LONDON—Julian Assange expressed support for #Gamergate, Wednesday, during an interview with Vanity Fair at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange is set to release a personal clothing line and spoke to Vanity Fair about his personal life, “I want to dispel the notion that I’m one-dimensional or machine-like. Others have painted false images of me for too long, and the public deserves something closer to reality. I’m into fashion, hiking, as well as video gaming. Believe me, I have a life outside of WikiLeaks.” Assange mused, “CounterStrike and Civilization 2 are games that only get better the more you play them. Some video games are timeless.”
The video gaming industry was recently rocked by the so-called #Gamergate controversy, in which documents were leaked outlining the systematic sexual exploitation of Zoe Quinn by powerful voices in the gaming industry, as well as her payment — lucrative exposure in many of the world’s biggest video game publications. Assange told Vanity Fair, “Gamergate is yet another kind of phenomenon where hackers and whistleblowers have leaked information and exposed evil. I don’t see what’s controversial about that. I support #Gamergate.”
Just a few weeks after its launch, advocates for Gamergate entered a level of group mania that was intolerable for typical browsers of 4chan. After being banned for harping on the same tired #Gamergate story for too long, #Gamergate fans created their own forum, 8chan, accusing 4chan’s creator, Moot, as well as other moderators, of sleeping with the enemy. They now fester away at endless threads about the same tired stuff and continuously send spam emails to members of the news media pleading their case, desperate to change their floundering image. Often employing hacking, doxing, and intimidation campaigns, Internet Sociologist Dr. Cecilia Darwin says, “The Gamergate movement is only one misogynist face of the Anonymous collective.”
Critics of Assange quickly tied his support for Gamergate in with his pending rape charges in Sweden, and anti-Wikileaks spokesperson Greg Mierolo told reporters, “Facing trial for rape is completely unacceptable for Assange’s image, and even the threat of the trial is a black mark. Like all heroes, too many look to the good deeds and not to the bad, but I cannot look past anything, no matter the cause. In trying to masquerade as an actual human, Assange has revealed his utter monstrosity, psychopathy, and misogyny. Is he a rapist? That’s up for the courts to decide.”