Image via Complex Original
This Friday, Julian Assange comes to movie theaters in Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, a political thriller about the founder of WikiLeaks. Benedict Cumberbatch, riding the success of Sherlock and Star Trek Into Darkness, plays the silver-haired Australian activist who captured the world's attention in 2010 when his organization leaked video footage of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrikes under the title Collateral Murder. This leak brought the organization unprecedented attention, though WikiLeaks had been in existence for four years at that point.
A fictionalized account of Assange's work, The Fifth Estate can't possibly include all the crazy moments from the activist's rich biography. But here's to hoping it accounts for most of the juiciest bits. These are the Most Bizarre Facts About Julian Assange That We Hope Make It Into The Fifth Estate.
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As a child, he lived on an old abandoned pineapple farm in Horeshoe Bay on Magnetic Island where he built his own rafts, explored tunnels, and had his own horse. "Most of this period of my childhood was pretty Tom Sawyer," Assange told the New Yorker.
[via Townsville Bulletin]
His mother believed a formal education would instill an unhealthy respect for authority in her children and diminish their will to learn.
He recalls moving over 50 times and attending 37 different schools throughout his childhood.
When he was 16, he began hacking under the name Mendax, meaning nobly untruthful.
He's part of a cyberpunk movement that posits that mathematics and individuals are stronger than superpowers.
He has been threatened by the Church of Scientology, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, British bank Northern Rock, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, the Pentagon, and Swiss banks.
He's politically inspired not by anarchist ideals but rather anti-Stalinism, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and radical U.S. traditions like the Black Panthers.
He started a Bachelor of Science degree at Central Queensland University focusing mostly on pure mathematics. He averaged about a D and eventually dropped out to focus on WikiLeaks.
Not the ideal house guest, Assange is known for being argumentative, self-absorbed, paranoid, having poor personal hygiene, and forgetting to flush the toilet. Though he is apparently good with kids.
During the first two months of his year long confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the consul, Fidel Narváez, slept at the embassy to maintain a diplomatic presence at all times in order to protect Assange from police hostilities.
[via]
On his 41st birthday, July 3, 2012, Assange sent cake to all of the demonstrators protesting his confinement at the embassy.
His paranoia is contagious. While in Sweden, he was thrown out of a woman's house because she was afraid the C.I.A. was going to find him.
During Project B, the 38-minute viral video that showed American soldiers openly shooting unarmed journalists, Assange, his team,and half a dozen computers holed up in a century-old house in Reykjavik, Iceland. Assange made sure the stark white interiors never saw the light of day and kept the drapes closed 24/7.
In an effort to raise more money for WikiLeaks, Assange has entertained M.I.A., Lady Gaga, John Cusack, and others for dinner while at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Assange urged Benedict Cumberbatch not to do the film, calling it a "massive propaganda attack."
[via SMH]