim glasses" is short hand for "hipsters", presumably meaning here well-educated liberal arts majors and aspirational future intelligentsia members.

I hope WikiLeaks moral high ground and/or credibilty are never huge factors. Their releases should probably always be treated with trust-but-verify disposition. Or maybe distrust-until-verified.

The way I look at it, WikiLeaks is basically a parallel construction. We have no idea how or where the info came from, but if it's a map to the bodies, we go there and see if it's accurate info.

> I hope WikiLeaks moral high ground and/or credibilty are never huge factors.

I think they are hugely important factors. Information is power and they have a huge amount of influence because of the trust people have placed in them.

Like it or not, wikileaks will influence all of our lives. To say that they are a mere conduit and have no obligation to vet or squelch the information they've been given is to also assume that they will never get their hands on information (factual, or otherwise) which may have a direct, negative impact to you personally.

Useful information is rarely neutral. There are nearly always winners and losers when it is disclosed.

Edward Snowden refused to trust them for a reason - he knew they would probably refuse to vet anything that could damage the US, and just dump everything they were given.

I'm not sure what your disagreement is, beyond the value of credibility to WL.

They have been accused of releasing PII before, but they claim to be a journalistic organization. My take is, they're more concerned with delivering data dumps than sorting through terabytes to redact innocent details, because they're more of a dump site than a news site. And as such, it's raw information to consumers. I expect it to be pretty fully digested if I'm going to call it a news or analysis product.

No it hasn't. The DNC leaks will be remembered as historic. I talked with the protesters in philly, and the vast majority had pro-wikileaks signs or were pro-wikileaks.

That particular tweet falls under the "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity" razor, which kind of undercuts the rest of the author's (fair, but quickly sketched) points.

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