If you grew up in the hacker-scene of the late 80ies early 90ies it might be easier to empathize with him than what is possible just reading the US/UK/SE documents claiming he is a rapey person that enjoys torturing cats.

I don't think he is either a hero nor a villain, but has the classic mentality of the hacker-scene (both useful but also highly toxic). Broken people (aren't we all?) who try to be larger-than-life figures.

The difference between Assange and the rest is he thought "sticking it to the man" is possible while not living in a safe place that supports his "work". Assange has been living this fantasy of a small good guy who can fight back because of his hacking skills and never grew up from the kid he was. Who hasn't tried to access *.mil domains in the late 80ies or hack a payphone for free international calls? At least everyone bragged about it. There are people still out there today claiming you can issue a "climb command"[0] to the CAN-bus of an aircraft via the infotainment system just so they are liked more on social media (same sad mentality).

His biggest flaw is not taking sides and thinking that he could get away with exposing US interests from US friendly territory. All of the wannabe independent citizen journalists who are successful must be backed by the intelligence community in the country they operate. Bellingcat is a good example because it paints the outfit as something that was bootstrapped by 1 guy without a job in his bedroom (Elliot Higgins) but Elliot has good friends in UK intelligence and Atlantic council. Belingcat does fantastic work but believe not for 1 second that they would be able to drop the intel that Assange did without getting retired quickly. You can not work in IC without choosing a side that you feed the info to and that you also rely on support. Assange thought he could live like a digital nomad traveling on his real passport while literally calling DoS asking to speak to H. Clinton and strongarm her.

His failure to chose a side meant life chose a side for him, by becoming the mouthpiece for Guccifer 2.0 (GRU). I do not think he decided to pick a side suddenly (RU), but that he ended up being a useful idiot that eventually had no choice but to double down. Both so that he isn't seen flip-flopping but also because FVEY already were out to get him. The sheer stupidity of doing all this from Europe and UK is hard to understand . If you upset your own Western government you better have a second passport from China or Russia and don't do it from that country. It's what activists who want to be martyrs do but not journalists or members of the IC. Assange thought he could play in all these camps which is why he will eventually get disappeared into the prison system after this farce of a trial. The biggest casualty other than Assange is the truth.

Also it anyone who who supported him has their own story about how they were hunted/harassed (Jacob Appelbaum, Ola Bini, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, ...)

[0] https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/vulnerable-s...

[1] Australia today isn't a real country but just a propaganda mouthpiece for the US IMHO. Australia is where the most conservative idea that are too insane to be tested in the US get rolled out- check the AABill where the gov can show up demanding you implement a backdoor without being able to disclose it to your employer or end up behind bars. They even have a law now that let's LE plant evidence. There is a fantastic show called "underbelly" (the "Sopranos of Austriala") which does a great job showing how corrupt law enforcement is in Australia.