::fibreculture:: The Leisure Class as Lynch Mob (Scientology vs. Anonymous)

[Mathieu O'Neil]

Wonderful post, Christian! It made me remember an early US zine / 
hacker activist called Jerod Pore (he used to do 'Poppin Zits' and also 
contributed to 'Factsheet 5' in the early 1990s) who put up a lot of 
anti-scientology stuff on his webpages such as affidavits from ex- 
Church members describing various strange practices and customs. So 
there are definitely some precedents of people attacking scientology 
around the issue of free speech - he was a Libertarian I think..
Cheers,

Mathieu

On 28/01/2008, at 7:52 PM, Christian McCrea wrote:

> In the spirit of continuing some conversations regardless of silence...
>
> I just wanted to ask if anybody has been following the recent events
> of the past week concerning
> the activities of Anonymous and their attack on Church of Scientology
> websites. For those who
> may not be familiar, Anonymous is a named superstructure of internet
> users who post or lurk on
> any of the highly popular -chan image boards. These boards were
> created over the past 5-6 years
> in response to the greater and greater individualisation of the
> internet through Myspace, Facebook,
> where ego management is the prima materia of communication. The -chan
> boards (which I don't
> recommend anybody visit from their work computers) are usually
> intensely puerile arenas where
> people communicate as on a forum, but all forms of naming or
> identification are disallowed, frowned
> upon and banned. A type of anti-social networking, if you like. This
> of course also allows lots of
> very horrible behaviour, as the mask of anonymity completely shatters
> responsible dialogue.
>
> Anybody frequenting these sites is therefore Anonymous, and users
> often ask questions of the
> group - 'Does Anonymous like this band?', 'What does Anonymous think
> of this?', always asked
> by another Anonymous. Every so often, Anonymous would stage raids on
> other virtual communities,
> forums, sites, Second Life, Habbo, and so on with the purpose of mass
> nuisance, disruption of
> services and a crude form of aesthetic commentary.
>
> I became interested in the Anonymous phenomena during some of these
> raids and am uncomfortable
> dismissing them merely as a teenaged leisure lynch mob - although
> those of you thinking this are
> completely right in that impression. Something worthy of comment was
> going on, as people were
> responding to growing up with LJ, Facebook and Myspace by donning
> Anonymous and its trappings
> (anti-political correctness, consistent nuisance generation, a set of
> unfunny memes such as the LOLcats
> later popularised by sites like I Can Haz Cheezburger?)
>
> So I've been fascinated with the events of the past two weeks. Ever
> since that Tom Cruise Scientology
> video leaked, with his claims that only Scientologists can help the
> survivors of a car crash, Anonymous
> has staged a real-life (IRL) raid on Scientology offices the world
> over - protests, fax spamming, and a massive
> 12-day distributed denial of service attack, which has a conservative
> estimate of seven thousand participating
> IP blockers. Which means at the very least that seven thousand
> computers have been set up to hammer
> Scientology webpages, if not that many participants. Everything is
> loosely organised, fast and stupid - and
> even largely ineffective. What interests me, however, is the massive
> scale of the action. Just in the last couple
> of days, dozens of youtube videos showing disruptive activities have
> been gathering views - outside CoS offices
> in dozens of cities.
>
> Those familiar with Scientology's efforts to stifle free speech
> relating to its products in the 1990s can probably
> see this in the light of the internet having a social history. At many
> times during the raids, references to Operation
> Clambake and so on are made. Within a couple of days, the collective
> action morphed from a reaction to the Church
> demanding the Cruise video be taken down from Youtube, into something
> more amorphous. Very surprisingly,
> the attacks are not at Scientology itsel, but are directed at the
> closure of free speech and free access specifically.
>
> This video has become a touchstone for what has become known as
> Project Chanology:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ
>
> Wiki:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
>
> One of the more popular Anonymous rally points:
> http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology
>
> The reason I wanted to bring all this to Fibreculture's attention is
> that we all hear at a fairly regular pace some worry
> that teenagers growing up now are politically apathetic and only
> engaged with the dynamics of leisure. As those invested
> into the social dynamics of technology, events like this are worth
> paying the closest attention to, because they signal
> some remarkable shifts in the activities of a digital leisure class. I
> use the term 'lynch mob' in the subject of this email
> specifically because it is loaded with cultural and racial tensions,
> but also because I don't know of a better term to describe
> what is going on here. The groups involved are using all the languages
> and trappings of revolution and insurrection, capable
> of direct action, global reach, local politics, asymmetrical behaviour
> and cell structure.
>
> If anybody has any context to apply to this phenomena, it could be
> good to unpack what is occuring,
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Christian McCrea
> Swinburne University of Technology
>
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