Julian Assange's Twitter account is gone

As far as I can see it's back, also with the entire history intact.

But without the hundreds of thousands of followers he had before.

Could be "incidentally" removed, then restored through backup when discovered like Trumps personal account.

Seems plausible because some people hate Assange the same amount (or possibly even more) as Trump these days.

Another option would be him temporarily putting his account in the deletion queue then undoing this later. But I can't come up with any good reason why to do this.

didnt he always have a deadmans switch for his twitter account?

Because Twitter won't let "non-state hostile intelligence services" have accounts? Or is it just good old fashioned censorship?

Or maybe he deactivated it to get attention.

Good, he's done nothing but damage to his cause in recent years. Not sure what happened, but glad it's stopped.