The (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was many things, few of them savoury, but stupid was not one of them. Indeed, in his own whacky way, Crowley was quite brilliant. His commentary on the Tarot, for instance, The Book of Thoth, reveals him as a man of tremendous erudition in an astonishing range of religious and occult traditions.
A reasonably talented poet and reasonably good author of pose fiction (his Simon Iff stories are unsung classics of early detective fiction), Crowley also had a gift for turning out some memorable quotes. One of my favourites is:
I slept with Faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with Doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
What Crowley is getting at, here, is the tremendously liberating effect of being prepared to question everything you might otherwise take for granted.
All of which is a roundabout and probably somewhat show-offish way of getting around to my point: have I been wrong about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden? (TLDR: probably not, and yes, respectively.)
First off, Julian Assange.
Whether you see Assange as a hero or a villain largely seems to depend on your political leaning: left-wingers generally opt for the former, right-wingers for the latter. It must be conceded, though, that there is lately considerable crossover.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been accused of espionage and publishing hundreds of thousands of secret documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he’s facing extradition and we’re all wondering, “How did this happen?”
Well, no we’re not: it’s really quite simple, Assange illegally obtained and dumped on the internet troves of secret US documents. It’s really that simple.
The question is: is Assange a heroic, whistle-blowing journalist, or just a hacker with a hate-boner for America?
Firstly, for all Assange’s high-falutin’ rhetoric, it’s hard not to suspect that Australian journalist Jack Marx pinged Assange from the very start as motivated “mostly by the illicit thrill of the late-night smash’n’grab”. While Wikileaks (and Assange is not the totality of Wikileaks, however he may try and self-aggrandize) initially shone a light on some less “sexy” authoritarian targets, Assange seems more interested in going for attention-grabbing tilting at the left-media’s favourite bogeyman, the US.
Secondly, Assange is not, whatever his supporters may claim, a journalist. This isn’t a matter of quibbling over qualifications, such as the legacy media try and use to discredit the likes of Rukshan Fernando or Avi Yemini. Assange simply dumps hacked material without any attempt at journalism.
In fact, the only time Assange tried to practise something like journalism — the infamous “Collateral Murder” video — he in fact merely peddled grossly distorted and slanted propaganda. Far from simply “reporting” the video in question, Wikileaks deliberately edited, distorted and framed the video to present a particular and grossly inaccurate narrative.
Edward Snowden, on the other hand, is a very different creature.
In 2013, Edward Snowden, then still an employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) […] uncovered the full extent of intelligence agencies‘ surveillance and espionage practices around the world. Today he lives in involuntary exile in Moscow, a return to the USA is completely unthinkable under the current circumstances.
MSN
This is not entirely true: Snowden was a contractor, and is an involuntary exile because he is trapped: he was in Russia en route to another country when his passport was cancelled by the US government. It’s certainly not that he has any great admiration for the Russian government, simply that he cannot go anywhere else.
Snowden, unlike Assange, is not interested in attacking America simply for the sake of it, or to play to the left-wing peanut gallery. Snowden describes himself as a patriot who was motivated to join the NSA after the 9/11 attacks. Snowden believes deeply in the ideal of America — but says that what he found at the NSA were bureaucrats and elected officials who were acting un-Constitutionally and against the highest ideals of America.
And he is right: we now know that officials like James Clapper lied under oath and that the American government and bureaucracy undertook an unprecedented, massive and illegal program of spying on the American people.
Moreover, Snowden’s courage cannot be doubted: he knew that, as a private contractor, he was not protected by whistleblower laws.
So, I’ve changed my mind on Snowden at least. I’m yet to be convinced that Assange is anything other than a self-aggrandizing hacker — if you want to have a go in the comments, though, please go ahead.