Assange, Manning, Snowden: Heroes or Villains?

[NoRest4Wicked]

It's actually even stupider than that.

You know how like, you read on the internet, a few times a year, some suburban Muslim moron got hooked onto reading the wrong sites on the internet, and then gets a visit by the FBI for offering to help ISIS or Al Qaeda blow up Times Square or something? Snowden is the White Angle Saxon Protestant version of that.

Eddie Snowden has self taught smarts, but a life of pretty low achievement. He got his GED. He dropped out of college. His contractor job at the NSA was not a high level one. But what he did do a lot of was hang out on the internet exactly like the poser terrorist above. He hung out on the internet and read lots of websites and hung out a lot on forums, specifically the Ars Technica forums.

How many posts did he write? Something on the order of 40 a day, mostly on political issues. He lived there, for years.

What I'm describing is a person who got radicalized on the internet, on a forum not terribly different than this one. He saw Julian Assange's leaks, and became political sympathetic to a kind of anarcho-libertarian worldview that was in typical wannabe Al Qaeda suburban terrorist style, naively critical and hostile to American foreign actions. You can even look at how he responds when confronted by people like John Oliver. Edward Snowden is not a man, paradoxically, who likes to question what he assumes to be right.

Now I don't mean to equate Edward Snowden with ISIS or anything dumb like that. But he is an example of another type of internet radicalization. The guy who goes and tries to get to Syria via Turkey have hanging out on an ISIS forum is just the Islamic extremist expression of a larger phenomenon of disenfranchised young people who get stuck in echo chambers and come to believe, somewhat unquestioningly rather extremist things. And to be clear, what Edward Snowden is on record of believing, politically (putting aside the leaks), is very, very far outside the political mainstream in the US or Europe. It is the politics of someone who reads a small group of websites and considers that life experience or all there is that he needs to know.

If you can say one thing about Edward Snowden, it's that he is a essentially a forum political crusader who took his agenda out of the Ars Technica bulletin board and into the real world, which is a lot more than almost any other forum political crusader has ever done. But his entire political philosophy and the justification for his actions is as easily challenged as the wannabe-ISIS footsoldier's justifications for their rage against the West because they both come from the same type of source: websites that tell disenfranchised young people that the world is upside down and wrong for a set of easily comprehensible reasons, and that one type of radical action is the way to make it right.

In the end, like the wannabe ISIS footsoldier, Snowden threw his life away for nothing.

Not a high level one? Snowden is quoted as being a "Genius among geniuses" by NSA employees. He had full system access due to his position as an admin. Even with that, he convinced at least 25 employees to give him their log in information so he could steal all the data without raising suspicions. Snowden was making over 200k a year working with BAH in Hawaii.

[Deleted]

They are heroes, those who hate them value US imperialism over anything.

Snowden is a hero in my book. I don't envy him sitting in Russia.

Black Sea coast is quite nice though.



Freaking palm trees in freaking Russia That's where I'd live, I'm not a fan of cold.

[Deleted]

They are heroes, those who hate them value US imperialism over anything.

Black Sea coast is quite nice though.

Freaking palm trees in freaking Russia That's where I'd live, I'm not a fan of cold.

Weird how we always imagine Russia as some Cold war era communist hellhole, while ignoring that probably most of Russia's population is content with the status quo and live normal, happy lives

[Independent voter]

They are heroes, those who hate them value US imperialism over anything.

The three men are great heroes in foreign nations, like Noam Chomsky.

[Acidbaron]

Weird how we always imagine Russia as some Cold war era communist hellhole, while ignoring that probably most of Russia's population is content with the status quo and live normal, happy lives

If you aren't part of any minority you don't have it bad at all in Russia if you are well then yeah. Being openly gay is a crime and nevermind other religions especially muslims, being any other color then white and you might have some issues to.

[Deleted]

The three men are great heroes in foreign nations, like Noam Chomsky.

Noam chomsky has no statue in berlin.

[Drsolders]

I'm in the middle they tried to do good things but went about it the wrong way and released certain things they shouldn't.

Also it pisses me off they are making statues while they are still alive. We wait until they are dead because we won't have made one for someone who could change. The few people who have ones while they are alive are usually dictators.

[Deleted]

The few people who have ones while they are alive are usually dictators.

Thats untrue people make statues all of the time.

[Independent voter]

Also it pisses me off they are making statues while they are still alive. We wait until they are dead because we won't have made one for someone who could change. The few people who have ones while they are alive are usually dictators.

But by that time they're dead nobody will know what the statues are about! "Who are those three guys?" "Oh."

[Drsolders]

But by that time they're dead nobody will know what the statues are about! "Who are those three guys?" "Oh."

Ignorance is no ones fault but their own, I would rather wait for him to die then be known as the people who built statues to horrible people. Hitler was pretty amazing for Germany if the first several years but ya know.

[Deleted]

Manning was bound to happen the security was too lax. (Petty act of revenge in my oppinion)
Assange is just the messenger.
Snowden genuine whistleblower.

[Drsolders]

Thats untrue people make statues all of the time.

Not normally to people that are still alive. Not saying it doesn't happen but rather it's uncommon.

[Deleted]

Not normally to people that are still alive.

https://twitter.com/Lonniemiller1/st...620480/photo/1

[Drsolders]

https://twitter.com/lonniemiller1/st...620480/photo/1

its not common.

[Wildtree]

I think their motivation is the closest you'll get to whether or not they are heroes or villains.

Snowden: Believes what he did was in the interests of the public and, however naive he may have been, it's a fairly noble cause. Therefore I'd edge him toward the hero camp, but not into it.

Manning: Seems to have done it partly out of spite due to his/her perceived treatment by the military and partly out of what they thought was the public interest. Neither a hero nor a villain, s/he sits in the corner with the dunce cap on.

Assange: He comes across as the sort of person that would refer to himself in the third person. His motivation appears to be Assange, with any benefit to the public a side effect that he doesn't really care about. Definitely not a hero, but not a villain, except perhaps in some Hollywood teen movie, where he'd play the bitchy cheerleader whose only interest is to become head cheerleader and schemes to achieve that goal.

That's hands down the best summary by leaps and bounds in here...
Of course, and it's expected that most Americans won't share the notion of either one of these guys being a hero, but for a whole different reasoning.
I don't consider either one a hero either.
And - this portion I wanna add to what I quoted - that isn't necessarily the point at all.
Maybe the point is more.... Are they not criminals. Because in the US for many, all three are considered that.
The opposite of a hero. A criminal coward.
And as far as the exposure of documents goes, I don't think either one is a criminal.

[Deleted]

its not common.

Yes it is people like statues.
https://www.google.de/search?q=obama...w=1056&bih=533

[Wildtree]

Yes it is people like statues.

I think you're both right.
It used to be, that we had statues made from people who passed away already.
Unless.... you were part of some indoctrinated self glorifying nation, where they erect statues of their leaders everywhere.
Today, that kinda weakened, and statues of still living people became more common.

[Deleted]

Maybe we should seperate just statues and monuments in public space.

The later which is true is rather rare for people who are alive and this is not a memorial statue sort of so this general rule doesnt apply anyway its modern art.

[Wildtree]

Maybe we should seperate just statues and monuments in public space.

The later which is true is rather rare for people who are alive and this is not a memorial statue sort of so this general rule doesnt apply anyway its modern art.

Well now you're killing the thread, by applying facts......

It's an art exhibition..... The statues aren't that at all.... It's an art sculpture and a mobile one with that.
They're going to move from Berlin to Dresden next, where they then be for a few days and so on.
I believe they are already there.... They were supposed to stay in Berlin til May 2nd.

[Kalis]

Not normally to people that are still alive. Not saying it doesn't happen but rather it's uncommon.

It's relatively common...





Dennis Bergkamp...Dennis Bergkamp...Dennis Bergkamp...DENNIS BERGKAMP!