Assange (verb intransitive) To scare bullies.

I wonder if soon there’ll be a new word in English: Assange (verb) To expose hidden activities of the powerful, to scare bullies. Spokespeople for the mega rich might meet in private to confess grimly that they’ve been assanged. The process of obtaining and exposing state secrets might be called an assangement.

OK so we already have ‘whistle-blower’ but what Julian Assange has done is far more than that; it’s simply astonishing how significant this whole episode is.

And I love that he looks kind of creepy. If he had a Che Guevara machismo about him, well…it’d be too cute. And if he fitted the stereotypical bumbling nerd with thick glasses it’d be too easy to explain, it’d fit with all those idiotic ‘geek’ movies Americans seem to love.

No, this guy’s a phenomenon that doesn’t fit a mould. The only thing I can relate him to is that guy at Uni who got massively high grades, wasn’t a dork or a nerd, nor was he a leader or part of the ‘in’ crowd, but all the same he ended up with the most beautiful and enigmatic girl on campus, then later started his own Ad agency and became a millionaire, albeit a lonely one because she went mad left him and she was the only woman he ever really loved. Woops - free associating again.

The question about Assange is what’s his motive? Is he doing it for our benefit – so we can live in a more open and honest society (and is that even a possible outcome of his expositions?) or is it for the glory? Or both?

It seems the effect of his actions is nowhere near as important as the fact that he’s bothering the powerful. That’s the real attraction I think; he’s shaking things up in a way the rest of us can only dream about. He’s making the Whitehouse and 10 Downing Street et al quake in anger and frustration because there’s nothing they can do to get him. And he’s doing it without harming anyone, so it’s even more frustrating for them; they can’t demonise him properly. They can try but it’s not working.

He’s the Andy Warhol of modern politics: brilliant, creative, enigmatic but more or less asexual. This is what makes the Swedish charges bizarre, it’s just too hard to imagine him fucking or even kissing a woman or anyone. He's kind of like Kevin Rudd's wayward cousin.

And even more interesting, no elected politician has the guts to back him. Notice Bob Brown and his Green mates have said nothing. They’ve weighed in to a pile of other non-environment issues like justice, immigration, economics and health – but no, this is too weird, too much chance of being pilloried by the right when it turns out that Assange is…is…heaven knows what, he’s too hard to pin down. Apart from the eccentric left – Pilger and Chomsky, and now a few lobby groups – he’s on his own.

But he’s not, he has a huge following of people. But who? Well that’s the beauty of the man: he represents that group that stands for ‘all the rest of us who aren’t connected with a party, a business or a religion’. And he’s doing it with no pretence, no hubris about ‘doing it for the people’ or fighting on the side of justice and truth. He’s just doing it, poking a stick into the spokes of that gigantic wheel of power, that juggernaut small countries fear because it can make and break them, create coups, set up whole nations like Israel, invade countries on the whim of a few men, place trade sanctions on non-compliant nations, commit war crimes while accusing others of that, implement torture regimes, basically act as if it owns the earth. And all the time it works overtime to invent euphemisms and deceptions to hide those heinous actions. In short, he’s poking a pin into the bubble of the self righteous right wing political machine, and wow, isn’t great to see it stumble and stagger, even if it’s just for a month or two.

The important thing is that while the politicians and cranks (how do you categorise Sarah Palin?) attempt to demonise him, we try not to make him a hero. The less spectacular and saint-like the man is the more chance he has of surviving. We don’t need another martyr. Monty Python comes to mind: ‘He’s not a messiah, he’s just a….a… an ordinary looking, slightly creepy, bloke from Queensland with an IQ of about 160 plus'.

One headline I don’t ever want to see is Assange Assassinated.

* Since writing this, I've been informed Bob Brown has supported Assange's actions if not the man himself. http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3090227.htm