He's a vocal opponent of current policy. He says the government is keeping secrets from you and lying to you.
His conservative opponents are apoplectic with anger. They are calling for his head. He has been investigated for imaginary federal crimes.
But most of all, his opponents are attacking his character. They are accusing him of being a sexual deviant.
No, I'm not talking about Julian Assange in 2010. I'm talking about Scott Ritter in 2002.
I'm only mildly interested in the documents that Wikileaks have published.
Like the Pentagon Papers that Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971, the documents that Wikileaks are giving the news media aren't all that shocking to most of the thinking public.
The real story here is the official reaction, whether it was Ellsberg in 1972, Ritter in 2002, or Assange in 2010.
Forget the details of the documents for a moment and look at the government reactions.
The Anti-Neocon
Let's start with Scott Ritter. A 12 year veteran of the Marines, he was chief inspector of the weapon inspectors team in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
In a 2000 documentary Ritter claimed that Iraq no longer had WMD's and opposed the policy of trying to remove Saddam Hussein. He predicted a disastrous occupation of Iraq in 2003.
To make matters worse, he also opposed the policy of removing the Taleban from Afghansitan in the days after 9/11.
Ritter was the anti-Republican. The messenger had to be assassinated.
They accused him of taking money from Iraq. They called him the "New Jane Fonda".
The FBI investigated him for being an agent of Iraq. They also investigated his wife for being an agent of the KGB.
Then there was the reaction from the foot soldiers of the right wing. The Weekly Standard called him a liar, even though it turned out that he was telling the truth. CNN questioned his loyalty.
When Ritter still wouldn't STFU then the big guns came out.
Ritter was arrested in 2001 in sex stings with under-age girls, except that the charges were dropped because Ritter didn't know they were under-age, and never actually met the girls. Even though the records were sealed, somehow they made it out to the news media.
Ritter's only real crime was telling the truth when no one wanted to hear it. He compounded his crime by not shutting the Hell up when the powers that be wanted him to.
Wikileaks Takedown
Now compare this to Julian Assange.
He's a physics and mathematics student, computer programmer and an outspoken proponent of free speech. He help found the award winning, whistleblower website Wikileaks in 2006.
Wikileaks was created after Sin Tao was sentenced to 10 years in jail after publishing a Chinese government email.
Over the years Wikileaks has released embarrassing information about various governments, banks and organizations all over the world. They include Guantánamo Bay procedures, the membership list of the far-right British National Party, Bilderberg Group meeting reports, and the 2008 Peru oil scandal, among others.
The governments of the world mostly tolerated it until this past year.
China, Thailand, and most of the Arab middle east began blocking access to Wikileaks. Members and staff have been harassed, monitored and even threatened. It's website hosting has been shut down and been the target of denial-of-service attacks.
The Justice Department is considering prosecuting him under the Espionage Act, despite the fact that he isn't an American and doesn't live in America. The Australian Government is investigating him for breach of national security.
Like the Ritter experience, the right-wing has gone bat-shit crazy.
* "Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?" – Bill Kristol.
* "Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?" – Jonah Goldberg.
* "I won’t think twice if Julian Assange meets the cold blade of an assassin." – Donald Douglas.
The reaction isn't limited to America.
Despite nearly the entire world governments out to get him, Assange hasn't backed down. So, like with Ritter, his character needed to be assassinated.
Sweden has issued rape and sexual harassment warrants for Assange.
Like Ritter, Assange is a being portrayed as a sexual deviant. Like Ritter, the charges look suspicious.
In both cases, no one denies that the incidents with Assange started out as consensual sexual encounters with adults. Like Ritter, the charges against Assange have already been dropped.
Shortly after the investigation opened, however, chief prosecutor Eva Finné overruled the prosecutor on call the night the report was filed, withdrawing the warrant to arrest Assange and saying "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape."
The warrant was revived after Assange had already met with police in Sweden.
It's also worth noting that Sweden has not actually charged Assange with a crime. In fact, the "crime" he is being accused of is literally sex without a condom. One of the women went out and got him breakfast after sex.
Some Perspective
When Daniel Ellsberg, another patriotic Marine, released the Pentagon Papers many people on the right considered him to be a traitor. They accused him of endangering the war effort. It made no difference that he told the truth. They questioned his sanity. The FBI wiretapped him. He was arrested and tried under the Espionage Act. The Nixon Administration broke into his therapist's office in order to dig up dirt on him.
Republicans in 2001-2004 couldn't stand Scott Ritter. It made no difference that he told the truth. It didn't matter to them then, and it doesn't matter to them now.
And now we have Assange. His organization has angered the most repressive governments in the world, as well as democracies. His organization has embarrassed huge multinational corporations. Regular people of the world should be at least modestly supportive of him for no other reason than because he's poked a finger in the eye of their natural enemies.
His crime is telling the truth. Now he's being hounded and slandered.
What I find so surprising and disturbing is how many regular citizens hate people telling them the truth. The government and the corporate media has told us that it is dangerous for us to learn what they are doing in our name, and for some unfathomable reason people believe it. The government says that these leaks are endangering people, but never even attempt to back up the claims. Yet so many people take the government's word at face value, as if they have forgotten all those lies about Iraq and the War on (some) Terror. Right-wingers, who claim to detest and distrust the government, are the first to rush to its defense when threatened by the truth.
It's as if people are scared of freedom.
[Update: Daniel Ellsberg supports Wikileaks.
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
~John F. Kennedy