Morlock Elloi on Fri, 12 Apr 2019 20:43:11 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Guardian Live on Assange's arrest


I agree Assange's impact has been immense, but that kind of heroic model
is a counterproductive way of thinking about Assange and his
contributions. If anything, the distinctive (maybe even decisive)
feature of the last decade was its lack of heroes and the growing sense
that we're enmeshed in tangled and collapsing systems.

I often see this system vs. heroes argument, and if you look at my infrastructure rants, I generally support the 'systemic' approach and denigrate 'heroes'. But who creates the proper systemic approach, as opposed to the present one? The 'system' more often than not turns into ecosystem of cowards, leeches and opportunistic parasites, and nothing, *nothing* ever comes out of it. So we are back to the necessity of heroes and martyrs, and if you look back in the recorded history, nothing happened without them.

The cycle is then: corrupt system -> hero/martyr -> better system -> actual change. Assange's efforts may become visible long after he is neutralized. But he is a required component.

As for the theory, look up his paper on how elites organize and how it can be disrupted. I think it's a general mistake to classify Wikileaks as the new journalism model. Journalism is part of the system and journalists are prostitutes. Wikileaks is about actual disruption of elites, which journalism sometimes accidentally or incidentally does. While calling them publishers is convenient in the legal battle, it has a side effect of masking what they actually do. This is what makes the case interesting: everyone that matters knows what Wikileaks is really about, yet it has to be narrated through this silly cover. Similar to Cryptome - where JY has to put up a balanced front of a runaway mind in order not to be carried away by neither TLA nor people in white. In the end, it's all about who will you be carried away by.


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