Julian Assange has never been high on my list of people to invite to dinner. Even before the allegations of sexual abuse, I had been persuaded by some of the media depictions of an egotistical, elitist and aloof intellect who was more interested in proving his superiority than positive social change. In particular, the release of data that directly endangered the lives of security personnel such as troops and intelligence agents set me, if not against him, then at least certainly not with him. His inflexibility about what should be public knowledge pricked me in the same way as Thomas More’s inflexibility in Robert Bolt’s ‘Man for all Seasons’.
Seeing him talk live (even remotely, such as it was) was quite persuasive, however. At the beginning, he seemed quite pale, frail, shaking — perhaps even a little manic. But he was articulate and passionate, and I was quickly caught up in his narrative. His talk of the curse of being curious, the tension between being unencumbered by the sound of suffering and being crushed by the pain in the world. His pragmatic, utilitarian mantra was to ‘change things, in a positive way, on average.’
As a law student, I was also somewhat moved by what he said regarding his current legal predicament. The American’s lack of jurisdictional authority, the determination of the arbitrary nature of his detention by the United Nations, and perhaps even more tellingly that (according to Assange) he has been cleared by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm — all highly suggestive of a politically motivated injustice that breaches concepts of natural justice and the separation of powers.
After a full and long day of intellectual stimulation it’s likely that some of what Assange was saying was lost on me, so I found myself in quite a flap when I suddenly had a journalist quizzing me on the talk. I noted the camera and the phone recording my every word. I was careful to get the reporter’s name, but I wish I’d been a little more careful with the way I spoke – I was just mildly embarrassed to see my words reported verbatim. The reporter had taken no effort to clean up my slightly clumsy sentences and poor grammar. A lesson learnt, however — next time I’ll get Dennis Glover to cover for me.
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