On February 14, The Intercept published details of leaked private messages from inside Wikileaks, painting a picture Julian Assange’s world as self-serving, mysognynistic, and peddling Kremlin a world view.
The private conversations dispell any myths of public spirited behaviour being at the heart of Julian Assange’s operation, exposing the targeted trolling of journalists and public officials.
The Intercept said: “Twitter messages obtained by The Intercept provide an unfiltered window
into WikiLeaks’ political goals before it dove into the white-hot center
of the presidential election. The messages also reveal a running theme
of sexism and misogyny, contain hints of anti-Semitism, and underline
Assange’s well-documented obsession with his public image.”
“Be the troll you want to see in the world….Did you hit all the mps?”
Commencing with some disturbing views on the trans community, the messages, stretching back to 2015, indicate that in May 2015 Assange was co-ordinating some effort on Twitter to influence UK MPs.
Though The Intercept has not published the full context of the exchanges, the Wikileaks account wrote to one user: “Be the troll you want to see in the world….Did you hit all the mps? Also, can you change your icon to something less creepy.”
The conversation around UK MPs continued in June, with one unnamed Conservative parliamentarian being referred to as a “twat” in an exchange which saw Wikileaks giving advice on the creation of fake personas for the use in trolling of public officials.
“You could just change the name of your account and the icon to a pretty blonde…He won’t know the new name. And the blonde–studies show attractive women as icons open up resistant social groups of men, such as MPs. Or just create a new account to do this…Pick a dead actress if you want plausible deniability, where the image represents a statement, rather than a person.”
Targeted trolling continued at Wikileak’s behest in November, this time aiming for a journalist at the BBC, Christopher Cook.
“Please troll this BBC idiot: https://twitter.com/xtophercook/with_replies,” Wikileaks wrote, adding: “Our interest is in having inflamitory tweets from him about JA/WL that we can use in legal cases to show that a toxic climate exists [in] the UK.”
“Kalingrad, Crimea, and its only foreign naval base, Syria are all
under threat and are not protected by Russia’s strategic depth.
Meanwhile the US hacks the hell out of it, and attempts to forment an
orange revolution in an explicitly stated policy of regime change.”
In further exchanges in June 2015, Wikileaks pushed known Kremlin disinformation narratives to users, writing: “Kalingrad, Crimea, and its only foreign naval base, Syria are all under threat and are not protected by Russia’s strategic depth. Meanwhile the US hacks the hell out of it, and attempts to forment an orange revolution in an explicitly stated policy of regime change.”
“US next generation weapons are serious advancements. It’s play in Ukraine was in Russia’s sister country, and so the Russian ruling class are terrified the same thing could happen to them,” Wikileaks added.
Ukraine is known to be the most extensive and successful test-bed for Russian disinformation campaigns and cyber attack operations in the world.
“…the accusation industry is highly profitable.”
With Assange still wanted for rape in Sweden, the Wikileaks account, referring to the founder as JA, outlined a distorted view of rape victims and support for them in August 2015.
“A few years ago in Sweden they intruced a measure which superficially sounds reasonable, to provide alleged victims with their own state funded lawyers. owever, look at how it works in practice. The accused is up against a state funded team from the prosecution, another from the police, and, say in JA’s case, another two state funded lawyers for the accusers…So the accusation industry is highly profitable. Almost nothing to do other than bill the state for advertising your own law firm.”
“We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.”
By November 2015, Wikileaks had shifted focus to the 2016 US Presidential Election and Hilary Clinton, writing: “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win. Dems+Media+liberals woudl then form a block to reign in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities.,dems+media+neoliberals will be mute. She’s a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”
“Perhaps Hillary will have a stroke,” Wikileaks added in March 2016.
By August 2016, as increasing concerns of Russian interference in the US Election began to gather pace, Wikileaks planned targeted action against individuals raising the alarm.
“Bog him down. Get him to show statements of his bias. He’s the son of David Satter, who is mentioned in our cables. DS is a senior member of the Hudson institute and a well known Russia basher and NSA apologist. He was expelled from Russia in 2008 and 2014. Rafael grew up in Washington DC.”
Rafael Satter, an Associated Press reporter, later wrote at length about journalists exposing the Russian election hack being targeted by Russia and its affiliates.
While The Intercept asserts Julian Assange personally manages the Wikileaks side of the conversation, this cannot be confirmed.
It is clear that Wikileaks operates to sole benefit of Assange’s personal agenda in terms of rape allegations against him, that the organisation is overtly aligned with Kremlin ideology, and it promotes targeted trolling of public officials and journalists.
This article has been forwarded to the UK’s Fake News Inquiry, with a request to forward it to colleagues in the US Senate, and the Wikileaks and Julian Assange accounts on Twitter have been reported due to their clear involvement in targeted trolling of journalists and public officials in breach of the social media platform’s terms of service.
Assange lost his latest appeal against an arrest warrant in the United Kingdom on February 13, with the judge delivering a withering ruling against him saying: “He appears to consider himself above the normal rules of law.”
Where a public interest exists in excerpts of the private messages, The Intercept has made them available online.