A pasty anarchist/egomaniac, a hilbilly porn-monger and a crusading Jew have been floating around my brain lately, because I’ve been thinking about arseholes whose areholery makes the world a better place.

When Julian Assange isn’t penning anarcho-techhead manifestos that look like they were written to impress the redheaded girl who’s always carrying a book of Marxist poetry around campus, he’s busy shagging that same redheaded girl. And her best friend. In the same week. He’s a slightly creepy little dweeb but what he has achieved with Wikileaks is something both noble and crucial to keeping democracy alive - he has brought truth and accountability to government.

All journalists rely on leaks from insiders but they temper that with the need to stay on reasonable terms with the establishment in order to receive the “friendly” leaks and keep a good seat in the press briefings. Wikileaks has no such relationship to protect, it simply receives the documents, checks them and releases them. The result is not just harassment from the government or corporation in question but also a fundamental change in the way governments do business, communicate and store information. Not all government information can be or should be freely available but Wikileaks is freeing a hell of a lot of stuff we should’ve known and if it were up to government and the MSM, we never would. It’s also putting the fear of god into governments planning on covering up corruption. Good. Thank you Julian.

Speaking of things governments would rather we didn’t see or know about, Larry Flynt comes to mind. He is the owner and publisher of Hustler magazine, a vile “girlie” mag and website that demeans us all: women are nothing more than a collection of body parts to be hunted down, used and thrown away and men are predatory, moisture-seeking shaved-ape flesh missiles. You’re well aware, no doubt, of his court battles in the 70s and 80s over freedom of speech and how his efforts enshrined the First Amendment as an iron-clad right, as dear to Americans as the right to own a gun and be fat and ignorant.

He didn’t stop there, though. When the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11, of course the media went too. The military told them where to sit, what to write, forbade them from travelling through the warzones and provided them with enough explodey-porn to keep them docile and acting as an arm of the DOD propaganda department. One organisation went to the US Supreme Court and said “Hang on, this is bullshit; there are laws which allow reporters to travel and report in and on warzones with a shitload more freedom than this” and forced the military to allow reporters to be reporters. It wasn’t CNN or NBC or FOX or the New York Times. It was Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine; without them we still wouldn’t be seeing civilian casualties, or footage of coffins draped in American flags, nor would we know about abominations like Abu Ghraib or Halliburton.

Jesus of Nazareth, now there was an angry troublemaker looking for a fight. Turfing money lenders out of the Temple and calling the Pharisees a nest of vipers was just a start. Read that “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” bit again – he’s daring them to stand up to him, or admit their hypocrisy. He turned the Jewish religion on its head, gave the bird to the Romans and managed to piss off just about everyone in Judea while he was doing it.

Putting aside the son of god delusions, he was a social reformer, a political trouble maker, he was hated and feared by the power brokers of his day and he changed the course of western civilisation in ways that are impossible to measure.

I wouldn’t rush to friend any of these men on Facebook but I’d sure as hell follow them on Twitter.

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