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

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Assange masterfully seduced the press, in that way presaged Trump's 
bountiful curative to a dying paper-profession unable to overcome 
online challenges, WikiLeaks was little noticed from October 2006 
founding until Collateral Murder was staged in April 2010 (at the 
National Press Club, where else?). Then Manning's gushing, then a 
sustained dramaturgy of Swedish pecadillos, then 
Snowden/Greenwald/Poitras/Guardian/WaPo's careful teasing, redacting, 
withholding ("not dumping like WikiLeaks").
Assange's celebrity (Pamela Anderson, Wei Wei, ad nauseum) arrest 
extends an arc from Gawker's pansexual predatory excess to DJT's 
blow-dried sexculpation, to resurgence of top-down leadership of 
MeToo, Blackish, innumerable 2020 candidacies, the 99%, privacy and 
comsec advocates, all susceptible to being overwhelmed by 
rule-breaking gender and racial disintegration. Assange's dominant 
male whiteness not so different from Greenwald's Brazilian racism.
Presumbably Trump will pardon Assange along with his Barr-blessed 
hoodlums but not before feeding the media with prolonged advertising, 
yarping heads, febrile criticism, abhorrent violence. Assange better 
watch his unasylumed ass against a one-off fame seeker with a banned 
firearm, not least a former colleague/lover/influencer.

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