He was the hero of the left who became the champion of the right, held up as both saviour and betrayer – often at the same time.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks stormed to notoriety in 2010 with the largest confidential document leak in modern history, the cable dump blighting those leading the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars and those at the bastion of global power.
![Views on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have shifted.](/web/20161115040354im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/i/n/w/n/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsmbyq.png/1479146874559.jpg)
Conservative commentators called for "traitor" Assange –
now languishing in Ecuador's London embassy – to be jailed for putting America's security, and its security forces, at risk.But with the release of emails from those within the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign – which laid out DNC attitudes towards the Bernie Sanders campaign, as well as interactions with a media already viewed with suspicion – views on Assange began to shift.
The Australian-born Walkley winner had previously made his views on Clinton clear, writing in February that the Democratic nominee was a "war hawk with bad judgement who gets an unseemly emotional rush out of killing people".
The Trump campaign and its supporters seized on the emails with gleeful abandon, dismissing suggestions of Russian involvement in the hacking, while wielding their contents as proof of a media collusion conspiracy.
Suddenly, the man held up as a hero of truth and transparency by those opposed to George W. Bush's America was besmirched as a turncoat, to be lauded by those who once accused him of waging a war against the United States itself.
Assange claimed he had not received any information on the Trump campaign to publish, that the release of the Democrat and Clinton campaign emails was simply a case of fulfilling WikiLeaks' "guiding principle" – "the right to receive and impart true information".
![Julian Assange is confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London.](/web/20161115040354im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/e/t/7/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsmbyq.png/1479146874559.jpg)
"WikiLeaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it. WikiLeaks must publish," he wrote on the eve of the election.
"It must publish and be damned."
One Nation senator Pauline Hanson, amid Champagne celebrations over Donald Trump's election win, made time to ask the President-elect to pardon "an Australian hero".
Senator Hanson called for the "immediate release" of the "Australian citizen and political prisoner", which is not too far away from the call her party's political diametric, the Greens, made in 2012, when the NSW branch condemned the Australian government for it's "lies and inaction" in relation to Assange.
But for those who know him best, Assange is neither hero nor villain, left nor right.
Instead, says Greg Barns, an adviser to both Wikileaks and the man himself, Assange has been held up as a blank screen, on which passionate advocates from both sides of politics have projected their own ideals.
"The idea that WikiLeaks and Assange is on the left or right in the partisan sense was always a fiction," he said.
"The role of WikiLeaks, and Assange, is as a publisher and as an entity and person committed to exposing the rottenness that is modern democracy.
"A system where decent people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are undermined and neutered by the mainstream political, media and corporate establishment."
Mr Barns said he saw firsthand how Assange supporters "wanted him to be their saviour" when he managed the Wikileaks Party campaign during the 2013 election.
He described Assange's personal politics as about "total transparency", to be applied across the board.
"Those who blame WikiLeaks and Assange for the rise of Trump are misguided," he said. "WikiLeaks is a publisher and it had access to Clinton campaign material, not Trump material.
"But Trump material would be welcomed and no doubt Wikileaks will expose the innards of the Trump world at some point in time.
"But what should Wikileaks have done? Self censored, so Hillary – the neo con and candidate who cheated to destroy Sanders' campaign – could be elected?"
While the debate over Assange's alliances rages, authorities were preparing to interview him over sexual assault allegations, six years after they were first raised, and four years after he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The allegations – three of which have already expired because ofSweden's statute of limitations – have been denied by Assange, with his supporters claiming they were politically motivated and designed to have him extradited to the United States over the 2010 WikiLeaks confidential documents release.
Earlier this year, court documents confirmed US investigations into WikiLeaks were ongoing.
Whether they continue under the new administration is yet another unknown.
0 comments
New User? Sign up