Anarchism: Wikileaks: Bukunin with a Macbook?

Prospect Magazine carries an interesting blog by Michael Weiss entitled Bakunin with a MacBook which compares Julian Assange, that Wikileaks fellow, and Mickael Bakunin the 19th Century Russian Anarchist. He muses that Assange might seem like a uniquely 21st century character, but is he simply a modern incarnation of a delusional 19th century anarchist? It is a lively and amusing piece well worth a read if you are studying ideologies.

Weiss writes: The argument over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has so far taken place in a zone of ambiguity. Is he a principled genius or a megalomaniacal nihilist? A fugitive rapist or a political prisoner? The sexually charismatic shaman of web-based “scientific journalism” or the unlikely albinoid saviour of the declining newspaper industry? Much ink has been spilled trying to understand the mind and sensibility of Assange. Most profiles emphasise his resemblance to a Stieg Larsson character, a laptop-wielding crusader that only the 21st-century can have produced. Yet upon closer inspection Assange betrays a striking similarity to a 19th-century historical figure, the willy-nilly anarchist and failed Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin. Click here for the full post.

Here is a reference to a past blog on a recent book on Anarchism called ‘The world that never was’. Click here.