Who speaks for Anonymous?
Traffic to this blog has exploded in the past day thanks to my post suggesting that the anti-Scientology organization Anonymous is a Stand Alone Complex. Being a Stand Alone Complex, there are no leaders, no chain of command, no orders, little cohesive organization, and the meaning of Anonymous is pretty much open to interpretation to each stand alone individual (within the overall bounds of anti-Scientology, which defines the overarching movement). Yet there are people commenting on this blog who insist that I don’t have the meaning right, that the Anonymous movement is tackling the organization and practices of the Church of Scientology itself, but not any of its attendant beliefs. Is that really a meaningful distinction though?
The church and the beliefs it exists to espouse are one and the same. The church only exists as a result of the beliefs. If nobody held the beliefs that being a Scientologist entails, then there would be no Church of Scientology, and thus none of the evils that Anonymous exists to fight against. This curious habit of semantic nitpicking amongst the anti-Scientologists speaks to a complex dance of mental contortion caused more by attempted rationalization than logical consistency. After all, isn’t it hypocritical to attack someone else’s beliefs when your own are no less believable? I’m looking at you, mainstream religions. Is Xenu blowing up a bunch of aliens with atomic bombs any more believable than creating the universe in seven days, with the light from the Sun created two days before the Sun itself? At least the Xenu story is possible, though unlikely. The desire to avoid tackling these issues of indefensible taking things on faith is the reason for the weird parsing of exactly what is under attack, as seen in this comment left on this blog:
Anonymous does not protest Scientology. Scientology is at its core perfectly valid belief; if someone wants to believe this Xenu stuff, he’s certainly free to do so. Anonymous protests the Church and its actions rather than the movement itself; it considers other independent Scientologists, such as the Free Zoners, to be its friends and allies even though those groups may not be participating directly in the movement against the church.
Is Scientology really at its core a perfectly valid belief? No, of course not. Some of the evils Anonymous is attacking Scientology for are caused by its deranged belief that psychiatry is dangerous, that psychiatric drugs cause harm rather than do good. Scientology’s beliefs have directly been responsible for murders and suicides when bipolar and schizophrenic individuals who needed serious medication were instead told that auditing could solve their problems, with deadly results. It’s no less acceptable of a belief than that of the Jehovah’s witnesses who rather would let their children die than receive a life-saving blood transfusion or organ transplant. These beliefs deserve condemnation because they are wrong and harmful, not respect because they are “sincerely held”. After all, you know who else had sincerely held beliefs?
I should carefully point out here that I am not advocating fascism; I am not advocating that we make people give up their silly beliefs by force. But I do think it is entirely acceptable to argue against the beliefs, to present reasons why they are flawed and dangerous, and to attempt as fervently as possible to get the adherents to cast them aside. Thus, attacking the beliefs of Scientology really is within the bounds of the Anonymous movement. And if it wasn’t, how can you explain all of those protest banners I’ve seen in pictures from the February 10 raids that directly and openly mock Scientology beliefs? By the very nature of a Stand Alone Complex, if a lot of the members of a movement think something is in bounds as part of the movement, then it is!
So keep making fun of Xenu all you want. I know I will be.
February 11th, 2008 at 17:18
Anonymous is not claiming that Scientology is any less a valid belief than a group like Jehovahs Witnesses. Note that we’re not claiming its any more of one either. Picking on their beliefs is just shooting fish in a barrel; everyone’s done it. Even South Park. But, here’s the big s3cr3t concerning our ‘mental contortions’ and our hard-to-impose specificity in our cause (which, due to this being as you say a Stand Alone Complex, is very hard to make any such unified cause apply to all Anonymous.)
First off, if I remember your earlier posts correctly, you didn’t know a lot about Anonymous before this event. I’ll give you the brief, meme-filled rundown without breaking some of Anonymous’ sacred rules that can be found on google: we emerged from a loose confederation of warring websites last thursday discovering that, in a environment where there were virtually no rules, we could do whatever we want, say whatever we want, post whatever we want without fear of reprisal. The environment we thrived in was epic, and a trademark case of why anarchy would never work. There was much infighting to be had. But, like the Europeans flooding out into the holy land during the Crusades, we discovered that we could unite by finding common enemies outside of our little conglomoration. We attacked with the full armada of the intertubes, and discovered our greatest weapon; our anonymity. None of us knew eachother. Our enemies didn’t know us. We didn’t know who came up with the idea to raid our targets in the first place. To put it in your terms, it was a series of Stand Alone Complexes. A vast legion of individuals scurrying forth from the internet to attack targets who had been deemed fail, annoying, or just plain had it coming.
With each raid, our numbers grew. Word spread about our activities, and more flocked to our cause. One member didn’t have to fall to have 10 take his place; by the time the battle was over, over 9000 had joined the ambiguous armada known as Anonymous. We became the final boss of the internet.
Then the recent events involving the Tom Cruise video occured. This is where we broke with tradition. Before, we would fall upon our prey unannounced, striking with surprise and anonymity, and emerging from the battle not only unscathed, but reinforced with more newbies to our cause of lulz. With this raid, however, Anonymous decided that publicity was needed. We had never before called upon reinforcements, otherwise known by the meme /b/lackup, BEFORE a raid. As such, we found our ranks swelled with Anonymous who had no part in our previous activities. Just look at the youtube videos of news reports from clearwater; some of the protestors admitted they were not Anon, but played by the rules laid out by Anonymous.
And now, without further ado, the best educated answer that can be made by an unofficial spokesperson for Anon as to why we are attacking not the religious beliefs, not the members, but the institution and corrupt practices of scientology.
1) Face it, the general public knew NOTHING of Scientology. For all the news reports, online articles, and general scientology hate groups, the average joe on the street would think upon first hearing of Scientology that it’s just another religion. What right do we have to protest a religion? First amendment states that the government can take no action to supress a person’s religious beliefs. What the government can do, however, is bring justice to an organization that has brought pain and suffering to innocents, has virtually enslaved people to work for it, and various other atrocities. Tell Joe about Xenu, and he’ll laugh. Tell Joe about female members of Scientology being forced to get abortions so they can continue to act as manual labor aboard Scientology’s SeaOrg, and he will ask about why the group still exists. Also, when Scientology inevitably cries out ‘persecution and bigotry!’, as Wise Beard Man predicted, our insistence of this point will make their cries rather hilarious.
2) Its strategery. Divide and conquer. Scientology does outright abuse its members, and charges them out the nose for its auditing and courses. The upper management is corrupt. Tell Joe the Scientologist that big bad Anonymous is going to tear down the statue of L Ron Hubbard and piss on it, and he will react. Tell Joe the Scientologist that we simply believe his religion should be free, and that we don’t agree with the upper management of the church making Joe disassociate himself with his family who don’t agree with Scientology, and he’ll think twice before he attacks Anonymous protestors.
3) Yes, their beliefs are the root cause of the death of Lisa McPherson, who we venerated in our 2/10 protest. It is the publics duty to ask that question, of, ‘why did she die?’ Anonymous wants the public to pick up their phones and call their representatives in government and ask why a religion whose beliefs directly caused the death of a dozen people is granted tax exempt status.
That’s why we protest. That, and by saying Anonymous is in no way shape or form trying to repress the beliefs of Scientology makes the CoS responses such as this freaking hilarioius: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.scientology/browse_thread/thread/5cc394c8198560b6
“Hacking is a felony. Sending white powders to harass, spread fear and
overwork the authorities is a felony! To undermine freedom of religion
is unconstitutional.
Taking orders from a foreign secret service to destroy US
constitutional laws may be penalized by execution. (Death.)
Who is behind the international anonymous young criminals?
Press release and YouTube videos of Anonymous reads and sounds like
Nazi propaganda against Jews.
1) Scientology wins religious recognition is South Africa, Spain, and
Portugal, all within a few weeks.
2) German secret service is in the hand of psychiatrists. (If you
would ever have lived in Germany, you would know that the
psychiatrists are even above the courts and government in Germany. No
official or German judge would ever overrule a psychiatrist. Most
anonymous kids have not much of an education besides hacking, and that
is why they don’t know that psychiatrists were former barbers and made
horrible experiments on millions of Jews and others.)
3) History shows that the German secret service was specialized of
infiltrating and they still do it. Most of the hacker kids might not
even know who their master is but as they are dumb and like criminal
actions, they allow this secret service to run them,
4) Tom Cruise becomes target of a defamation campaign because he dares
to speak out his opinion against psychiatry and the pharma industry,
which consists of psychiatrists of course. They blow anything that Tom
Cruise said completely out of proportion.
5) The Germans started two world wars, invented the atomic bomb,
invented the police state, invented psychiatry and run the anti-
religious extremists and the anonymous harassers who are clueless
about Scientology.
6) Who ever dares to point the finger at those who are really behind
this, is being harassed and defamed and probably worse.
7) The German secret service recruits either criminals or young
dummies for their purposes. Intelligent people would never
participate.
8) The kids hide their faces during their hate marches because they
know that they are lying about the religion Scientology. They know
that they violated the laws and don’t want to be sued or prosecuted.”
The only thing i feel should even be dignified with an explanation is parts of the first paragraph.
Hacking- Yeah, Anonymous did DDoS the CoS’s website, but that was an attention grabber. And boy did it grab attention. The CoS made NO responses to Anonymous at that point, though a group of actual hackers took down a small website that had been acting as host for some coordination of Anonymous’ online activities. In an effort to keep the movement legit, however, Anonymous has stopped its attempts to DDoS scientology’s servers; after all, if we did close their pools due to thetans constantly, we wouldn’t get to hear their lulzy responses. As a JiC thing, I did not take part in this activity. I was putting up flyers around the city I live in spreading the word about Scientology and getting chased by Scientology goons.
The White Powder- Anonymous denies that it did this, and would love to see proof to the contrary. The idea was discussed early on, but it consisted of sending koolaid packets, not white powder. Scientology has been known to frame its critics by faking death threats and such before, so if Scientology tried to make Anonymous look like the bad guy, this would have been how they could do it. As far as I know, though, it was fail, and the white powder hasn’t been tracked back to anyone, Anonymous or otherwise. I’m, personally, beginning to question its existence in the first place, and taking the age-old stance of “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
Undermining Freedom of Religion-addressed in my first point above. Anonymous, as you have astutely noticed Mr. Wey, has stressed repeatedly that we bear no ill will towards Scientologists or their religious beliefs. The Church of Scientology apparently needs to lrn 2 r3ad.
I hope that helps in your understanding of the Anonymous cause, Mr. Wey.
February 11th, 2008 at 22:52
Well said. I would like to add, however that even Anonymous is not in total agreement. Go to any website Anonymous congregates at and you’ll find quite the hive of scum and villainy. Part of this is because, as a Stand Alone Complex, every Anon is an individual who has his own likes, dislikes, and beliefs. For every person who went out to protest, there’s one who flames him for tossing aside his anonymity by using the Anonymous moniker in public.
It makes it so any unsavory action done by someone claiming to be Anon can be dismissed as an individual’s action and not indicative of the group as a whole.
It’s quite the interesting situation.
February 11th, 2008 at 23:13
I definitely agree on the hive of scum and villainy comment. These types of people — the lulz-doers who congregate on the chans and other like-minded websites — don’t always pick good targets. They’ve attacked furries for many years for no other reason than furries enjoy doing weird things. At least Scientology is a good target because they are a dangerous organization, but how did furries ever harm anyone? I’ve also been targeted by these people for some things I did as an administrator on Wikipedia. That’s pretty much over by now, but it did give me a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of this fury.
The ability to dismiss any unsavory action by Anonymous as the work of one rogue individual is the genius of the whole (non-)organizational structure. Scientology must be scared shitless because there is absolutely no way to fight against this kind of foe. They can’t figure out who to sue or harass. Anonymous isn’t vulnerable to any part of their oppression toolbox.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:35
“Scientology must be scared shitless because there is absolutely no way to fight against this kind of foe. They can’t figure out who to sue or harass. Anonymous isn’t vulnerable to any part of their oppression toolbox.”
Perfect. That’s all I can say.
February 12th, 2008 at 13:16
I’m throwing in as an afterthought to my original post (taking this from the quoted scientologist nutcase)
“Taking orders from a foreign secret service to destroy US constitutional laws may be penalized by execution. (Death.)”
First off, um, yes, death is involved in execution. Dur… de dur.
Secondly, if trying to destroy US constitutional laws is punishable by death, then hows about Operation Snow White, where thousands of Scientologists were ordered by L Ron Hubbard to infiltrate the IRS to bug, harrass, and sabotage efforts by the IRS to scrutinize the Church Of Scientology? 10 of the top members of Scientology were sent to prison for that, yet Scientology still recieved its shiny tax exempt status!
Remember, everyone, next time Scientologists accuse us of treason, bring up Operation Snow White! Ask them how they bullied the IRS into giving them their tax exempt status!
February 12th, 2008 at 20:05
Now obviously what that Scientologist said in the newsgroup is stupid, but remember, he’s not an official spokesman for Scientology. We have some loonies on our side as well. All that the official spokesmen for Scientology have said is that we are terrorists. Hrmm … yeah … still pretty bad. But not quite execution-level.
That poster is quite silly though. He’s confusing treason, which is punishable by death, and violation of other laws, which (apart from murder) isn’t. Yes, the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and press. And you know what that amendment is there to protect us from? The government. Of course, governments at various levels have been found in violation of the amendment, and have been fined, forced to change their practices, etc. Not a single person has ever been executed, nor ever will be. I should point out that the freedom of speech part grants individuals the right to criticize other people’s religions.
So, in short, this Scientologist knows very little about the law.
February 12th, 2008 at 22:07
Scientology also knows little about its current enemy. Or how to fight it. Note how noone’s been prosecuted yet. Our anonymous were too well behaved, lol.
March 21st, 2008 at 01:21
“No, of course not. Some of the evils Anonymous is attacking Scientology for are caused by its deranged belief that psychiatry is dangerous, that psychiatric drugs cause harm rather than do good.”
You’re wrong. If people wish to kill themselves by not taking medicine that is their choice. I am not going to tell people how to live. What I want is to stop other people from telling US how to live. Stop CoS from telling us what to watch. Stop them from doing things like Operation Freakout against critics, or using strong arm tactics to silence people. I don’t want the CoS forcing people to follow the Church’s rules but allow people to choose for themselves. If someone says “You know what, maybe I don’t want that anymore” they can freely leave without any problems. CoS doesn’t allow that and that means people should fight them.
March 21st, 2008 at 09:32
Most people who commit suicide are only temporarily suicidal, and if they are stopped in the act and then given counseling, they tend to live full, productive lives. Yes, it’s true, most people who attempt suicide do not end up offing themselves later on. In terms of the cost to society of a person of working age committing suicide – after we’ve put all of the resources into educating them – it is worthwhile to prevent suicides. If people have stupid beliefs that are causing them to die, those beliefs need to be addressed with the simple facts.
But the main fallacy of your argument is that the people who don’t take the necessary medicine are only harming themselves. This is far from the truth. Someone who is delusional, demented, psychotic, schizophrenic, bipolar, etc., poses a serious risk to the people around them, their family members as well as the general public. It is for the public good to treat these people to lower the risk of harm to others, so hence, it is worthwhile to address the dangerous beliefs.
April 13th, 2008 at 03:49
Now that Operation Reconnection is mere hours away. We would like to make a small note regarding our efforts.
Firstly, We are not against the freedoms of any individual in pursuit of religion. Everybody is free to pursue their believes. Any banners and posters that makes fun of CoS beliefs are created to poke fun and draw lulz. As much lulz as we poke fun at other religions.
Secondly, We are against the litigous nature of CoS leadership, their strong arm tactics against critics and their exploitation of laws and harrassment to achieve their ends. It is what they do that we are against. And again. It has lulz.
Thirdly, Reconnection is all about reuniting families torn apart by Scientology dogma and cruelly enforced policies. Reconnection seeks to unite Scientologists who are deeply affected by their seperation from their families and friends and are encouraged to use this event to reconnect with their families and friends. Reconnection is all about bringing love and forgiveness back to seperated families. And yes there will be lulz.
Lastly, We commend you, Mr Weys, for your discourse on how Anonymous is shaping up as a Stand Alone Complex, yet the solidarity of /b/rotherhood has little room for your personal take on how Anonymous should attack religious beliefs in general. But We still find that it has potential for lulz. Anonymous is nobody’s private army however and We find the attack on the issue of faith itself has no contribution to our cause, and instead would undermine the hard work that has been done all this while.
In lulz we trust. In Wise Beard Man, We listen.
We are Anonymous,
We are Legion
We do not Forgive
We do not Forget
Expect Us
April 13th, 2008 at 12:23
Honestly, all these references to “lulz” are just silly. It’s hard to take you seriously. Reuniting families torn apart by Scientology is a noble goal, but when it’s bookended by repeated claims of doing things “for the lulz”, then it pretty much loses all meaning. If you guys are actually serious about this, you really need to sharpen your rhetoric. You won’t be convincing anyone over to your side like this, and to really win you know you do need to convince the general public that you are correct. But continually giving CoS such an easy way to attack you is your Achilles heel. All they have to do is point dismissively at comments like yours to win sympathy.
“See, they’re not serious about any of this,” they will say. “It’s all a big joke to them. So don’t believe them when they say they’re looking out for anyone’s best interests; they just want to cause trouble for trouble’s sake.”
April 23rd, 2008 at 06:24
And there is the enternal dilemma of Anonymous, Mr. Weys.
Because for many of us, it is all a joke. And for the rest of us, it is a joke with a purpose.
Scientologists speak their own language and so do we. Many of us feel the need to pay lip service to the demigods and totems of the Anonymous ideology, lest we sound like “newfolk” (apologies to my /b/rethren for mangling the memespeak by removing the inherent homophobia therein). Of late, many of us have felt the need to invoke lulz, to remind each other that there are lulz, since for many of us, this whole Chanology thing has become far too much “serious business.”
Anonymous is a Stand Alone Complex. Thus, your opinions are as valid as anyone else’s. You are not required to tow the line because there is no line to tow. Most of us have forgotten this. Our attempts to correct you about what Anonymous’s goals and beliefs are reflects this to some extent.
But what you may yet fail to understand is that Anonymous is also a culture, with its own values and history. Anonymous is an in-joke about in-jokes. The lulz are inherent to it. I could never say that by rejecting lulz, you reject Anonymous, because such a statement is meaningless. But by rejecting lulz, you reject what made Anonymous. You reject what, for many people, sustains Anonymous.
But to me, it seems you don’t reject the lulz, really. You like making fun of Xenu, and why shouldn’t you? What you really seem to reject is the explicit nature of the fact that Anonymous is a joke. You would like to be taken seriously, while still having your fun.
Anonymous loves cake. But we’re still not quite able to have it and eat it too.
Perhaps the general public can’t understand that Anonymous is both serious and a joke. You have made it clear that if you were the Leader of Anonymous, you’d choose the former to be our image.
As we have no leaders, our image is left to the collective action of Anonymous to determine. So far, we have chosen to give the latter impression. Collectively, we seem to have decided that it’s more fun and effective to be silly and look silly than to be serious in how we present ourselves.
It’s bizarre, isn’t it? It’s completely alien to much of our meatspace culture. Anathema, in fact.
And it’s working. It’s working better than most of us could have predicted. People see us and see rebels. Troublemakers. People having fun. To those who share our mindset, it is enticing. For those whom we oppose, it is terrifying. Is this emergent aspect of Anonymous – the fact that “like attracts like,” calling more Anonymi to our cause who then emulate our actions and style of expression – not essentially what makes us a Stand Alone Complex?
But maybe I’m reading too much into your words. Perhaps you don’t mean that we need to change our image. Perhaps you just mean that we need to choose our words better. I tend to agree, mainly because I find excessive memespeak repetitive and tiresome.
That’s why we try to avoid memespeak when we talk to the press; it gets annoying and it blurs our message.
But the interbutts? On the blog of an Anon sympathizer? That’s our home turf, and we speak our native tongue here. And with all due respect, I don’t think the Co$ comes to your blog to win sympathy.