Poor Julian Assange. Call me a contrarian but I’m genuinely starting to feel sorry for the guy. He’s just made such a mess of his life, hasn’t he? And with such promise. Only a few short years ago he was the world’s most prominent anti-everything activist, with hair like an indie guitarist, feted and worshipped wherever you might find hot Scandinavian revolutionaries, smug old men who work for ‘theguardian’ and Jemima Khan. Now he’s a hermit with hair like Noel Edmonds who lives in a cupboard. It’s a hell of a fall.
Most crushingly, he’s become a figure of fun. Perhaps you noticed him holding a press conference last week, to announce that he might soon leave the Ecuadorian embassy but probably wouldn’t, or something. Journalists did, and Twitter resounded with their hoots of derision. This chump! Remember him? What, does he have a book out?
As it happens, yes. He does have a book out. But nobody will care. There was a time, not so long ago, when British media was in awe of Assange, broadsided by scoop after scoop from sources we couldn’t get near, via methods we couldn’t comprehend.
Yet the Assange show got old, long ago. Those who worked with him he turned upon. Those who merely watched him have observed a sketchy relationship with the truth that makes even the most dubious tabloid hack look like a priest with his hand on a Bible. So often has he shouted the words ‘house arrest’ and ‘detention without trial’ that he possibly even believes them. But nobody else does. Assange has had no trial because he refuses to go to Sweden, where any trial would be. He’s under house arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy only because he himself refuses to leave it.
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