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

[Christian McCrea]

Thanks Mathieu,

The 1990s push against Scientology was interesting because it split
people interested in anti-corporate activism but for whom protesting a
specific "religion" was difficult to reconcile with their political
economy. Its quite hard to position anti-Scientology, anti-Landmark
Forum or anti- Alpha Course positions as, say, active leftism - at
least in English speaking countries. Not least of which because every
time a sociologist or academic researcher has so much as looked askew
at the group, they are declared 'Fair Game', and come under massive
pressure.

Also because to become 'Anti' these groups is to devote your life to
it; a passing interest in commentary simply doesn't pay.

However, I believe its worth keeping the candle lit on this because
each of these groups give substantial money to right-wing governments
and organsations, wield significant influence on the operation of
social programs (in which they are primarily interested) and of
course, free speech.

In Australia we also have the Exclusive Brethren, which is an entirely
different kettle of insane fish.

I'm not interested in attacking Scientology at all, but I think that
these incidents (grown exponentially since I made the first post, by
the way) tell a social narrative of the internet that I think is worth
tracing. For every initiative to build a Smart Internet, there is a
Stupid Internet growing on its own. Anonymous is perhaps one of the
least organised, least effective group actions in history but we so
used to asking 'well where are the burning tyres in these online
spaces, where is the activism?', that we may be missing it. This is a
massive distributed denial of service attack being organised by
teenagers who came together over videogames, racist jokes, image
macros and mind-boggling japanese pornography. Some action groups are
forming in ways we didn't expect,  or still don't have a language for.

So on one hand you have this amorphous weird entity formed in the most
bizarre way, and on the other you have Scientology. Its a bit like a
duel between bezerk bureaucratic monsters; a T-Rex and a Stegosaur in
the Land Which Reason Forgot.


-Christian McCrea
Swinburne University of Technology