Unmasking the "Anonymous" Protest Group

UPDATE, 4:00pm, 9/18/08: Please see the my updated post on the Palin e-mail hacking case, "Epic Fail? Hackers Sought Damaging Evidence on Palin."

**********

The organization originally alleged as hacking into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, known as "Anonymous," has been identified as a "left wing group" by Caleb Howe (the group was videotaped staging some unusual protests at this year's Republican National Convention).

There's some question, however, as to the ideological identification of "Anonymous" as a leftist protest organization.

As one commenter at my previous post indicated:

I think calling Anonymous a group of "liberals" is a stretch. More like bored 14 year olds.

Further, according to information provided by Michelle Malkin:

Anonymous is not exactly a group. It is people using the umbrella of a web discussion board for cover to be as offensive, funny, strange, or whatever as they want.

The Anonymous hackers are associated with the /b/ message board groups of 4chan.org, an image-posting site modeled after a similar webpage in Japan. The New York Times recently published a feature story on Anonymous-style hackers, with this description:

Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

But the original agenda of Anonymous hackers in the Palin case has been to protest the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology, and they've recently gone public with a series wider protests against organized religion:

Hackers who launched a massive online attack against the Church of Scientology are now turning to real-world protests to draw attention to what they call a "vast moneymaking scheme under the guise of 'religion."'

The loosely organized group of hackers, who meet up and coordinate attacks through Internet Relay Chat channels, have set Feb. 10 for a wave of protests at Scientology locations worldwide.

In anonymous postings on the group's Web site, organizers said they are trying to raise awareness about the threats to free speech posed by the church's lawyers, who, the group claims, aggressively try to silence critics by threatening lawsuits. The church said its lawyers follow standard procedures for protecting copyrighted materials.

As noted, in February, the group staged protests in Boston:

A group of more than 50 masked protesters gathered yesterday outside of the Church of Scientology of Boston headquarters on Beacon Street to demonstrate against the policies of the church. Protesters said the event was part of a worldwide demonstration against the church by Anonymous, an informal Internet-based group.

Donning Guy Fawkes masks modeled after those worn in the 2005 film "V for Vendetta," or face coverings improvised with T-shirts or scarves, participants began to assemble in front of the building at the corner of Beacon and Hereford streets around 11 a.m.

The story of Fawkes, an Englishman sentenced to death for attempting to blow up the House of Lords with kegs of gunpowder in 1605, was revived in the fictional "V for Vendetta," in which a crowd of people wear identical masks to challenge the government.

The Guy Fawkes paraphernalia is important in identifying the ideological orientation of Anonymous.

As fans of the movie know, "V" is a revolutionary anarchist who dresses with a Guy Fawkes mask. The film is explicitly anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian, featuring allusions to the "warmongering" policies of the United States government (read the Bush administration).

Anarchism itself is a radical ideology favoring the total elimination of the state and the eradication of private property (a tenet anarchists share with communists). The wearing of Guy Fawkes masks by Anonymous protesters signifies a complete identification of the state as the ultimate threat to human freedom, which is combined with a revolutionary agenda toward the destruction of state institutions and the establishment of a utopian society of universal liberty and human equality.

Further, Anonymous, in its anti-Scientology program - expanded this year to include all church organizations accused of forming a "vast moneymaking scheme" - can be identified ideologically as representing radical left-wing anti-clericalism.

Anti-clericalism is an extreme left revolutionary ideology that seeks to overthrow the iron alliance of church and state in all aspects of the political and public in state-society relations. Revolutionary anti-clericalism emerged particulary during the European Enlightenment of the 16th century, and it saw the full actualization of its violent ideological program against the Catholic Church during the Jacobin stage of the French Revolution of 1792.

According to the latest Malkin report, a lone hacker is claimed to have breached Sarah Palin's personal e-mail accounts. However, at present, the identification of the attacker is unsubstantiated. As Wizbang notes:

Everyday I am learning that there doesn't seem to be a rock bottom for the scum who support Obama. Today we learned that a left wing nut hacked into Sarah Palin's private - PRIVATE - email account and splashed the contents all over the internet. Gawker is a website without any scruples and is promoting Palin's private information even though it was illegally obtained.

Even even if it turns out that the Anonymous hacker (who ILLEGALLY breached Governor Palin's proviate e-mail files) is a solo, non-ideological operator, the response on the establishment political left and the netroots blogosphere has been absolutely disgusting, and is in essence a total endorsement of the violation of the Palin family's dignity and privacy.

See, for example, Lindsay Beyerstein, at the nihilist Firedoglake:

The contents of the inbox confirm that Palin was using her private account for government business. We already knew that Palin's advisers urged her to use private accounts, a la RNC email accounts, in order to circumvent FOIA requests and skirt subpoenas.

Beyerstein apparently has no problem with the hacker's reprehensible actions, which are subject to five years in federal penetentiary upon trial and conviction.

But, of course, that's typical of those on the political left. As Victor Davis Hanson noted yesterday, the current attacks on Sarah Palin and the GOP ticket have "no parallel in modern election history."

The hacking of Sarah Palin's personal e-mail files is so far the most diabolical attack on the GOP vice-presidential nominee to date. Even if we find that a lone, totally unhinged Internet "lulz" geek got lucky in breaching Governor Palin's personal data, the failure of the left-wing political establishment to completely and unequivocally repudiate this most vile "dirty trick" of campaign 2008 reveals the total, unremitting project of ideological demonization among political actors of the contemporary left-wing Democratic establishment.

In sum, there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that's beneath the radical left-Democrat Party alliance in its sickening, immorally grotesque grab for power this year.