arlier on in the day, Wikileaks’ official account echoed my tweet to over a million followers, which is rare (I have posted over 50,000 tweets and never was I mentioned by Wikileaks). For whatever reason, people still associate Wikileaks with crime, even though its only connection to crime is that it helps expose crime. In this world and in this strange age of oppression, exposing crime is criminal if the criminals are very rich. If they are poor people who commit petty crimes, nobody seems to care — neither about them nor those who expose them.

Whether people realise it or not, there is a coordinated campaign to slander Wikileaks and put down those who support it. Evidence was leaked that millions of dollar were going to be invested in the defamation of Wikileaks simply because ad hominem attacks are the last resort for those whom Wikileaks exposes, e.g. Bank of America.

To a certain degree, Wikileaks has been de-funded and driven ‘underground’. Its founder is treated like a criminal even though he is not and the organisation is being deprived of donations. Is this justice?

Some people would hastily state that leaking is a crime, but actually, most crimes are exposed and the criminals caught after a sort of leak — either by the police or a member of the public (civilian). The difference is, Wikileaks exposes some bigwigs who can afford PR operations that falsely characterise Wikileaks as the problem. It’s a deflection tactic. They actually do use those tactics a lot (look up “HBGary”).

In some sense, Wikileaks suffers a similar reputation problem to that of the British public, whose gripes are collectively referred to as “vandalism” and “looting” as it helps trivialisse real grievances. At Wikileaks, praises and awards are received when they expose criminality in rogue African nations, but when the same type of scrutiny is applied to people in the West, suddenly Wikileaks is an “evil plot” that must be shut down. In the UK, when millionaires that include MPs steal from the public, it’s alright, but when misguided individuals steal smaller amounts of money/assets, then it’s a punishable crime that warrants expanding the police’s scale and powers. In both cases, the allegation that the police serves rich people (oppresses the poor and protects the rich) is only further validated. To an extent, the same applies to the court systems, which are themselves run and managed by rich people. See what Julian Assange is being subjected to.

Wikileaks — unlike looters — can be defended without risk of being associated with criminality. The only ‘crime’ of Wikileaks is that it exposes criminals. By doing so, it removes uncivilised people from society. Some leave in disgrace.

Speaking for myself, as someone who wrote about corporate crime over at Techrights, I sure empathise with Wikileaks. It is common for those who expose criminals to be portrayed as criminals and in some cases “poisonous” (a projection from the accused).

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2011 at 4:09 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.