Australian Libertarian Society

Julian Assange is a terrorist

Assange's useful idiots rally in Melbourne

Julian Assange has a plan. The plan is to leak lots of information so governments become fearful of leaks. As they become more fearful they become less likely to share information among their departments and appendages. The restriction of information flow will retard government operations and eventually cause their demise. Assange explains:

Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate, and pass it around the conspirators and then act on the result … We can marginalize a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment. . . . An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself.

This is very interesting. Usually anti-state people see transparency in government as a good thing. Many have defended Assange with pro-transparency arguments, but they don’t understand that his objective is the exact opposite; he wants less transparency. He wants to encourage a highly secretive, paranoid government because he feels that it will be less effective in its various ‘conspiracies’ and more susceptible to overthrow.

I’m not sure if I’m sold on the logic but it certainly is logical. Paranoid repressive regimes usually fail and provoking them to become more paranoid and repressive might well have the desired effect. However transparency and accountability in government have been hard won, sometimes very hard. Terrorising governments into repression to incite collapse and revolution puts a lot at risk for a high-minded ideal.

December 10, 2010 Posted by Joseph Clark | General | 17 Comments