If I have to read one more indirect attack on Wikileaks by way of a “critique” of an unrelated aspect of Assange, I’m going to become nauseous. I’m going to skip straight to projectile vomiting if it’s another “leftist” critique.
The idea that anti-establishment leftists will swallow hook-line-and-sinker blatantly US-sourced propaganda is so abhorrent to me that I can’t help but think that I’m simply witnessing a crop of State Department sock puppets agreeing with each other. Assange hasn’t been charged with anything— outside of what may or may not exist in secret, sealed grand jury indictments— and it’s irrelevant to Wikileaks. Whether or not Assange is a believer in “free markets” is irrelevant to Wikileaks. Assange *himself* is irrelevant to Wikileaks insofar as I doubt he has any ability to contribute much of anything to the running of that organization from behind the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy, much less when on the run.
Fixating on Assange is a misdirection— leftists, anti-authoritarians and anti-establishment types *should* be familiar with the concept of an organization being able to exist and thrive on more than the personality of one prominent member. I suppose that this is beneficial to Wikileaks— with this pop-culture tabloid obsession with Assange’s minutiae, Wikileaks is spared the same intrusive drama-fostering “journalism” that is more concerned with cults of personality than actual reporting.
Then again, I can totally understand the impotent rage emanating from certain sectors of the left. Establishment leftists and authoritarian types who fetishize Islamic militants like Hezbollah don’t like Wikileaks because Cablegate didn’t show Israel to be their evil, string-pulling boogeyman. Old, establishment leftists also don’t like Wikileaks because of its role in provoking the Arab Spring, which threatened old, establishment Stalinist dictators. Other folks don’t like Wikileaks because they don’t like *Assange*, which, as I just pointed out, is petty tabloid bullshit.
Urgh.
