- Image: Anonymous Logo - Anynonymoose
In the mire of endless newspaper headlines, it is sometimes difficult to determine how I feel about Anonymous. This is the group of hacktivists who, amongst many other actions, kept the websites of the Egyptian government off-line until President Hosni Mubarak had stepped down. They also launched celebrated attacks upon MasterCard, PayPal, Visa and PostFinance, after each of these companies froze their payment of donations to WikiLeaks.
Anonymous are currently in the news for OperationBART, in the USA. After police reportedly shot dead a civilian, Bay Area Rapid Transit officials thwarted protestors by blocking telecommunications signals in their stations. Anonymous members arrived en masse, in their trademark Guy Fawkes masks, at the BART Civic Center headquarters and in the sub-stations. They objected to censorship and the obstruction of people’s right to protest; and effectively closed several underground stations down through physical occupation.
So are they modern day Wat Tyler figures? Or reckless children, who have grasped too much power too quickly, and will use it to ruin my world for laughs? On behalf of Suite101, I left messages all over the internet. Eventually AnonNietzsche agreed to answer my questions and concerns. The interview was conducted online, during August 24th-25th, 2011.
Anonymous: A Leaderless Collective
Throughout all of the reports about Anonymous, no name has ever surfaced as their head. AnonNietzsche denied being the organisation’s leader, adding, “Anonymous has no leaders.”
“We’re a leaderless collective that bases the validity of what is said on its popularity, not by who says it. It is meme theory at its most basic. No one can speak for the whole of Anonymous, but various people represent the views of specific cells.”
But if there are no leaders, I wondered how the hacktivists decided upon and co-ordinated their actions. Were their operations democratically determined amongst the whole membership, or is there a central core leading the rest?
Anonymous confirmed the former, before clarifying the process, “The usual evolution is a mention of a target, and a justification, which then grows into an operation of some sort. Not every idea gets picked up. But there are hundreds of cells dealing with different aspects of activism, so there is usually a place for most reasonable operations.”
How does Anonymous work?
This afforded a fascinating insight into the workings of these hacktivists, but it didn’t explain their structure. While many groups can be conquered with division, it appeared that they had emerged with their strength being in the isolation of their ‘hundreds of cells’. But perhaps we were looking at this in the wrong way.
I was further informed, “At its core, Anonymous is merely an idea; opposition to governments and institutions that are perceived to impede our rights, or act in a corrupt way. The manifestation of this idea is known as the Anonymous collective.”
An idea is all well and good, but how does someone join it? There were obviously individuals involved in the collective, so how did they get there? Anonymous replied, “As for membership, there are no lists and the concept of official membership is controversial. Anyone who acts in accordance with the general direction of Anonymous is Anonymous. Any rebel that fights a corrupt dictator is Anonymous. Any whistleblower who exposes the lies of a government is Anonymous. We are not just hackers, we are activists.
"The organisation of Anonymous on the web has moved to various IRCs across the internet. Admins and mods exist to keep order, keep the discussion on-topic and to ensure certain bots are in place; but they generally don’t command the operations. We work with a concept of horizontal rule, where no individuals directly command everyone else.”
Anonymous and 4Chan: When it’s Time for the ‘Lulz’ to get Serious
One of the most common statements that I’ve heard about Anonymous is that they are an extension of the rowdy youth forum, 4Chan. The site has drawn criticism, primarily from the Murdoch-owned Fox News, for its profusion of sometimes cruel practical joking and internal cyber-bullying. There are allegedly no sacred cows in 4Chan, as members attempt to out-do each other in shock posts and daring. It is not a great stretch of the imagination to see Anonymous as an initial 4Chan stunt, that turned out to suit the zeitgeist of the day.
I decided to be blunt in my question, ‘Is it fair to say that you are all teenagers, who tired of ‘trolling’ each other on 4Chan, so decided to target governments and corporations just for a laugh?’
Anonymous had obviously heard it all before. After all, this is how they are frequently stereotyped in the media. “All three statements are unfair generalisations. We are not all young, though there is a reason the young are so disenfranchised with their governments. Many are facing worse economic situations than their parents or grandparents did. They are entering a working world, where there are no jobs for them; and the possibility of getting qualifications, in further education, has been snatched away from them. To expect compliance from this demographic is expecting too much.”
However, the past link with 4Chan was not denied. “The origin of Anonymous does owe its existence to 4Chan. The reason many of us moved on was not to target these organisations for laughs, but because we saw corruption or behaviour that we opposed.”
Anonymous: Heroes or Villains?
It appeared that some of my preconceived notions about Anonymous were incorrect. The hacktivists were deadly serious about their operations and certainly viewed themselves closer to Wat Tyler than 4Chan jokers. There were mature voices amongst the collective, being heard in an on-going referendum system. It appeared more democratic than the process by which my country is run!
It is perhaps too soon to determine the impact of Anonymous – that will be something for the historians of the future to write. As Wat Tyler himself teaches us, a society never can identify its heroes from its villains at the time.
Sources:
- 4Chan.
- Fox News, 4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet. (April 8th, 2009.)
- The Guardian, WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers. (December 15, 2010.)
- New York Times, Hackers Shut Down Government Sites. (February 2, 2011.)
- PCMag, Anonymous BART Protest Shuts Down Several Underground Stations. (August 15, 2011.)
Jo Harrington - Jo has a BA (Hons) in History and Philosophy and a MA in History. She has a book published on the history of Wicca.
