Everybody Loves the Treason; Nobody Loves the Traitor

The public demands immaculate saviors. Julian Assange can’t serve as such; that’s also why we can’t make him the scapegoat.

History is often unfair. It makes demands and sets expectations for those who undertake big projects that they ultimately cannot fulfill. That’s probably what happened with Julian Assange. As the founder and motivating force behind the investigative platform WikiLeaks, he inherited an image of being the super-human hero of the digital information world. The glitz and political power of his project propelled him, comet-like, onto the front pages of the world press. To the many who revered freedom of information in the age of the Internet, he was a hero; to others he became public enemy number one and a traitor — even in the free world.

The old saying that everyone loves the treason but nobody loves the traitor applies to Julian Assange — if only in a very special way. He gave a name and a face to all the aspirations of freedom and expectations of salvation held by those globally connected by the Internet. He gave them his name and his voice and, like no one before him, he challenged the powerful people of the world with WikiLeaks’ policies of disclosure.

Many enemies and much honor — true. But the price for it was very high. His tendency to grandstand cost him a great deal of sympathy and didn’t make life easier for those who admired and sympathized with him the most. That Assange coupled his personal destiny so closely with his relentlessly proclaimed right to the freedom of global information was the source of much criticism and eventually divided his organization.

The public image Assange presented was especially dominated by the highly controversial nature of his projects and the shadows the media coverage cast on Assange himself and his monstrous undertakings. This media birth of a two-headed sort of hero was accompanied by one condition that was absolutely essential for WikiLeaks to work: complex and total protection of all his protagonists’ anonymity. WikiLeaks made organizational privacy and the identities of all its informants an absolute must. The linchpin of the WikiLeaks policy of enlightenment was that nothing could be seen in the dark. In brighter light and without the gray areas, Assange appears as a living monument to the new media world’s buccaneers. And if an informant appears in the headlights, as was the case with the leaked diplomatic dispatches, it poses legitimacy questions for the entire project, even though in this case WikiLeaks made no accusations.

One thing above all was responsible for Assange’s public image taking on messianic dimensions. It’s the idea that one is called personally to systematically make enemies of every powerful figure in the world. And this isn’t limited to just shadowy figures in all nations, but applies also the leaders of liberal and free societies. No one is in danger of being left out or forgotten. At least no one that a person with Julian Assange’s intellectual gifts gets in his sights.

It’s not difficult to find evidence in Assange’s biographical background of the isolation and lack of ties that one who chooses such a profession must fall into even before the advent of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange doesn’t fit into the category of “make a wish” picture puzzles. There are connections. Only the totality of all his personal facets could have allowed him to become commander of this media-political ascension-into-heaven brigade. Make no mistake: No one can protect Assange from the necessity of giving an account of himself for his personal misconduct. The accusations of sexual misconduct in Sweden must be explained legally and morally. According to whose morals, however, is another matter entirely. The Swedish definition of rape is quite narrow, but neither is being a bizarre genius a valid defense.

But whoever wants to use his conspiracy paranoia, his almost obstinate dislike of authority and his strains of megalomania against him should take note of this: Without his extraordinary mixture of personality traits, WikiLeaks would have never come into existence. As an old Native American bit of wisdom runs, “you can’t build a fire in the rain.”

In the land of the Native American, they don’t quite know what to make of WikiLeaks. Leading American politicians want to have Assange assassinated for releasing diplomatic dispatches and Iraq war videos. The same material was made public by the New York Times, but it isn’t subject to such threats. Why not?

Julian Assange and his team have unleashed a global debate about the freedom of information and the legitimacy of security classification in this age of digital media. It’s a necessary debate that should take place without exaggerations or extremist positions. Many of the traditional concepts concerning the media’s informational role are now highly questionable because of the Internet. The production and dissemination of information now appear in a new light across all societies. Questions of legitimacy have been raised from scratch. This debate is also essential because the concept of freedom has to be redefined in every new era according to the new technology available. That has to be uncomfortable, perhaps even upsetting, for anyone seeking political domination.

WikiLeaks has shown what tremendous possibilities for transparency and availability are inherent in universally accessible digital media. Because of that, Assange and his colleagues deserve the thanks of the entire free world.

Therefore: Julian Assange and his team deserve safe conduct.