Re: <nettime> free speech and financialisation

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

"Free speech" has come to mean to protect your wallet for
that enterpise has been "financialized" by media, academia
and NGOs -- and whistleblowers, not to overlook
documentary makers and once honorable alt media. 

Assange is a courageous and creative person, don't smirk
at the journo-formulaic cheap shot, but from the beginning 
he has put fund-raising first on the WL agenda, exaggerated 
WL uniqueness, overstated (with coy understatement) 
its influence, and misrepresents WL's inept security. 
My early critique of those fatal flaws is still valid. 

Although Julian now has a PR team of ghostwriters, bloggers
and quasi-intellects (authorized spokespeople WL brays) 
providing material to advance the crypto-free-speech 
brand he set out to establish with the carny-corny-copyist
Wiki + Leaks.

The e-flux pieces are epitomes of that lucre-driven genre
of unctuous fancy branding. The cliche of artist interlocutors 
stroking one another with sappy artworks and puff-ball questions 
for masterful ghost-scripted pontificating by Julian is pure NYC 
world capitals of capitalism stagecrafting of how commerce 
undergirds the high-branded, prize-winning! culture for 
consumption by blockbuster addicts.

Zizekism fits the bill.




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org