WikiLeaks, Anarchism and Technologies of Dissent Author Curran, Giorel, Gibson, Morgan Published 2013 Journal Title Antipode DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01009.x Copyright Statement © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: WikiLeaks, Anarchism and Technologies of Dissent, Antipode, Vol. 45(2), 2013, pp. 294-314, which has been published in final form at dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01009.x. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/54330 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au WikiLeaks, Anarchism and Technologies of Dissent Abstract: WikiLeaks is a controversial organisation that attracts polarised responses. This is not unexpected given its key objective of exposing the secrets and social control ambitions of the powerful. While its supporters laud its pursuit of an informational commons, its detractors condemn its anti-social character, its megalomania – and its anarchism. It is the latter that particularly interests us here. This paper treats the ‘charge’ of anarchism seriously, however, giving it the analytical attention it warrants. It does this by first identifying those characteristics of the organisation that would render it anarchist, and then to conceptualise what this anarchism means. It highlights two important elements of the WikiLeaks story: the anarchical character of the technologies it utilises to foment its dissent; and the anarchical ethos of the organisation’s radical politics. We conclude by also considering the tensions and contradictions in WikiLeaks that temper both its anarchism and its social change objectives. INTRODUCTION WikiLeaks emerged on the global political stage in earnest in 2010 when it leaked a large number of secret government documents and made them available through its Internet site. The response was loud and immediate, and either highly condemnatory or highly congratulatory. Since its inception several years ago, WikiLeaks has aimed at the direct exposure of the secrets that underpin statist institutions’ social control ambitions. As the organisation’s ‘editor-in-chief’, Julian Assange charged that “a world wide movement of mass leaking is the most cost effective political intervention” for challenging a widespread “governance by conspiracy and fear” (in Gellman 2010). The reaction, from government quarters at least, was unsurprisingly strident and disparaging. Among the general public, however, the reaction was more mixed; ranging from the appalled condemnation some shared with governments, to those who lauded the democratic commitment to information transparency that the organisation seemingly championed. Many of WikiLeaks’ detractors framed their criticism in terms of the organisation’s criminality, its wilful disregard for national and global security, its megalomaniacal character – and its anarchism. Indeed, a spokesperson for the US State Department, P. J. Crowley, intent on fomenting a negative characterisation of WikiLeaks, declared that Assange “is not a journalist” or “a whistleblower”; he is “a political actor … [with] a political agenda … an anarchist” (Indianexpress.com 2010). As general criticism the charge of anarchism is often used loosely and pejoratively, meant to signify the organisation’s anti-social temperament, and its preparedness to sully the norms and practices of a decent social order. This paper is interested in WikiLeaks characterisation as anarchist but treats the charge more substantively than is usually the intent of these general critics. In this paper we thus seek to identify those characteristics of the organisation that would render it anarchist and then to conceptualise what its anarchism means. The story we tell in this paper also has important spatial dimensions. This is because, first, it takes place within a new technological and cyberspatial landscape that has helped (re)shape the contours of contemporary lived experience, with the Internet – a technology that compresses space and time in novels ways – central to this story. As Dodge and Kitchin (2001:xi) observe: information and communication technologies and the cyberspace environment they inhabit are today “radically restructuring the materiality and spatiality of space and … and changing the way we live our lives … regardless of whether we actively use them”. While the nature, scope and implications of this ‘re-shaping’ is highly contested, both within anarchist thought and society more broadly, most agree that these technologies have shaped the contours of economic, social and political life in significant ways – as the processes of globalisation well illustrate. Today’s flexible accumulation regime – enabled by the increasing mobility of capital flows across the globe – necessarily alters “the relationship between the territoriality of political power and the spatiality of capital accumulation” (Harvey in Schouten 2008:1). WikiLeaks seeks to mount a counter- response to the forces of neo-liberal globalisation and the re-worked geographies of inequality and domination that occur in its name. Since the new technologies are an important driver of today’s globalised landscape, ‘hacker’ organisations such as WikiLeaks inject their struggle both through the use of the new technologies, and against the kind of world they have more recently enabled. There is another reason why the spatial dimension is important to the anarchist story we tell here. As Crampton (2003: 1-2) points out, “[s]ocial life is inherently spatial ... we live in, open up, shape, and are shaped by, spaces and places”. Anarchists observe that many of these spaces are colonised by dominant powers that set out to out to shape these spaces in ways that reinforce their domination. Anarchism’s emancipatory focus is hence on the creation of decentralised “free spaces” that challenge prevailing hierarchical and centralised arrangements (see Breitbart 2009). Since anarchists are fundamentally concerned with “the qualities of life of particular places”, David Harvey observes that “the tradition in geography of radicalism” is necessarily anarchist (in Williams 2007). As we discuss, the new technologies offer opportunity for counter- appropriation for emancipatory ends, and this is precisely the opportunity WikiLeaks’ eyes off. This paper thus focuses on two key components of the telling of the WikiLeaks story through an anarchist prism: the anarchical elements of the computer mediated technologies that are utilised, particularly the Internet, and the anarchical ethos of the organisation’s politics. We argue that the interrelated character of these two components is important to understanding the nature of the organisation’s anarchical temperament. Anarchism is, of course, a multifaceted and wide-ranging ideology with “a broad back”; boasting many well know actors and theorists from a range of political backgrounds and positions (see Rocker 1938; Guerin 1970; Marshall 1993; Kinna 2005; Curran 2006; Gordon 2007a). Its political philosophy has seldom commanded the respect of the other ‘major’ ideologies such as liberalism and Marxism, however, with its oeuvre often dismissed as fanciful and its views treated with considerable suspicion, as the current treatment of WikiLeaks highlights. While a robust discussion of anarchism is outside the scope of this paper, and while the identification of its core values runs the risk of simplifying what is in actuality a complex political composition, some isolation of key principles is necessary at the outset in order to proceed with this paper’s narrative. The principles of liberty and autonomy are central to anarchism, and since the state is viewed as the acme of centralised and institutionalised authority, anarchists, by and large, resist it. The tenor of this resistance helps describe the many different varieties and expressions of anarchism. Anarchists are alert to the forces that would trample freedom and agency – particularly the forces of institutional mediation, centralisation and hierarchy. Their anti-authoritarianism (which assumes many forms), and their championing of a necessary correspondence between means and ends, is thus directed towards protecting their animating principles. Throughout the paper we also distinguish between the terms ‘anarchist’ and ‘anarchical’. This reflects our sympathies for some of the more recent scholarship on contemporary anarchism which, generally, distinguishes some actors’ robust ideological embrace of anarchism from those inspired by the force of its analyses and animating principles. For example, Neal (1997) distinguishes between “small a” and “capital A” (or highly ideological) anarchism, a distinction that Graeber (2002) also embraces in part to support his characterisation of “the new anarchists” in the anti- globalisation movement. Utilising similarly conceptualised distinctions, Epstein (2001) talks of anarchism per se and anarchist sensibilities, while Curran (2006) theorises a “post-ideological” anarchism, which refers to the looser and less doctrinal embrace of anarchist ideas and strategies by actors who do not necessarily identify as, in effect, “card-carrying” anarchists. To discuss WikiLeaks’ relationship to anarchism, the paper is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses the theoretical and historical background that informs the WikiLeaks story in important ways. Here it first discusses the anarchical Internet and the emergence of the anarchical hacker cultures that helped shape it; hackers that, in the face of the technology’s eventual commodification, then sought to counter-appropriate it. The second section charts the specific WikiLeaks story, situating it within this theoretical and historical background, before tracing its specific brand of cyber-hacking and the principles and motivations that drive its formation, its organisational shape and its subsequent politics. While this paper is an analysis of the anarchical character of WikiLeaks, due to the towering influence Julian Assange exerts over the formation and trajectory of the organisation, we necessarily pay close attention to his ideas and how they impact upon it. Third, the paper considers WikiLeaks’ anarchism more directly, focusing on some of the elements central to an anarchist praxis and that in turn characterise key aspects of the organisation’s ethos and identity. Finally, the discussion concludes with a critique of WikiLeaks’ more recent praxis and the implications this has for its anarchical ethos more broadly. TECHNOLOGY AND DISSENT Technology has long shaped the fabric of social life. As a key driver of social change, human history is replete with instances of the social transformations driven by technological developments. Computer mediated technologies, and their operation in and creation of a novel spatial landscape, are indeed new and compelling. But technological developments do not emerge in a social or political vacuum, nor is technology neutral. Since their shape, scope and utility is determined by existing social forces technologies “are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning” (Winner 1985:11). With technology such a powerful force, it is no surprise that the anarchist’s view of it is cautious and circumspect. On the one hand, some anarchists celebrate technology’s capacity to improve people’s lot and/or advance libertarian or democratic principles – as in the case of an anarchical WikiLeaks. On the other hand, they are also alert to its potential for social control. Since technology is both socially produced and socially transformative, a distinction is often drawn between the benefits of technology per se, and its power relations – that is, the use to which it is put, the manner and focus of its distribution, and the social and political impacts of its commodification. This is similar to a position Gordon (2009: 492) attributes to what he calls ‘Promethean’ anticapitalists, like Proudhon, who argue it is important to distinguish between the “essence of the technology” which, in its capacity to enhance freedom and creativity, can be seen as “intrinsically positive”; and the “effects of the technology” which, particularly under capitalist power relations, can be viewed as inherently suspect. But the history of technology is also one of its capacity for utilisation in ways that may not have been originally intended. The origins of the Internet, as we discuss below, echo a strong libertarian ethos, even as this ethos was rapidly diluted by its subsequent commodification. Three interrelated characteristics are important to understanding WikiLeaks anarchical engagement with these new technologies. First, while some technologies are viewed as inherently ideological in their capacity to reinforce prevailing power relations, others incorporate design principles that offer the capacity for counter- appropriation in the service of more emancipatory ends. The Internet is one such ‘anarchical’ design technology, particularly through its capacity to generate an informational commons and hence its potential to invigorate democracy (see Crang 2000: 307-317). Yet, as we discuss below, this enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that the actualisation of this libertarian potential is reliant on the physical materialisation of a critical public in public spaces (for instance, in the act of protest). Second, while the Internet has also become increasingly centralised – particularly through a centrally organised domain name system that emerged during the Internet’s early commercialisation and privatisation (see Mueller et al 2007) – its design continues to enable avenues of utilisation that resonate some anarchist values. Third, through a combination of the first two elements, a form of anarchical politics is generated, as exemplified most directly in hacker culture. The dynamic nature of these characteristics is important to conceptualising WikiLeaks as anarchical – particularly through the congruence it can signify between means and ends. Anarchists, Technology and the Internet Since there is no overarching agreement on technology among anarchists, WikiLeaks’ embrace of the democratic capacity of new communication technologies is not necessarily a commitment shared by all. Some anarchists, for example, harbour a staunch opposition to what they consider the unmitigated ravages of technology. This reflects a debate about technology that has, in some form or other, long occupied anarchists’ political repertoire. Anarchist positions on technology are hence conceptualised in a number of often very divergent ways. These positions share, however, an objection to its power relations – regardless of the socio-economic system in which these technologies may be embedded. The claim here is that technologies do not emerge freely and neutrally; rather they are selected or utilised in response to prevailing social relations and ideological objectives. Evoking Foucault’s panopticon, Gordon (2009:496) notes that “[a] society biased toward hierarchy and capitalism generates the entirely rational impetus for … surveillance”. For anarchists, some technologies are hence intrinsically ideological. These technologies – such as nuclear power – are viewed as inherently state-centred and centralising since their operation and control require an extensive and hierarchically organised state apparatus (see Winner 1985:29-37; Gordon 2009:500). This general suspicion of technologies’ power relations is probably a position that WikiLeaks shares, as evidenced in particular by its determination to prevent a democratic cyber space or commons from commercial enclosure. But as a consumer of these technologies, WikiLeaks would not share some anarchists’ resolute opposition to all technologies – indeed, to technologism as a practice and ideology. Anarcho-primitivists or “anti-civilizationists”, such as John Zerzan, for example, oppose the technology-enabled evolution toward civilization, or “symbolic culture”, and view technology as the major tool in the state’s social control armoury (Zerzan 1994). Since technology is heavily implicated in the project of domination and control, anarcho-primitivists and their sympathisers urge that it be opposed in its entirety (see Green Anarchy Collective 2004). This form of technology needs to be clearly distinguished from tools, however: tools help achieve set tasks while the technology project is a fundamentally oppressive one. Other anarchists take a less deterministic approach arguing for “human-scale” technologies in the service of broader, rather than narrowly commodified, social goals. Prominent eco-anarchist and social ecologist, Murray Bookchin, for example, finds much potential in technology. He calls, however, for appropriately scaled and ecologically sound forms of technology – what he labels a “libertarian technics” (1991). Following Lewis Mumford, Bookchin contrasts libertarian technologies (fundamentally egalitarian) to authoritarian ones (fundamentally hegemonic). For Bookchin – and here WikiLeaks would largely concur – it is thus not technology per se that has driven social and ecological ruin – rather it is a technics in the hands of a hierarchical elite that explains its destructive thrust. An Anarchical Internet Whether welcomed or otherwise, information, communication and computer technologies are now a central feature of contemporary life, and the Internet sits at their core. For many (particularly in the West), the Internet can be viewed as the very “fabric of our lives” and communication technologies “the present-day equivalent of electricity in the industrial era” (Castells 2001:1). As a highly sophisticated global communication network, particularly through the interconnected admission it provides to a more accessible informational commons, the Internet has transformed the structures and processes through which economies, politics and society function. Whether this means that it has changed the fundamental nature, as opposed to expression, of unequal power relations is another matter altogether. The Internet may today be a highly commodified tool of the global marketplace, but it was not always so, with the Internet’s libertarian history an interesting one. Before its commercial potential was corralled in earnest, its