Weird. Assange compares himself to Solzhenitsyn— in 2006.

web.archive.org

If there is a book whose feeling captures me it is First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. To feel that home is the comraderie of persecuted, and infact, prosecuted, polymaths in a Stalinist slave labor camp! How close the parallels to my own adventures! What longing one has when reading Solzhenitsyn’s love for his first cell of self similars! Such prosecution in youth is a defining peak experience. To know the state for what it really is! To see through that veneer the educated swear to disbelieve in but still slavishly follow with their hearts!

I know he got arrested for hacking, but I’m fairly sure he got released with a slap on the wrist.

Comparing himself to Solzhenitsyn is pretty goddamn hubristical.