Anonymous as Freedom Fighters - or How I Learned to Love the Internet
Over the past few years there have been a variety of “headless” political movements that have developed, with the Occupy movement, Tea Party, and the Arab Spring being movements that come to mind immediately. The movement that grabs the most attention in the media, yet is the one that the least is known about is Anonymous. Anonymous is a hive collective originating from image boards such as 4chan. It has led DDoS attacks against organizations such as Scientology and for organizations such as PirateBay, WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring uprising. While at first blush, they seem like an organization dedicated to fighting organizations that seek to quell free speech, it is not until you begin to understand the history of the organization that it become apparent what a thin line they walk on.
A Brief History of Lulz: Rickrolling through time
In order to understand the dichotomy that is found innately in Anonymous’ core and how that affects and influences the causes it choses to support, we have to first establish what Anonymous is and define some core tenets. As mentioned previously, Anonymous sprung from an image board named 4chan. This is a board that has no history of what has been posted and the posters have no name. Anonymous originates from a particular section of 4chan, /b/. Quinn Norton, in a Wired article called “Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz,” defines /b/ as, “/b/ is the id of the internet, the collective unconscious’s version of the place from which the base drives arises. There is no sophistication in the slurs, sexuality, and destruction in the savage landscape of /b/ – it’s the natural state of networked man.” This internet space is a space that subverts everything you think is moral and immoral. Pejorative and racist terms are thrown around with a regularity that would make most people uncomfortable – which is exactly why they do. “Terms like ‘nigger’ and ‘faggot’ are common, but not there because of racism and bigotry...Their use is there to keep you out. These words are heads on pikes warning you that further in it gets much worse, and it does” (Norton).
By defining the environment that Anonymous originates from, where the only sense of decency is seemingly having no decency, one has to wonder what commonalities unite the people of /b/ in a broad sense and Anonymous in specific. Andrew Crenshaw makes a compelling argument that there are 3 principals that define Anonymous:
- Do it for the lulz.
- Internet censorship is bad.
- Don’t hurt cats.
Rules one and two being the ones to primarily focus on when considering Anonymous a being capable of political activism. Lulz, coined by Encyclopedia Dramatica, is an internet term for laughing at someone else’s expense. One of the first internet meme’s to originate from /b/ was the meme, “I did it for the Lulz.” Usually a poster would post an offensive image or statement and then follow it up with the statement that they were doing it for the Lulz. This statement would define Anonymous before gaining a sect that is more morally and politically active. According to Norton, Anonymous’ initial raids included, “D0xing, ordering unpaid pizzas, signing people up for embarrassing junk mail were all common raids.” When they weren’t doing raids, they were creating some of the internet’s most popular memes like rickrolling, lolcats and pedobear.
Trolling for a Political Consciousness: Moralfags don Guy Fawkes
Putting Anonymous’ involvement in the Arab Spring movement requires the establishment of a couple more key ideas:
- Is Anonymous an organization or something much less defined?
- Are Anonymous’ actions out of political activism or are they still doing it for the Lulz?
In every address that Anonymous makes directed at the media, they always end with “We are Anonymous, We are legion, We do not forgive, We do not forget.” Looking at this it easy to derive that Anonymous is a collective organization working towards a common goal. While, they profess to be a collective, there is someone somewhere pulling the strings. We only need to look at an organization such as the Tea Party who claim to be leaderless, to see that while they function in nodes with basic principals to unite the nodes, there is still a head such as the Koch brothers controlling the message. Once there is a true understanding of what Anonymous is, a more sinister undercurrent begins to develop under their political actions.
The key to understanding what Anonymous is, it is important to revisit their origin in /b/ and define Anonymous through their terms and language, not ours:
Anonymous is really not a cohesive group, if you can even call it a group. While looking in a Thesaurus for an alternative to the word group, it suggested ‘mess,’ which might be more apropos...The main point is that Anonymous needs to be seen not as an organization, but as a banner term for loosely organized actions using a shared meme as a somewhat common culture and brand (Crenshaw).
Having previously defining what Anonymous is, we can now more accurately address question number two. Is Anonymous a 21st century representation of political activism or are they still just doing it for the Lulz? The answer has to be yes to both items. When you have an entity that is linked purely by the internet culture that birthed, there is going to be a conflict in ambitions – especially if there is no leadership to the organization. Norton writes, “Call them rapists, and they’d laughingly tell you they were child rapists. Accuse them of any crime, and they could point to worse on /b/. Anonymity and the ‘words will never hurt me’ ethic that arose out of the aesthetic of extremes on 4chan made them immune to the Church’s arsenal.” One of the ideas that came from “doing it for the Lulz,” is the idea of “do not feed the trolls.” So, when Anonymous makes someone the target of a raid or DDoS attack, the more the organization expresss displeasure or anger, the more it provokes members of Anonymous, purely because they are doing it for the Lulz. This creates a rift between the Anons that are more politically minded and the Anons that attempt to get get enjoyment at other’s expenses.
DDoS: The Arab Spring Virtual Sit-in
When the Arab Spring uprising began, Anonymous took a very interesting and important approach. Remembering the three principals that unite Anonymous, it is the second one that played a role here, “Internet censorship is bad.” For Anonymous, it was important that there be fair and adequate media coverage about the riots in Tunisia. They were concerned that the western press was not giving the uprisings fair and adequate coverage, and because of this they released an open letter to the media appealing:
It has come to our attention that the ongoing riots in Tunisia have by and large escaped the notice of the major Western news networks. It is the responsibility of the free and open press to report what the censored press cannot. The people of Tunisia have asked for our help and we have responded through launching a new operation, Operation Tunisia. We are asking you, the journalists, to respond to the Tunisians’ appeals for assistance at this most troubling time.
This statement also included a variety of links to information on the uprising. Anonymous implored that this might help the Western news networks to understand the situation. The statement also included in detail a variety of DDoS attacks that they led to shut down any corrupt media that was preventing free speech, while also establishing networking to allow the people of Tunisia an anonymous way of accessing the internet to communicate what was happening. This is an important stage in Anonymous’ development, because this is one of the first times there was not an indication of trolling and that the ‘moralfags’ were the Anons that were primarily directing the focus.
Around this time, Anonymous hacked a variety of Egyptian websites: “Sites belonging to Egypt’s cabinet, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology were inaccessible, most likely due to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, as of 3 p.m. EST.” (Wagenseil). Also during the involvement of the Arab Uprising, an official new sect of Anonymous develped, A(A)A or Anonymous Anarchist Action.
The development of A(A)A is an important moment in Anonymous because it is one of the first times that an official subset of Anonymous has developed. “A(A)A is not a ‘split’ from Anonymous, but rather a group that works inside of Anonymous’s decentralized and open structure, focusing on anti-capitalist targets and solidarity initiatives” (Harrison). They defined themselves as:
This is why, we as members of Anonymous and anarchists, have decided to start an autonomous group to help spread the ideas of anarchism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism and self-organization within it. We want to provide the skills, tools and experience of direct action in the streets, and take advantage of the new resources and techniques of hacktivism.
There are two items that stand-out in this self-definition of A(A)A: the importance of anarchism and the extension of hacktivist tools. By bringing anarchy to the forefront, it looks to be a direct melding of Lulz and political activism. Anarchy can be seen as the furthest possible extension of doing it for the Lulz. Through the extension of hacktivist tools, they are allowing people access to Anonymous without exposing them to the culture and ideas that comprise /b/. In doing this, there is a distillation of the meme that creates the Anonymous brand. By making the tools readily available to anyone – even people without hacking skills, the self-policing, however tenuous that is, now becomes even less apparent. The consequence of this is that it becomes even more difficult to remain on message, as thin as that message is.
Lolcat and PedoBear – Moral Relevancy in the Meme Form
Being a fairly young agency, Anonymous is still working to define itself. As more and more sects develop we will see the line between hero/antihero, activist/Lulz, continue to get blurry. Looking at the good Anonymous has been able to do defending organizations such as Wikileaks and Pirate Bay, helping a revolution with the Arab Springs, it is easy to remain positive and hopefully at their protection of free speech. Though, it is important that they as an organization do not stifle free speech, however disagreeable it is, in the name of protecting free speech. We have already seen instances of them attacking organizations such as Fox News because the message that Fox News is producing doesn’t mesh with the “truth,” whatever that truth is. For Anonymous to reach it’s true potential it needs to remain true to the principal that internet censorship is bad, no matter who is doing the censoring.
Works Cited
Crenshaw, Adrian. “Crude, Inconsistent Threat: Understanding Anonymous.” irongeek. n.p., Web. n.d.
Harrison. “Anonymous Anarchist Action hacktivist group founded.” libcom. n.p., Web. 10 March, 2011.
Norton, Quinn. “Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz.” wired. n.p., Web. 8 Nov. 2011.
Wagenseil, Paul. “Anonymous ‘Hacktivists’ Attack Egyptian Websites.” newsdaily. n.p., Web. 26 Jan. 2011.