The hi-tech anarchist: WikiLeaks

Julian Assange now identifies himselfas the editor of WikiLeaks.  Which then has set off a whole range of discussions on whether what Assange does is journalism at all.

And then there are those who have already branded Assange a threat to national security and that he ought to be arrested. Who would have imagined that Time would have a piece with the title, "Should the US kidnap WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange?"

So, from my home-office in Eugene, Oregon, I have a different take on all these--Assange and WikiLeaks are the latest version of anarchism and anarchists who have always challenged the state and status quo.

It used to be that the meetings of the World Trade Organization or the G-8 or the IMF were the venues that provided anarchists with an outlet for their political and cultural dissent.  Most governments treated them as a nuisance, and every once in a while would make their police reaction so strong that anarchists ended up getting a lot more publicity and sympathy than would otherwise have been the case.

So, to all these rebels without a cause, al Qaeda and the Anglo-American "war on terror" have provided an ideal outlet for their passions, and with quite a focus as well.  This entire format of information-anarchy also works well for them--no need to gather in public places, and no visible confrontation with the establishment.  Given that the wars have affected the entire world now, and given the outright horrors of, say, waterboarding or Guantanamo or ... I can easily imagine that while those of us who are pacifists (or wimpy?) simply blog or write op-eds or grumble to our local Congress member, the young and radical anarchists have WikiLeaks.

To a large extent, this is a sign of the times--the information and technology world in which we live.  If our government can, from the comforts of military bases in Nevada, fly unmanned planes that kill people all the way across the world in Pakistan, then, hey, is it any surprise that these radical dissenters have their own remote operations?
WikiLeaks, I suspect, is only the beginning of all kinds of cyber-activities yet to come.