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Comment by henearkr | Hacker News Reader

How is it possible there is not yet a huge mob gathering near the court and threatening to burn everything. Because, this is literally revolting. How many people support that? And how many people are disgusted by that? Would nobody regret doing nothing?

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And then there's the whole Brexit thing, which probably upsets the average UK citizen a lot more than what some dude did years ago.

A lot of people have heard about Wikileaks and Assange, but that doesn't mean that people care or read the news.

I doubt most people care.

Outside of a few friends, I doubt most people I know know that this is 1) going on and 2) who Assange even is.

It doesn't help that Assange is kind of unsavory. It should not affect things, but it does.

also that "mainstream" journalists refuse to recognise him as a journalist and defend his rights like they would one of their own.

> also that "mainstream" journalists refuse to recognise him as a journalist and defend his rights like they would one of their own.

Mainstream American journalists have been bending over backwards doing exactly that with regard to the US indictment, even when it requires rather unusual characterization of what journalism normally entails to make the case.

They haven't been focussed on the extradition because they don't view the extradition as the problem, but the indictment.

It doesn't matter, he is still a journalist, and he has accomplished more than they will in a life time.

It's ten years since he was arrested (just weeks after the Cablegate release - but they'll have you believe that was a complete coincidence).

Kids who were 8 years old at the time can vote now.

It makes you wonder what the world would have looked like, had Wikileaks not been shattered.

It's not just Assange. Arjen Kamphuis disappeared without a trace on a trip in Norway. Ola Bini is jail in Ecuador. Aaron Swartz and James Dolan, who worked on SecureDrop and probably on Wikileaks' own submission system, both committed suicide.

State propaganda ops from all sides rushed in to fill the void after Wikileaks was crippled.

Chelsea Manning is in jail yet again because they're forcing her to testify again and she's refusing

Most people I know think Assange is a Russian asset and Wikileaks is a Russian front organization. (Although I do not.)

Most people don't even know the difference between Snowden and Assange, if they recognize the names at all.

You are correct. And it's the downside of living in an hyper-connected world: there is so much going on that the vast majority of people are numb to everything happening in the world, important or not unless it affects them directly (and I don't count in that "directly" things that will affect them 5 years down the road)

I assume if there were a mob of assange supporters in the UK they would have mobbed near the Ecuadorian embassy and secreted him out of England.

Not necessarily, because, at that time, there was still hope things would go more smoothly, at least not threatening him at this point as we see now.

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