Julian Assange is Still Being Dehumanised in Media Whose Owners Wikileaks Berated (With Underlying Facts or Leaks)
LAST month we spent a considerable amount of time researching whether "Embassy Cat" (Michi) was still alive, based on old(er) press reports. A video was posted of the cat after Julian Assange had been kidnapped and the cat was transported to Assange's family in Australia. Not much is said in Wikipedia edits/changes and it's mostly "ad hom" gossip in the "Talk" page (typical Wikipedia [1, 2], serving very affluent sponsors by praising them and dishing ad hominem at their critics/exposers).
Why does all this matter? To understand the "PR" angle of getting a kitten and telling the public that Julian's children bought it for him one must go back to 2010 to the "Assange tortured my cat" tall tales from a bitter Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The idea was to paint or to frame Julian as an apathetic or rather cruel animal abuser. We see such tactics all the time in the political scene/sphere.
How does one inoculate oneself against these non-starters or seemingly plausible ad hominem cheap shots? First, identify who spreads them. We saw the same tactics used against Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and various Free software communities wrongly or baselessly vilified as "nazis" (typically that just meant that heterosexual males led them).
Wikileaks and Free software aren't the same thing. Nevertheless, the tactics used to infiltrate or discredit both ought to be understood. █