Assange Loves Mr. Trump

                                    "...I have leaked documents that show Hillary's health is deteriorating."                                                              

For those who think Julian Assange is a rapist (read this Observer piece on his case), this post will be irrelevant and superfluous. One will, understandably, already consider Assange to be a pariah. However, for a sizable portion of the Left, Assange, even after the accusations of rape, remained an important figure. If one were to sift through the deluge of documents, cables, memos, etc. released in a Wikileaks leak, one was exposed to the inner-workings of bureaucratic corruption, military intervention, and other unseemly acts. Delighted by his work, anarchists, socialists and rebels of all colors swooned over Assange. This should not come as a surprise to anybody. Due to Wikileaks, Assange was seen as a courageous warrior fighting against the oppressive power of the state. Even Noam Chomsky heaped praise on him! Despite this association with the left side of the political spectrum, recently, Assange has made worrying overtures to some of the Left's most vicious critics. Lately, Assange seems...unhinged 

 I guess five years confined to an embassay building will do that to you. 

Though Wikileaks was a fulcrum in the fight to expose the moral failures of our governments (GRAPHIC CONTENT: Collateral Murder), Assange’s recent behavior should be unsettling for even the staunchest supporters of the Australian. In the past couple months, he has attacked Edward Snowden, released regular citizens’ private information and made anti-Semitic remarks on Twitter. Another cause for concern is his meddling in our current presidential election.. Though he claimed, “choosing between Trump and Clinton is like picking between cholera and gonorrhea,” Assange has certainly directed the majority of his criticism towards the former Sec. of State. While Hillary Clinton is certainly not above criticism, Assange's acrimony for Sec. Clinton has manifested itself in a particularly dangerous way. Even though the DNC leaks did inspire journalists to do some serious investigative work (check out this WaPo piece on how people buy influence in D.C.), a significant portion of Assange's political actions should give leftists pause; in a relatively short amount of time, Assange has gone from being an intrepid adversary of global power to a paranoid peddler of Clinton conspiracy theories. In fact, Assange, once a darling of the Left, has begun flirting with the Clinton-hating alt-right movement. Just this last week, Assange not only propagated a Clinton conspiracy concocted by the alt-right, but also appeared on Sean Hannity's eponymous Fox News show. 

While not completely apparent in the video, over the course of this election cycle, Hannity has established himself as an ardent Trump supporter, acting as an abetter to the far-right's vile political program. Turn on Fox News and you will immediately recognize Hannity’s racist bloviating as something akin to Trump’s own bigoted rhetoric. So, the question for the Left is, what is Assange, whose friends once included prominent leftists like Slavoj Zizek and Yanis Varoufakis, doing on a show hosted by right-wing creep? Why is he praising Hannity for his “analysis?” What does he have to gain from acting in such an obsequious manner to Republicans like Sean Hannity? (It is particularly confounding if you consider the fact that Hannity’s colleague Bill “The Slaves Were Well Fed” O’Reilly and the rest of Fox News thought Assange was an enemy of the state only a couple of years ago.) The answer is simple. For Assange, far right outlets like Fox News are the only ones willing to provide him with a platform to express his vitriol for Hillary Clinton, someone he hates with an incredible fervor. Indeed, as Jacob Siegel of the Daily Beast points out, Assange has a long and well-documented history of mounting serious attacks on Hillary Clinton. While Assange may have legitimate grievances against Hillary Clinton, one must pose the question: 'Is defeating Hillary Clinton worth a Donald Trump presidency?' One must ask Assange, is the alt-right preferable to Clinton? Is Sec. Clinton worse than this gang of racists? Fueled by resentment, Assange has concluded that, yes, Donald Trump and his group of nazi-loving shitheads are better than Hillary Clinton. Blinded by bitterness, the petulant Assange must defeat Clinton, even if defeating the Democratic nominee means enabling an insurrection coordinated by white supremacists. And while Assange may not be supporting Donald Trump and his cronies out of any sincere political conviction, it still does not absolve of him of any wrongdoing. Even if he believes Hillary Clinton will do irreparable harm to the world, his gripes do not give him the license to bolster a xenophobic, racist campaign like Trump's. If one’s goal is to defeat coercive imperial powers, one does not team up with a bunch of ethno-nationalists who, as Matt Christman of the CHAPOTRAPHOUSE podcast stated, “are gonna lynch everybody if they get in power.”  But Julian doesn't care. He's gone off the deep end.