I was thinking about how Assange holed himself up in an Ecuadorian embassy for years evading extradition, forgot that he was detained by the U.K. in 2019 (he hasn’t been in the headlines for awhile). My bad.
Anyway. Assange is a fringe figure. He has always had an axe to grind against “the West” and the United States in particular. Now I’m not claiming the West, NATO, the U.S., etc. are innocent lambs. What I am saying is that Assange has an ideological agenda that matches up with “anti-West” strongmen like Putin and others around the world whose records on human rights (and visions for the future of the world) are, in my opinion, even worse.
Snowden I don’t think is remotely as bad of an actor, as megalomaniacal or as self-deluded as Assange. It’s my understanding that Snowden ended up in Russia kind of by accident. That said — here Snowden remains in Russia to this day, now a Russian citizen by fiat order of a tyrant who just this year shattered decades of peace in Europe, has holed himself up in a bunker toying with the thought of launching nukes and ending humanity as we know it.
You think Putin gave Snowden citizenship out of the goodness of his heart? No — Snowden’s a useful propaganda tool, who can be wheeled out on command to give a blurb about U.S. perfidy for domestic Russian consumption. Snowden’s a smart enough guy. He must realize the terrible cost of his new citizenship.
Not the life he would have chosen for himself, I’m sure. But it’s the life he’s choosing for himself every day now.
