A court sketch of Julian Assange (Image: Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)

“He’s not the Messiah; he’s a very naughty boy,” may be what finally gets inscribed on the tombstone of Julian Assange. History has a habit of serving up tarnished heroes, much as we’d prefer it otherwise.

Like anyone who attains the status of iconic mystery, Assange — not actually seen freely moving in public in a decade — has become less person and more mirror, reflecting the meanings we choose to attach to him and his experiences. What he actually thinks is known only to him, and his lawyers presumably.

The UK High Court’s decision to reverse a lower judge and affirm that Assange can be extradited to the United States where he faces espionage charges over the 2010 WikiLeaks publication of classified intelligence files, has brought Assange back into the spotlight. He’ll try another appeal, no doubt, but it’s looking bad for him now. A long stint in a US federal prison is very much on the cards.

The Americans have no sense of humour about being embarrassed, which was Assange’s real crime. WikiLeaks pulled their pants down, and each president from Obama to Biden has sworn revenge, happily putting aside the ordinarily sacred First Amendment to pursue Assange on the very controversial basis that he is not a journalist but a spy.

Assange’s own government (that’d be Australia) is maintaining the stance it has always had: Julian who?

We have a fabulous track record for extending consular assistance to our citizens who strike legal troubles overseas, often negotiating their way out and home; rescuing Kylie Moore-Gilbert from Iran, where she had been imprisoned as a spy, is a recent glorious example.

In Assange’s case, however, we have done nothing. Australia, the government said the other day, is “not a party to [Assange’s] case”, a statement of the irrelevantly obvious. Our assistance has been limited to reminding the Brits and Americans of “our expectations of due process”. No prisoner swap one foggy night on London Bridge is in prospect (we could at least offer them Tony Abbott back — he wants to go anyway).

Russia was far more forthright in denouncing Assange’s legal persecution, calling the UK court’s decision “a shameful verdict in a political case against a journalist”.

Hang on. Russia? Bastion of the free press?

Well, there’s one of Assange’s problems. According to a lot of accusers, including the US Senate, WikiLeaks actively cooperated with Russian security services to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it released emails stolen from the Democrats, with the evidence strongly pointing to Russia as the thief.

Related, maybe, is the temporary affection Donald Trump had for Assange’s baby back then: “I love WikiLeaks,” he famously proclaimed during the election campaign, referring to it as a “treasure trove”. Whether Trump was an actual Russian babushka doll or just an unwitting beneficiary of Russian espionage activities, his endorsement is hardly beneficial to Assange’s martyrdom claims.

And then there are the rape charges. Lest we forget, when Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, he was facing imminent extradition not to the US but to Sweden. Those charges were never resolved, because he outlasted their statutory time limits in exile, meaning that he is and always will be an alleged rapist.

So — as free speech heroes go, Assange is a problematic candidate. His actions, motivations, history, all open to serious questions which nobody has been able to ask him for many years.

Does that mean he is not deserving of either the protection of his government or the defence of his craft?

That is also problematic. WikiLeaks broke new ground, but mainly in volume and approach, not content. Leaks of classified government material are as old as journalism, and their publication conventionally acknowledged to be journalism. WikiLeaks applied no discretion to its dump; it did not, as most mainstream media would have done, hold back material which might be actually damaging to national security or endanger lives. It was its indiscrimination which called into question whether it could call itself a journalistic pursuit.

That’s a fair question for debate, but frankly the US justice system is a dangerous place to have it. Australia should be giving more serious consideration than it has so far to whether its citizen should be subjected to that risk. It should also be wondering whether justice is still playing any role at all in the Assange saga, or if it has become pure politics, calling for a diplomatic way out of the mess.

The truth, it appears to me, is that there are no heroes in this story. I see little reason to sympathise with Assange’s situation, but I also think the legal process dragging interminably around him has little integrity either. It is, the whole thing, unedifying.