Swedish human rights activist Anna Ardin is glad Julian Assange is free.
But the claims she has made about him suggest she would have every reason not to wish him well.
Ardin is fiercely proud of Assange’s work for WikiLeaks, and insists that it should never have landed him behind bars.
“We have the right to know about the wars that are fought in our name,” she says.
Speaking to Ardin over Zoom in Stockholm, it quickly becomes clear that she has no problem keeping what she sees as the two Assanges apart in her head - the visionary activist and the man who she says does not treat women well.
She is at pains to describe him neither as a hero nor a monster, but a complicated man.
Yes. I feel that if someone has done good work, even if they are a horrible person, acknowledging the good work is the right thing to do. Even if they wrong you personally. That makes it much more difficult, but I still think it’s something that needs to be done.
My former best friend ripped my mom off for drug money by lying about what he needed it for and is now in prison for possessing meth lab equipment. He’s a horrible person in a lot of ways. But I will still acknowledge the good things he did as good things (he was always willing to give someone a place to stay if they needed it and for as long as they needed it, for example) even if he has done things I can’t forgive him for.
I guess in my view, the bad has to far outweigh the good if you’re going to ignore the good and I think that, while I also have a lot of criticisms about what he has done with Wikileaks, especially around the 2016 election, I also think that Wikileaks- at least when it began- did a lot of good. And credit does go to him for that despite anything else. His victim in the article seems to agree.
Fair enough. Thanks for the elaboration and discussion.