Understanding dual identities of Assange

Chennai

Julian Assange is regarded by many as a hero who uncovered war crimes and corruption and is the father of modern investigative journalism, having dealt with huge amounts of leaked data. But others see him as a traitor, an enemy of the state, an accomplice to Russian President Vladimir Putin, perhaps the man responsible for Donald Trump’s 2016 election as president of the United States — or all of the above.

His disgruntled former employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg once characterised Assange as “brilliant, paranoid, and obsessed with power” and accused him of turning WikiLeaks into an “ego trip” that he had “tied too closely to himself and his belligerent personality.” German magazine Der Spiegel quotes Assange as saying “When you are much smarter than the people around you, you develop an enormous ego — and you get the feeling that any problem can be solved if you put your mind to it.”

Assange’s alleged paranoia, in turn, has proven justified. Since 2010 he has been on a “Manhunting Timeline” list of US intelligence agencies, the online publication Intercept reported, citing secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden. These mention extensive intelligence operations whose goal is to investigate, stop, or at least damage WikiLeaks.

Just when Assange was at the pinnacle of his fame, his reputation was massively damaged for the first time. It was the summer of 2010 and the release of the “Collateral Murder” video had made WikiLeaks a household name around the world. With the “Afghan War Diaries,” Assange became a recognised figure in journalism. Then, on August 21, 2010, the Swedish tabloid Expressen reported that Assange was the subject of rape allegations. This became the basis of an investigation that would go on for years — although no official charges were ever brought against him. The accusation came from two women who walked into a Stockholm police station. Assange said he was not concerned about any proceedings in Sweden, but believed the Swedish allegations were designed to discredit him and were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States.

Gunter Wallraff, a renowned German investigative journalist, told DW that there had been a “character assassination” against Julian Assange. “He has been accused of the worst thing you can accuse someone of in an enlightened society: rape,” he said. The accusations against Assange were contrived to make the man who had uncovered so much a persona non grata, Wallraff believes, citing research by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer.

In the middle of the 2016 US presidential campaign, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails from Democrats, including their presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. These not only damaged Clinton’s election campaign against Donald Trump, but also Julian Assange’s reputation, according to investigative reporter Wallraff.

In this case, public interest in the information was relevant, showing some of the irregular influence of the Democratic party leadership in favour of Hillary Clinton to the detriment of Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

Andy Muller-Maguhn, former spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club, said he visited Assange almost every month during his time in the embassy in his capacity as chairman of the Wau-Holland Foundation, which campaigns for freedom of information. Regarding Assange’s stance on the US election campaign and specifically Hillary Clinton, Muller-Maguhn reports “extremely critical disputes about which comments are still in the spirit of journalism and freedom of information and when it starts to relate to personal disputes.”

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle