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Comment by the_optimist | Hacker News Reader

Our press, in coordination with the intelligence apparatus of the United States, turned Wikileaks into a referendum on Assange and his personality.

This has always and obviously been a psyop/frame job, ever since Robert Mueller's FBI agents were kicked out of Iceland for their efforts to attack Wikileaks.

It is only since the neoliberal generation, which controls power, felt themselves threatened by their own supposed ideals, that they were more than happy to hop in bed with the spy apparatus and hang Assange high.

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Assange has been using Wikileaks as human shields against his own terrible behavior for years. If they're collateral damage, then they're only that way because he made it that way.

Your allegations of "terrible behavior" are false, conveyed by intelligence agencies directly out of your keyboard, intended to short-circuit actual thinking on freedom of information.

The fun thing about freedom of information is that it ceases to be that way when you act as a gatekeeper. Poor little Julian had political axes to grind using information that didn't belong to him and thought that to be a journalist, all he had to do was claim to be one. His ego outmatched his wits, and that's why he's in the situation he finds himself.

Right, because information is best delivered in the service of the Rich and Powerful. Journalists™ and Journ-o-lists are the best form of right-think and certified information.

Even great journalists have editors for a reason.

Got it. We need properly-placed editors to govern the flow of information, to ensure the well-being of the Rich and Powerful.

No, we need editors so half-cocked idiots don't ruin the credibility of their entire organization.

Understood. Credibility derives from whether or not the people who receive information like it or not.

No, but I can understand how someone committed to being an ideologue might pretend to think that. Just turn your brain off and pretend you're carrying that cross.

That's pretty mean for hacker news. I think you've broken the rules.

I've noticed a pattern that attacks against Assange supporters are tolerated here.

Totally. Because having a negative opinion of Assange due to his rhetoric, behavior, and hypocrisy is simply showered with positivity here. So enjoyable to have people talk past you in an insulting manner because they hate addressing your points directly.

I stand behind this dialogue as testament to the full strength of your argument and the quality of your logic.

If the alternative to neoliberalism is fascism, I'll take neoliberalism.

To dislodge an incumbent orthodoxy you have to actually offer something better, not something profoundly worse.

Far from alternatives, more like bedfellows or twins. The specious labels belie the hard reality that the US political, bureaucratic, and secret police apparatus is powerful, extensive, and weaponized.

Since when is there only one alternative?

There are many sane alternatives. I was speaking of the specific alternative pushed during the 20-teens starting with the Gamergate era and proceeding all the way up through MAGA, the alt-right, and Qanon, and with which Assange was clearly either allied or serving as a useful idiot. That alternative is significantly worse than the orthodoxy.

BTW authoritarian Marxism is not a sane alternative either. I see people pushing that too, but they never got close to real political power.

The reality of the situation we are in, the rise of Trump, the alt right, Le Pen, and others is this: for neoliberals, if the alternative to leftism is fascism, they will actually choose fascism.

As people all over the US (and the world) are becoming more receptive to traditionally leftist talking points - labor vs owners, corporate control of the media, poverty, the evils of globalism etc. - neoliberals have been investing good money in supporting the alt right, neo-fascist voices that blame these problems on immigrants and jewish conspiracy theories. Fascism is much safer for the rich than even social-democracy (not to mention the, to them, terrifying spectre of socialism).

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