I do not understand why I am meant to accept at face value the idea that Julian Assange has a personalized or ideological problem with Hillary Clinton. And yet, the idea that he does is central to almost all of the narrative that I read about his involvement this election. "Of course", stories about leaked DNC mails point out, "Assange is doing this because he has an individualized problem with Clinton."
What problem would that be? Look at HRC's career to date. Where's the overlap?
I refuse to entertain the idea that Proff on #hack in the 1990s had a problem with HillaryCare, or anything else Clinton did as First Lady during WJC's administration.
I do not see a clear intersection between WJC's policies and any of the ideological stances Assange has publicly taken since. But more on that in a bit.
After WJC's administration, HRC became a Senator from New York. Start with the observation that there's no reason for a college student in southeast Australia to have opinions about a Senator from New York. Then read up on HRC's tenure as a Senator, where she was known specifically for not making partisan waves (indeed, this is the problem many Sanders supporters have with her). Does Assange have a problem with Senator Hillary Clinton? Why doesn't he have a problem with Evan Bayh?
HRC ran against Obama. Do any of you get the sense that Assange is aggrieved by the way HRC campaigned against Obama? (I mean, I have a problem with it, but my politics are... not Assange's).
HRC was Obama's Secretary of State. This is the closest I can imagine HRC came to intersecting with Assange's life or ideals in any way. But before you decide that her tenure at State is dispositive of Assange's issues, consider: the other party, which controlled two branches of government during Clinton's tenure, was actively campaigning for the US to have Assange assassinated. Not in a hyperbolic, sputtering way, but rather in a "when Trump is elected, maybe we should get around to that" sort of way.
This article dances around this issue. It seems to accept uncritically the idea that Assange has a real reason to work against HRC. But I don't think he does. That leaves open what seems to me to be the most important question about Wikileaks role in this election: why? Cui bono?
It's not hard to generate other answers to that question.
Maybe someone should address the elephant in the room? It's not like nobody was suggesting that Wikileaks was working on behalf of Putin before this election. Indeed, among natsec/infosec nerds, it's all anybody seems to ever have had to say about Wikileaks. It was funny to me before, in the sense that it's fun to smirk at the way infosec nerds want to believe they're living in a spy novel. I'm not laughing so much about it now.