What's Julian Assange Afraid Of?

Pale-faced in shirt sleeves before a crowd flanked by Metropolitan police officers, Julian Assange looked weary as he stepped out onto the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Sunday. It was his first public appearance in two months, as he’s been hiding in the Georgian mansion just a few feet away from Harrod’s in the posh neighborhood of Kensington. He looked tired, slightly uneasy and a little bit scared.

Even though Ecuador has granted the WikiLeaks founder political asylum, the London police have promised to arrest Assange as soon as he steps foot outside the embassy and send him to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault charges. There was even speculation that they would storm the building despite the provisions of 1961 Vienna convention which declares embassies inviolate. And so, Assange did the best he could, making a podium out of a small ledge above the embassy’s front door and speaking out to a crowd of his supporters as a police helicopter circled above. The Guardian called him the Bolívar of Knightsbridge. It was not meant to be a compliment.

Julian Assange has been in hiding so long, it’s easy to forget how just over a year ago, a cadre of conservatives were calling for his assassination. “We’ve got special ops forces,” said Bob Beckel on Fox Business. “A dead man can’t leak stuff… The guy ought to be — and I’m not for the death penalty — so if I’m not for the death penalty there’s only one way to do it. Illegally, shoot the son of a bitch.” Bill O’Reilly said, “That’s what I’d like to see: a little drone hit Assange.” Sarah Palin asked, “Why was [Assange] not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Rush Limbaugh explained, “Back in the old days when men were men and countries were countries, this guy would’ve died of lead poisoning from a bullet in the brain.”

It’s no surprise that Assange looked timid at the Ecuadorian embassy. He’s apparently not as afraid of facing the sexual assault charges in Sweden as he is of being extradited to the United States, where a real shitstorm awaits. Assange would undoubtedly be tossed into a detention facility, and if the case of his cohort Bradley Manning is any indication of his fate, he’ll probably be there for a long time before he gets a trial. (Manning’s days in detention count is up to 820, by the way.) On the other end of that trial, Manning’s case also suggests, could be the death penalty. This is, of course, assuming some anti-WikiLeaks radical doesn’t fire a sniper rifle at his head in the meantime.

On the other hand, maybe Julian Assange is just trying to distract us. Assange didn’t say a word in his ten minute-long speech about the two sexual assault charges — one for rape and one for molestation — waiting for him in Sweden. He and his posse have generally waxed conspiratorial when talking about the basis of the charges. After his arrest in 2010, Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens said that “dark forces are at work” and “this is part of a greater plan.” But if you take a step back and take into consideration the two women whom Assange allegedly violated, it’s pretty unfair to just write the charges off as some backhanded attack on WikiLeaks. So far, that strategy’s been great at framing Assange as a freedom fighter in exile rather than a rapist on the run.

Let’s not forget how much Assange loves being in the spotlight, though. And in doing so, he often takes to trolling major global powers. As election day approaches, it seems like U.S. politicians have better things to do than bother with Assange. Both Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have steered clear of Assange’s situation in their own public appearances lately. But that doesn’t mean Assange will do the same. “As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of our societies,” Assange asserted from his perch on Sunday. “I ask President Obama to do the right thing: the United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks.” We all know what that really means, though. Julian Assange’s days of speech giving and balcony standing are numbered, because regardless of who catches him, he’s not going to be able to hide forever.