In Assange's situation, I would have made the same gamble.
It's only logical to hedge a potentially decade-long sentence with a likely inescapable two year sentence.
When the charges are bogus and you know that they are being used to censor your work, which positively impacts the lives of millions of people, you may also consider it your civil duty to evade a wrongful arrest.
I'm incapable of providing a good reason why Assange should have just submitted to the bogus rape charges.
And the fact that sympathizing with him in this regard in an open forum has a high chance of impacting my civil freedoms at some point in the future just magnifies the impact of the work he was trying to achieve when all of this started.
> So, in the initial phase, he gets to decide that charges against him are bogus, and that he doesn't need to submit?
Are you supposed to let your accuser have 100% say in whether you are guilty, even if you believe the system is rigged against you and you are acting in good faith?
Such an attitude is subservient and enables totalitarian governments to operate under the guise of justice.
You have to understand that nothing gives any body of government legitimacy just because other governments recognize it. The only thing that gives your government power is your permission as a citizen. My country was founded on this sentiment.
When Martin Luther King said:[0]
"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law,"
he was not thinking of whistleblowers and the fact that their greatest impact on society comes from maintaining their sovereignty in spite of globally coordinated efforts to censor and imprison them.
Assange was operating in good faith that his life's work might end the moment he stepped foot back in Sweden. He chose not to recognize the authority of a State he was actively politically engaged with. Countries do this every day.
Just because he doesn't have an army behind him to legitimize his claim to sovereignty, doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to that claim and the right to achieve his sovereignty by any means that can be ethically justified.
To claim that he does not get the right to decide for himself, as all men do, whether to recognize what a particular group of people with guns and land command of him, is to claim that he is not human, because that is a natural human right.
I have personally been the victim of an illegal charge despite overwhelming evidence in my favor, and received the maximum possible fines and jail sentence. Going to jail made sense because I wanted to just get my life back on track after my government destroyed it, as soon as possible. But it was not the morally responsible thing to do. I didn't even commit the crime I was convicted for. The morally responsible thing to do would have been to not submit myself to the illegitimate city government which prosecuted me.
> I'd love to know what civil freedoms of yours you believe are going to be impinged by virtue of this post.
Any number of things.
My country asks for social media accounts when applying for a passport, sure it's optional now, but give it time.
Automation and machine analysis will ensure my Hacker News account factors into my Social Credit score.
If you get out from under your rock you would see similar things happening in many countries across the globe.
Or you could believe that your reputation is so important that you should defend your self responsibility for your crimes to preserve the credibility of your civil work.
Why would one believe such a silly thing? If I heard a doctor was accused (or even convicted) of shoplifting that wouldn't ruin the credibility of the lives they have saved. If Galileo was also a racist and a murderer that wouldn't reflect poorly on heliocentrism (although he probably wouldn't have a satellite navigation system named after him).
Even if Assange had violently raped and murdered multiple people (which would absolutely make him a terrible person) how would that affect the credibility of his civil work in any way? Does it make the truths that he helped expose any less true?
It's only logical to hedge a potentially decade-long sentence with a likely inescapable two year sentence.
When the charges are bogus and you know that they are being used to censor your work, which positively impacts the lives of millions of people, you may also consider it your civil duty to evade a wrongful arrest.
I'm incapable of providing a good reason why Assange should have just submitted to the bogus rape charges.
And the fact that sympathizing with him in this regard in an open forum has a high chance of impacting my civil freedoms at some point in the future just magnifies the impact of the work he was trying to achieve when all of this started.