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

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

> 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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