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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

I know that talking about propaganda and shills on HN is frowned upon, but it seems relevant to this discussion. I believe that the negative opinions of Assange mostly consist of either propaganda by sock puppets, people that heard this propaganda and repeated themselves, or a bit of both. Assange was held in high esteem by the public until they finally got a foothold on how to bury him. Intelligence agencies and their contractors have been trying to smear and shut him down since before he was arrested, such as the Palantir/HB Gary fiasco [1].

In short, when you see smart people saying silly things, sometimes it's not due to emergent organic causes.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/the-ridiculous-p...

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> "Assange was held in high esteem by the public until they finally got a foothold on how to bury him. Intelligence agencies and their contractors have been trying to smear and shut him down"

Assange is not held in high esteem by a large number of political allies who know him well. It is obvious from the Laura Poitras documentary, the Andrew O'Hagan LRB article, and the Wikileaks Twitter feed, that he is not worth the deification he receives in much of the hacker crowd. He is perfectly capable of trashing his own reputation and alienating his own friends without the help of a shadowy conspiracy.

It's not helpful to say "the people who I disagree with are repeating propaganda."

I agree, and that's not what I said.

Instead, you implied that the people who disagreed with you have been duped by propaganda.

Which is not a particularly helpful, or charitable statement.

So amazingly backwards since there's definitive proof of astro turfing, some users being allowed to post more than others, evidence of government agents controlling discussion etc and all of this is with the very explicit approval of the moderators who have also been proven to lie, modify posts, remove 'uncomfortable' posts, allow vote brigading, consciously alter to downvote and remove uncomfortable posts and then the mods have the boldness to lie, say none of this ever happens, and also that you can't talk about, then your post is removed and your account disabled.

This happens here. HN is compromised, trying to think a true sentiment exists here is false, you are seeing mostly the carefully curated posts to support us government propaganda.

Which of those categories does rayiner fall into, in your opinion?

I don't know he says he's a lawyer. He's been here for 10 years. But what he's saying seems insanely uncharitable & obtuse.

I think it's more of case of TDS clouding their judgement. Some people belive Trump won because of Russia and Assange helping him.

> I know that talking about propaganda and shills on HN is frowned upon, but it seems relevant to this discussion. I believe that the negative opinions of Assange mostly consist of either propaganda by sock puppets, people that heard this propaganda and repeated themselves, or a bit of both.

I have no issue with Wikileaks, and frankly, don't care whether or not they are being funded by Joe Bob, Putin, or the Antichrist.

Assange, however, is a somewhat unpleasant individual, and the allegations against him (the hacking conspiracy) have teeth.

It's rather telling that most of the posts in his defense in this thread believe that his means should not be criminal, because his ends justified them.

Yes, that appeals to a rather popular understanding of justice. But no, that's not how the law works. No, the law isn't fair.

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