In my last post I argued that an analysis of WikiLeaks shows it is operating on anarchist principles and methods. These views were elucidated in the comments, including the point that Assange had worked on some key technical components behind the crypto-anarchist movement. As someone that has been exposed to these ideas, I readily understood the context in which Assange operates, if only on an intuitive level that was not based on reading his philosophical writings.

Leonidas supplied a great link that comments on Assange’s philosophical writings and how that translates to WikiLeaks’ radical action. Whether you agree with it or not, it is crucial to understanding why the group is doing what it is doing and its potential impacts on the future. I will note the irony that WikiLeaks itself has a very fragile leadership structure at the moment (or so it seems), but I am sure that they are rapidly diversifying. If they can do so they will be extremely difficult to counteract as the counterculture he is part of is fairly large and extremely technically adept. Indeed, a lot of the people that write the core components of the internet are associated with it. I’ve always thought they were filled with delusions of grandeur but this is a real attack on the status quo that is getting a huge response so their ranks should quickly swell.

Osama bin Laden made it very clear in the 90s and in 2004 that his mission was to force the US to bankrupt itself by baiting us into drawn out foreign wars and raising the level of paranoia to the point that governance and trade was severely hampered (e.g. the 2004 statement: “[It is] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there and cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses … This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.”) Now comes Assange who seems to have the aim of disconnecting governments from themselves and each other through nonviolent means instead of bin Laden’s aim of disconnecting them from the populace through murder both real and imagined. Indeed, his mission arises in large part because of bin Laden’s success.

Something that has always bothered me is the lack of conversation about terrorist groups’ various philosophical underpinnings, even on erudite political blogs. [How many people know what Al Qaeda means and what it references?] The inability for our political classes to discuss these matters has a severe negative effect on our policies because they blind us to tackling them on their fundamental level; a view shared by various CIA and State intelligence assessments. However, I can understand this reaction because of what those groups do and the tens of thousands they have killed.

By contrast there is no reason why people should not learn and evaluate WikiLeaks in terms of its ideology to understand exactly what it is doing and why.