I can’t help but feel a twinge of respect for Julian Assange, the Australian Internet activist who has attracted international attention for his website Wikileaks. He and his colleagues represent the next generation of activists or hacktivits, protesting in support of free speech.
Right now, international diplomacy is a mess with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have gone on for years. Tensions are building between North and South Korea and Iran is openly developing nuclear weapons. The United States and Europe teeter on the verge of complete economic collapse. They say the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, so perhaps it is time for a new strategy, one in which the words transparency and accountability are not just buzz words.
Julian Assange is not really a great leader of any sort - he doesn’t write impassioned speeches, he just set up a website which makes available information leaked from a variety of sources. He didn’t write the information and he is not telling lies or inciting violence; he is simply making information available.
Of course, his supporters did cause significant interference to Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and several other sites that took an active stand against Wikileaks. They did this with as few as 400 bots. Imagine what they can do now, as since then, over 40,000 people around the world have downloaded the software to allow their computers to become bots. The Wikileaks site has thousands of online backup servers that will step forward if governments manage to shut down the website.
According to Assange’s lawyer, the U.S. government is trying to pass legislation that would make Wikileaks illegal. Just like many political protests, the movement has become so big that it is now unstoppable. Perhaps it is time for a new government strategy of sitting down and talking openly with the protesters. Perhaps their ideas have some merit.
I find it interesting that Tom Flanagan, former political adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, called for the assignation of Assange. I don’t recall him expressing such passionate outrage over former colonel Russell Williams’ murder of two women and other crimes. Although there have been claims that the police are investigating Flanagan, I have my doubts that there will be any significant action taken. Flanagan claims it was just a joke, but in the current environment where Assange is under serious threat, it is not a funny comment.
In the 1960s and 1970s, young protestors took to the streets and gathered in public places in large groups to demonstrate wars and government policies. Sometimes they would stage sit-ins to block or slow traffic or impede access to government offices. It was a passive and non-violent voice of a generation, demanding accountability from the leadership of the day.
I was only seven years old when the famous Kent State University massacre happened, but I remember the incident unfolding on the news and the resulting backlash of protests. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds into a crowd of unarmed college students, killing four and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia. The nation was shocked. In response, nearly four million students protested, closing over 900 American colleges and universities with student strikes.
But slowly over the years, the protests died down and became a thing of history. It seemed like generations of young people were content to accept government actions, until Wikileaks stirred the pot of unrest simmering on the back burner. Now emerging is a new generation of protesters with a much larger audience. The hactivists have surfaced as the avengers of Internet freedom, free speech and accountability.