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Assange in Melbourne, Australia (Mark Chew/Fairfax Media via Getty Images/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images).
Earlier this month, the Russian dissident artist Andrei Molodkin announced that he would seal a number of masterpieces — including a Picasso, Rembrandt and Warhol — in a safe designed to destroy them with acid were Julian Assange to die in prison. As expected, the art world was outraged; one critic in The Guardian dismissed it as “a pathetically banal stunt for our shallow times”.
Such reactions bear witness to our shallow times. They focus on the similitude of the gesture with others (from Dada to Banksy and some “eco-vandalists”), while ignoring the crux of the matter: the fate of Assange. Molodkin is not performing an act of modern art — he is trying to save a human life. Nor is he alone in this. Behind the WikiLeaks founder stands a collective of artists and patrons animated by a profound insight: do we have the right to enjoy great works of art while ignoring the horror from which they emerged?
In his essay, “Theses on the History of Philosophy”, Walter Benjamin wrote: “There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.”
The act of Molodkin’s collective heroically makes visible this barbarism. It is desperate and brutal, of course, but what if it is the only way we can raise awareness about what goes on in HMP Belmarsh? The true question is therefore: why is Assange such a thorn in the side of the knaves of our political establishment? And the answer is: because he is not a fool like the majority of the critical Left.
In his “Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis”,1 Lacan makes the distinction between two types of the contemporary intellectual, the fool and the knave. In short, the Right-wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who refers to the mere existence of the given order as an argument for it and mocks the Left on account of its “utopian” plans which necessarily lead to catastrophe. By contrast, the Left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court-jester who publicly displays the lie of the existing order, but in a way that suspends the performative efficiency of his speech. Today, after the fall of Socialism, the knave is a neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as counterproductive sentimentalism, while the fool is a postmodern cultural critic who, by means of his ludic procedures destined to “subvert” the existing order, actually serves as its supplement.
A joke from the good old days of Really-Existing Socialism perfectly illustrates the futility of fools:
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Because today as ever the knave is a political pragmatist who knows on which side their bread is buttered, while the fool is anyone so naive as to think they could churn their own butter and bake their own bread and still count on US military protection.
“Do we have the right to enjoy great works of art while ignoring the horrors from which they emerged?”
What a jolly old fraud Zizek is.
Is Zizek’s a profound question, as he says it is?
Did Vermeer’s Head of a Young Girl emerge from horror?
Do we have the right to enjoy the beauty of this world in spite of the horrors that emerge from it?
The answers to all of those questions, his and mine, are, unequivocally, Yes, No, No, and Yes.
A knave is a deceitful and dishonest scoundrel.
According to Lacan(!), according to Zizek, the Right wing intellectual knave is a “conformist….who mocks the left for its [ catastrophic ] ‘utopian’ plans.”
According to Zizek himself, the Right wing intellectual knave is a “neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as counterproductive sentimentalism.”
lacan’s definition ( according to Zizek ) does not define a knave, and if it did, I would proudly admit to knavery ( while being, as always, a little ambivalent about conformity, which is not knavery ).
As for Zizek’s definition of a knave, an unsentimental free marketeer is an Ayn Rand cartoon who is nevertheless still not a knave.
Regarding Julian Assange, he should be tried in a proper court of law and then let go, whether he has been convicted or not. He has paid enough for whatever crime he has committed.
Finally, no self respecting intellectual engages in moral equivalent arguments. Don’t talk to me about Julian Assange as “plank” in our eye.I don’t know whether he committed a crime or not, but he did our side a disservice, at least, as he aired our dirty laundry.
( PS Does anyone else see “plank” is that Biblical passage as….inartful? )
“our side”? Which side is that?
The side you will have to choose sooner or later. To get you pointed in the right direction, look directly at Zizek, then swing 180 degrees. As the cant dissipates, you know you will be getting closer.
Zizek’s idiotic ramblings prove that there is a fine line between a philosopher and knave.
‘Inartful’ is a very diplomatic way to put it. Amazing how the West’s most popular book features such excruciatingly bad use of the English language.
Assange broke the law by publishing classified documents. Whether he did the right thing or not, is irrelevant. If you protest something by breaking the law, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. Just because you agree with what he did and think he is a hero, doesn’t mean you can ignore the law.
He hasn’t broken any UK law. His deportation to the US shows that the UK is no longer an independent country but merely a colony of the US.
Not only that but he is an Australian citizen and so US laws should have no relevance to him.
Worse is the US gains nothing by putting him on trial. They might lose. As it is he is in prison, acting as a warning to others who might want to expose US evilness and hypocrisy.
So if I, a Canadian-American dual citizen, publish the name and location of every British spy and reveal the details of all upcoming UK military and security maneuvers, I should be subject to nothing but US-specific laws?
One should be subject only to the laws of the country in which one is located and to those of which one is a citizen. Up thread, I deliberately violated a law of the Russian Federation. I am not a Russian citizen, I am not in Russia. Assange is not an American and was not in the United States when he published the document dumps. Should I be subject to Russian laws? No, not unless I visit Russia, and only then during my time there. No more should Assange be subject to American laws unless he comes to the US, and again only during his time here — and for acts committed here.
I guess I see the validity of your claim to a point, at least in theory. But what of my ‘nuclear’ example above, or an actual bomb launched from international waters by an individual that kills thousands in a country the bomber has never been to?
Hands off, can’t board his vessel or extradite him?
Hence you won’t expect redress when someone in a far off land empties your bank accounts leaving y destitute.
This is very strange logic.
So Australian citizen commiting crimes in uk should not be subject to uk law because he is not uk citizen?
An Australian citizen in the UK violating American laws should not be subject to American law because he is neither an American citizen nor in the United States.
While uk extradition treaty with USA is very one sided, Assange is not the first person to be extradited to USA.
Mike Lynch of Authonomy is facing trial in USA soon.
Assange was clearly trying to avoid justice by skipping bail and hiding in Ecuadorian embassy.
His actions very clearly detrimental to the West and helpful to enemies of the West.
USA has every right to ask for his extradition.
It would seem that he has faced consequences, unless you think Assange’s life of the past several years has been a picnic. And what law exactly did this non-US citizen break? As I recall, the law once held that a person could own another person, it barred half the population from voting, and it prohibited certain consenting adults from marrying other consenting adults. The law may be many things, but it is not foolproof.
He had a constant succession of posh groupies bringing him succour even fathering two kids on his lawyer . I read above he endured solitary confinement at one point . Are you sure he ( or his lawyer) didn’t just request a bit of peace and quiet .
His case seems to be based on his being a suicide risk . What is the evidence for that? The notion he is too sick even to appear on video link seems questionable . .
Assange supporters whining about his risk of suicide is like a defence lawyer for a child who murdered its parents pleading for mercy because he is an orphan!
If he broke “the law” then he should be charged and tried. Neither has occurred. He is being punished in a cruel limbo for exposing the crimes committed by our governments.
Indeed, he should be charged and tried, in the USA. It is his desperate desire to avaoid this at any cost.
Why have you placed the law in “scare quotes”?
Assange is most certainly at least credibly accused of crimes against the US and on that basis should face trial. His understandable unwillingness to do so is the primary cause of the fugitive confinement you call a cruel limbo. Otherwise he’d have a verdict one way or another and perhaps an already-served sentence (admittedly: he’d probably still be serving it).
Assange, an Australian citizen, broke an American law, while outside the United States. The armed forces of the Russian Federation are murdering thugs worthy of the epithet “orcs” given them by the Ukrainians. There, by writing that I have just now broken a Russian law against disparaging the armed forces of the Russian Federation. I am not a Russian citizen, I am not in Russia. Do you regard that Russian law as applying extraterritorially to me, a non-Russian? If not, why do you regard American law as applying extraterritorially to Assange, a non-American? If so, do you really think extraterritorial application of national laws to foreigners overseas is a really good idea? (Perhaps per Monty Python countries can balance their budgets by taxing foreigners living abroad.)
Let’s suppose your (I assume) UK bank account was hacked and emptied by someone in, for example, Nigeria. The culprit wasn’t in the UK when your account was emptied and is not a UK citizen. Let’s then suppose that the culprit is identified by Nigerian authorities, unlikely as that may be. Would you happily accept that no crime has been committed in the UK and no redress should be sought?
So this should be applied to MLK, then?
Yawn!
I know I’m like a stuck record in the comments section, but the warning cannot be repeated often enough: CBDCs and biometric digital ID are the tools that will be used to oppress us. The Overton Window constantly narrows. The facial recognition system is quietly being rolled out. The mechanisms of Law 3.0 are falling into place.
The extradition of Assange is another nail in the coffin of our ‘freedom’, which far too many of us still take for granted.
A fine essay.
“Do we have the right to enjoy great works of art while ignoring the horror from which they emerged?”
This is begging the question.
Did Vermeer’s Head of a Young Girl emerge from horror?
Do we have the right to enjoy the beauty of the world in spite of the horrors that have have emerged from it?
And is Zizek’s a profound question, anyway?
The answers to those questions, Zizek’s and mine, are, unequivocally, Yes ( absent the ‘ignoring’ business ), No, Yes, and No.
A knave is a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel.
According to Lacan(!), according to Zizek, a Right wing intellectual knave is a “conformist…to the given order…who mocks the Left on account of its ‘utopian’ plans which necessarily lead to catastrophe”.
According to Zizek’s updated version, post the fall of Socialism, the Right wing intellectual knave is a free market neoconservative “who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as counterproductive sentimentality.”
If Lacan’s definition of a knave has any purchase ( it doesn’t ), then I must confess to knavery myself ( while being a little ambivalent about the conformity part – what ‘given order’? ).
Zizek’s definition of a Right wing knave is an Ayn Rand cartoon but still does not amount to knavery.
Arguments of moral equivalence are the most facile kind of philosophizing. In that game, I’ll see Zizek’s protest of the West’s indifference to Assange and raise him a few jihadists ( with a bankroll of purges, pogroms, and authoritarian regimes in my stash to keep raising him till he’s busted ).
With regard to Julian Assnage, he should be tried in a proper court of law and then set free, whether he is convicted or not. He has paid enough for whatever crimes he has committed.There is a credible argument that he illegally obtained and revealed sources and methods, to somebody’s detriment. So there’s that. He nevertheless might have recourse to compensation for cruel and unusual punishment, but then that he largely inflicted upon himself. He could have chosen to face his accusers. He likely would have fared better than he has. Perhaps Slavoj Zizek and his other defenders might have contributed something to his defence.
“Do we have the right to enjoy great works of art while ignoring the horror from which they emerged?”
Well I was going to pick this one apart as well: my short answer to this is to say yes, we most certainly do have that right. To assume otherwise is to buy into the false assumption that Art is inextricably linked to power and politics, which is a great falsehood in my opinion. Yes, art can be political and artists can have political beliefs and aspirations, but that does not mean that the product of artistic effort must always be viewed in this context: it must remain capable of abstraction to be viewed solely on its creative merits.
In fact, a great deal of the absolute crap that the art world treats with apparent seriousness these days only exists at all because of this insistence on political context and relevance. It is this excuse that insulates the art from being judged on artistic merit. On the other side of this particular coin, on a walk round the Uffizi gallery in Florence a few years ago I was struck by the fact that families with young children were looking at paintings that often depicted sex and violence, one in particular being an image of a man having a sword run through his throat while naked in bed with two naked prostitutes – blood everywhere, the horror of the scene expertly depicted by the artist, and yet such a thing was considered publicly acceptable in an art gallery, while if it was televised it’d be rated 18 and not suitable for children.
The difference is, surely, that the creative value of the art overrides what would otherwise be legitimate objections to its content.
Your comment deserves a lot of upvotes.
Thank you. The whole tiresome charade of condemning works of art because of the artist’s moral failings is just more preening and virtue signalling by The People Who Know What’s Best for Everyone Else. And as you point out, leads to a lot of absolute crap being promoted because it’s essential to the Great Moral Crusade the alleged artist wants to convince us that they’re serving.
Assange is the victim of his own actions.
Is he a fool? Considering he’s wasted his life on a fool’s errand, it would suggest he is.
To me, Mr. Zizek is a person worth listening to for as long as you can stand his strange voice. The real-world value of his speech would be strengthened by dispensing with terms like “performative efficiency”
Zizek is a person of credible intellect, insight, and skepticism. He falls into outright cynicism pretty freely, but that hardly separates him from “the next guy” these days. In my view, he valorizes Assange too much, but at least he departs from the realm of pure intellectualism on this point, touching on the real-world implications of the WikiLeaks info-dump, and takes a stand in favor of something–quite rare for Zizek, I think.
A revolutionary intellectual (maybe ageing out his radicalism?) at least imagines he’d like to see the Great Powers unraveled, though he mightn’t have the brawn or nerve to fight should fighting words turn to violence (few of us have have really had our principles tested in this way–at life-threatening stakes). Rome will and must fall at last. But what followed the republican version of that civilization? O tempora! O mores!
No no you’re thinking of Carthage
“ Assange is thus the victim of the new apolitical neutrality.”
The author used this strange, dumb sentence twice. What on earth is The new apolitical neutrality. Can anyone translate communist?
Oh, and the question about the right to enjoy art, my God, how sophomoric. That’s even putting aside the fact the other (deliberately) misuses the term right.
What a flop!
I do not know what it is to “translate communist” but I would say that “the new apolitical neutrality” is best understood by illustration: that of Melania Trump in 2018 making an official visit to a detention centre wearing a teeshirt which said, “ I don’t care – do U?”
What is “best understood” from that anecdote is that Melania Trump is a vapid fool. Not much more to it.
Precisely.
I suspect the phrase “apolitical neutrality” is used with a touch of sarcasm. The elites Assange offended by showing the world evidence of their crimes, incompetence and hypocrisy wish to be thought above politics and have now co-opted the media and tech companies to the pretense that their guild interests represent the public interest, that their subjective view of the world are objective truth, and that questioning their “narrative” is “politicizing” matters that should be “above politics” and thus within the elites’ remit.
Assange embarrassed people who cannot countenance being publicly embarrassed. This act of heresy will not be allowed to stand, because that’s who these people are. We freak out over what happened to Navalny, but many of those shaking their little fists of outrage are essentially doing the same thing to Assange.
Assange had bail and promptly breached it. As a (now retired) criminal defence solicitor, I can say he was treated in exactly the same way that any other person granted bail and then deliberately breached it would be treated.
That rather glosses over the question of whether he should have ever been arrested to begin with.
I do not think that facts will change the opinion of the enemies of justice, but thank you for trying.
There is no worth in appealing to the breach of bail when the circumstances behind him being bailed in the first place are unjust.
We all know he is a hero to people who loath the west . The women try to offer their bodies . The men bleat on -line .His uncanny blondness has something to do with it surely .
He is a narcissistic conspiracy theorist hacker whose avoidance of the consequences of his actions has unaccountably elevated him to the position of ‘freedom fighter’ hacker. He encourages others to break the law and then discards people who are no longer any use to him.
He is now nothing but a leader of the Cult of Assange.
True, he did jump bail (to avoid being extradited to the United States, not to dodge six months of community service).
In any case, would an ordinary bail jumper still be in confinement years – and years, and years – after the event?
Your argument does not stand up to scrutiny, I’m afraid. Mr Assange is not being treated like other offenders. That’s rather the point.
An “ordinary” bail jumper will usually face arrest unless they have a convenient embassy to retreat to.
Those who “cannot countenance being publically embarrassed” are at least still alive. Not so the numerous victims of Assange’s snitching including agents in Iran and gays in Saudi Arabia, revealed and executed.
Certainly locking himself away in the Ecuadorian embassy until the Swedes dropped rape charges was an innovative legal strategy. Can’t say I’ve heard much about him since.
and the false so-called Swedish charges were just another US tactic.
Avoidance of rape charges by leaving the country and refusing to come back until everybody gave up, would usually have the #metoo crowd frothing at the mouth. Why is Assange given a let?
Two reactions: 1. this very “intellectual” analysis reminds me why I find intellectual approaches to much of anything to be kind of…well..dumb. Overthinking is ultimately not much of a way of thinking. And 2. a government cannot do its good work without secrets. We have become much less secure in the west because a technology the west invented — the internet — has eliminated the secrets that are essential to security. So what if the government lies from time to time.
And comparisons to China, Russia or Iran are proof that when you have a thesis, you will do anything to protect it, including saying dumb stuff.
In sum, a weird and thoroughly unconvincing piece.
This article reads as though it was written by an instant-postmodernism-generating algorithm.
Ha! Good crack. In fact he sounds about the same when speaking off the cuff, except for a weird phlegmy voice and a more evident sense of humor.
Some lines from Book 2 of The Wokeiad
**********
They’re under starters orders, and they’re off!
Zizek’s first gambit is a hacking cough,
A rumbling’s heard as of church organ’s swell,
Poor tortured bronchioles enduring Hell.
Now Slavoj wipes off snot with t-shirt sleeve,
And spittle squirts like water through a sieve.
Poor J____ begins to look a mottled green,
While Slavoj’s gone completely tangerine.
Who’ll be the first to prostitute the truth,
Vomit on verity, corrupt the youth?
Professor Zizek is the first to speak,
A veritable smorgasbord which reeks
Of fallacy and sophistical cant,
Delivered with a lamentable want
Of etiquette: with back of hand, he smears
His greasy locks behind his waxy ears,
Burps up a specious, inane apophthegm.
Pursued by some hastily swallowed phlegm.
No more emetic spectacle than this:
The trouser front stained with its patch of pi55
The drool that glistens on the unwashed shirt,
The fingers crusted with the grimy dirt.
Vivid. I admit there’s some vicious/viscous justice in it. Not sure why your wit usually goes in such a seemingly mirthless direction, but I’ll give you what I intend as a compliment: good metrical reproduction of the heroic couplet; rude bite reminiscent of Hudibras…thumbs up, though a bit wincingly because for revolting, er–subject matter.
As it happens I’ve written the beginning of a Hudibras parody, about the Asian street preachers who deafened Bristolians for a few months a couple of years back. Unlike the original, which is in what I call subheroic couplets, i.e. iambic tetrameter – for which there seems to have been a fashion in mid-17th century low burlesque satire – it’s in normal heroic couplet:-
**********
The Bristol Hudibras
By Richard Craven
In this our fraught, fatigued, and febrile age,
When patronising bloviators rage,
And proud millennials shout down the old;
When May, before the Ides of March being told
“Go not unto the Senate,” thither goes, 5
And Jean-Claude Caesar fiddles with his hose;
When dipsomaniacs make the street their pub,
And famished folk scour dustbins for their grub;
When swelling influx bursts ramshackle dam
And Joe Bloggs ends up in a caravan; 10
Now manifests the Bristol Hudibras
To augment low burlesque with basement farce.
He’s not traditionally Puritan
– No scowling Scot – but angry Indian,
A scheduled tribesman from Mizoram State, 15
And Presbyterian, therefore irate;
And like all converts his crusading zeal,
When light is shed upon it, starts to peel
Much as a foreskin with a weeping pox
When gentleman disdains to wear his socks. 20
No lance hath Hud, nor armour, nor a horse;
Instead a sort of abstract hairshirt, coarse
And stuffed with satisfaction and stale prose,
Protects him as out of his foghorn blows
His wind-borne bigotry and foetid cant. 25
He is a very perfect knight pissant;
Wherefore most fittingly attended, he,
by knaves who serve him in capacity
Of squires and ganymedes and baggage train,
Mostly from South Korea, but some from Spain, 30
Who come to Broadmead and here set up camp,
With massive speakers, cables, and an amp.
A dour duenna too, his awful wife,
Her face a chopping board, her tongue a knife,
Dispensing leaflets upon which is writ, 35
In plain vernacular devoid of wit,
Hell’s gory details: sulphur, fire, the spikes
On which impaled writhe atheists and kikes,
The lake of molten gold poured down the throats
Of Fenians, and the demons horned like goats 40
Whom, in His loving mercy and his pique,
Jehovah’s hired to violate the Sikh,
The charnel house for Sunni and for Shia,
The cobra hanging off the Hindu’s rear,
The profane gimp whose job it is to fist 45
The bleating Anglican and Methodist;
And finally, that sober Paradise
Or Asphodel, not blissful but quite nice,
Where righteous Presbyterians end up
And sit at His right hand, give thanks, and sup 50
The lemon barley from His plastic jugs,
while His recording angels blitz their lugs
with Ian Paisley’s sermons on repeat,
Which Hudibras on Twitter shall retweet.
When all the leaflets have been given out 55
To bustling shopper and to idling lout,
Then Hudibras his soapbox doth ascend,
Seizes his microphone and draws a breath.
“I speak,” he shouts, “of judgement day, and death!”
But PA feedback’s screeching promptly rends 60
This sublunary part of Heaven’s vault,
Which Hud promptly denounces as the fault
Of man’s first peccadillo and its fruit,
Then changing tack, “Consider babes. How cute!”
He cries, “They gurgle, babble, suck their thumbs. 65
You can’t help blowing raspberries on their tums.
Who would traduce such helpless innocence?
What specious sophistry, what sham pretence,
What psychopathy does it take to aid
The murd’ress Roe versus virtuous Wade?
Genuinely impressive, Richard Craven. I see many superb individual lines, including these: “His wind-borne bigotry and foetid cant / He is a very perfect knight pissant”
The verse is a bit more tuneful and resonant than the Zizek excerpt, perhaps because of the intensity/sincerity that underlies the caustic poetic voice.
I think the concluding last line you posted gives too easy and divisive a binary by choosing murderess/virtuous.
Reminded again of venerable older models, like Dean Swift’s savage wit and Samuel Johnson’s poem “London”. Remember that Dr. Johnson kept his head and his sense of humour, despite no minor streak of the oft-misantropic eye that I see in your work. Swift fell apart in the head and heart, like the later American misanthrope-humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910). That’s my simplified take on it.
Credible work; no mere quaint reproduction. Supplement (in places) your cerebral power and sharp pen with as much heart as you can, and get some of this work published–if you can locate a publisher with enough nerve and sympathy of taste. Perhaps you have tried. Otherwise…hand out pamphlets at Bristol supermarkets?
I know it’s easier said than done for most: I’ve written a 70-page volume of poems I haven’t published yet, except as a master’s thesis several months ago.
Cheers,
AJ
Nice. When is your poetry collection coming out?
Powerful stuff ! Is the model for the wokeiad Pope ? Have not got round to him yet
What a nasty image! I admit I laughed a bit despite wishing I’d never read that.*The post I replied to has since been altered.
I think Richard, whom you might have meant to reply to, knows more of Pope than I do, but his Essay on Criticism (all in rhymed couplets, with occasional tercets) is still a model of its kind. (Sorry if you know all this and more). I’ve yet to read most of The Dunciad, but should have enough time and inclination to correct that.
Yes indeed, it was the Dunciad, although in fairness I think Pope probably got the inspiration for his poem from Dryden’s Macflecknoe.
If the people whose balls you are chopping of are the representatives of Anglo democracies, and by chopping them you are diminishing state security for UK and US citizens, then you are really only contributing to the power of their enemies in authoritarian regimes like Russia and China.
Zizek is part of a long line of revolutionary leftist mid-wits, who are too stupid to understand these dynamics.
If their own liberal utopian pretensions are not carried out precisely then they start barking like angry poodles
This guy is supposedly an influential intellectual. I’d say he is a relativist idiot.
Noone is under any delusions about the internal political situation in Saudi Arabia. But firstly, that country is – or was – a geopolitical ally of the West, not part of it. And secondly it isn’t, unlike Iran, engaging in outrageous attacks through fanatical proxies on its neighbours and international shipping or indeed Israel.
Assange was in “solitary confinement” because he evaded justice and holed himself up in the Ecuadorian embassy.
As to today’s Chinese and Russians realising their oppression, is this actually true, or another lazy cliché?
Very clever; largely meaningless verbiage, but constructed in such a way that one might almost think it makes sense.
How is being visited every day by posh groupies and twice impregnating his lawyer being held in solitary confinement .Bit hysterical surely .
More likely the poor man is simply worn out
The woman is his wife.
Since they married in Prison . They met when he was hiding in the embassy
Leunig’s letter to Julian Assange: https://johnmenadue.com/a-letter-to-julian-assange/
As Molodkin’s masterpieces are in his own private collection we don’t have the liberty “to enjoy great works of art”, at least those he intends to destroy. In response to that pointless stunt, perhaps collectors of Moldkin works will destroy them in turn.
Putin’s spies hacked into the American democratic candidate’s operation and gave the stolen info to wikileaks who expertly undermined her candidacy with perfectly timed releases of hacked documents to the press. This was entirely a political hit. There were no crimes exposed. Just normal campaign talk that made the politically immature Bernie people feel even more radical and revolutionary so they booed at the convention. Anyone who supports all that is a nihilist.
Slavoj Zzzzek
I saw Assange’s mother interviewed when he first came to prominence. She was quite proud she had encouraged him to do what ever he liked. Great encouragement, but she forgot to mention. You need to be prepared to wear the consequences.
Or if you want to put it put this in modern terms. If you piss people off you had better be prepared to live with the consequences. An oversigh on Julian’s mums part.