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Many in my tribe won’t like what I’m about to write, but I’ve never been a fan of Julian Assange. At best, since 2016, I’ve been ambivalent towards him. Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire to see him locked up any longer, but I have never seen him as some pure-hearted victim, or his deeds as obviously entirely just and responsible.

Here’s the thing: to me over the years, he’s really struck me for the most part as a weird, narcissistic guy with a messiah complex who pretty recklessly saw to it that hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents were made available for everyone to see, including Australia, Britain, and the United States’ enemies.

In 2010, working with Chelsea Manning, a very messed up man who seemed to want revenge against the world for a tragic life, Assange saw to it that anywhere between 500,000-750,000 classified documents were made available on his website WikiLeaks. Most of these were classified military and diplomacy documents dealing with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reckless

I’m not denying for one second that there were documents there clearly in the public’s interest, and documents that exposed corruption and evil.

But at the same time, you can’t tell me that Assange and his helpers could possibly have scanned all these hundreds of thousands of documents to make sure there was nothing in them compromising our military forces or our countries. That was a reckless act.

It’s one thing to upload footage of US helicopters opening fire on innocent civilians; it’s quite another thing to indiscriminately dump hundreds and hundreds of thousands of documents into the public space for anyone to go through.

There are really bad people out there, and they’re not all just part of the American government and swamp. Assange potentially handed very sensitive information to people who would do our countries and soldiers harm.

Anarchist

So, if people want to celebrate the release of Julian Assange, fine, I get it. But I don’t think this guy is a straight-up hero or martyr for free speech, and I think the situation is far more complex than the dominant narrative of one innocent, pure-hearted guy finally getting justice.

I tend to see him as a megalomaniacal anarchist, with no national allegiance, who may have cared about injustices against some people, but who also didn’t care one little bit about potentially compromising the safety of other people in his quest for “justice” (or, just as likely, fame).

As always, happy for folks from all sides to debate the issue.

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