This Internet Hate Machine Kills Fascists: Anonymous in Context

Therefore, it is understandable that movement scholars tend to write from a rather activist stance. There is nothing wrong with this per se, however, as historians, we should critically assess in how far this positioning might limit our scholarship. At times, Payne tends to overemphasize the unity and the solidarity among the organizers and the local population and fails to mention the tensions among direct democratic groups like SNCC. Every social movement is made up of people, united under what they perceive as an urgent need to bring about change. This unity tends to suppress theoretical and practical differences for some time and can thus create a tremendous amount of communality and solidarity among its members. However, as history has shown over and over again, as soon as the external threat either diminishes or proves resistant to change, movements tend to disunite. This is what Baker and other activists wanted to prevent by modeling their training around local long-term strategies and individual

Historically there have been many social movements that have contributed to social change or shifts in societal views. Many factors have contributed to social movements from the people involved to how well they work together. Social movements is a kind of group action. They can be large, at times informal, alliances of individuals or organizations which focus on particular political or social agendas. In other words, they carry out, resist or undo a social change. Using the African American rights movement this paper will discuss what was accomplished by collective effort that an individual could not do. As well as the ways that group involvement helped this movement to be sustainable and have a lasting impact.

Globalization is about information. In my opinion, information speed and access is the most important factor in bringing the world together. By far the most influence technology to how fast a person can access information is the internet. The internet allows information to be transferred across the planet in milliseconds. From its start as ARPANET in the 60s, it has been the backbone for connecting a variety of organizations. ("Internet", 2016)

In recent weeks, there have been protests on various issues. One of the protests, being held at UC Berkeley, went awry. The original purpose of the protests were to peacefully display the students’ dissatisfaction with the allowance of a neo-Nazi journalist, Milo Yiannopoulos, to speak at their campus. The approximately 1.500 students who had gathered there to peacefully protest the event, had succeeded. They had prevented Milo from getting to speak there. But the protest was not just against him, it was against what he stood for. This would have been a wonderful step in the right direction for those who disagreed with his anti-semitic views. However, there was a group, referred to by Kaani Powell Cleaver in their article Black Bloc Anarchists, Not UC Berkeley Students, Ran Amok At Last Week's Protest as, “self-described ‘black bloc anarchists’.” These supposed Black Bloc Anarchists had sullied the image of those who were their for the right reasons, peaceful resistance. In the aftermath, this only gave oppressors power over the oppressed since all they were now were just destructive animals.

Digital activism describes activities or practices that are in-depth, which compasses all social and a political practice that use digital networks, and exclusive, where it excludes practices that do not utilize digital networks (Joyce, 2010). This form of activism is an effective platform to reach and inform more people on different issues that the world is experiencing, at a larger scale. With the help of the different social media technologies, numerous uprisings have been successful because of the

On january 1st 2005, Frank Warren started up what became a very successful blog known as PostSecret, it is a website where anonymous postcards are mailed in and later posted up online to share with others. Its wide use and popularity has brought to attention the concern of people's willingness to share secrets as long as they stay anonymous. In today's world where we are constantly being monitored, it should be no surprise that we have grown the need and desire for more privacy. In Peter Singer's, “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets”, he also speaks about the concern of increased monitoring but claims that it will create “a world where morals are reformed”. Privacy and Anonymity have two different meanings but they go hand in hand

Richard Kahn and Douglas M. Kellner’s article, Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach, offers readers an insight into the alternative uses of Information Communication Technologies (hereafter, ICTs). Kahn and Kellner state even though the Internet “reproduces logics of capital and is continually co-opted by hegemonic forces”, “we should look to how emergent technologies and communities are interacting as tentative forms of self-determination and control from below – recognizing that as today’s internet citizen-activists organize political-ecological devastation, and other forms of oppression, they represent important oppositional forms of agency in the ongoing struggle for social justice and a more participatory

The Anonymous movement is a decentralized community that anyone who believes in open information can join (Mansfield-Devine 1). Anonymous intervened into various international conflicts, such as 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella movement, by Distributed Denial of Server (DDoS) attacks as a form of civil disobedience and demanded the Hong Kong police to stop resisting the protesters (Fuchs 1). Appropriating tropes and word choices of God, Anonymous evokes audiences’ fear and faith to convey its capabilities and legitimacy of conducting interventions.

Hate speech promulgated through the internet poses a significant problem for the traditional legal system.

Hacktivism, according to the Reference Dictionary, is “the practice of gaining unauthorized access to a computer system and carrying out various disruptive actions as a means of achieving political or social goals” (Hacktivism). However, they are even more well known for the Guy Fawkes mask that the members where when, on a rare occasion, perform a stunt in public. By doing this they are protecting their identity and, in a sense, disrespecting what activism was in the first place. This is because, in the beginning, activism of any kind was done in public without masks. So, by Anonymous wearing masks in public and using code names on the internet, they embody the exact group Gladwell argues is not considered social activists. In short, Gladwell argues activism cannot be done through mainly social media as Anonymous

Interconnected computer information systems have become essential aspects of today’s society. All forms of communication, from education, personal brand identity, to commerce and finance, use these systems creating a permanent personal presence for all of us within this digital world. Individuals, who reveal or threaten to reveal these personal identities for various reasons, are sometimes referred to as hackers who can also form hacker activist groups; also known as hacktivists. One of the most recent and visible of these groups calls itself Anonymous. Anonymous has evolved into a worldwide meticulously calculated social and political movement concerned with the freedom and access of information. It uses a variety of means to promote free information, sometimes legal protest, sometimes illegal hacking. There are any numbers of splinter groups that claim affiliation with Anonymous but its decentralized structure makes it difficult to know who is working with or for the goals of the collective. Anonymous has transformed from a physical entity to that of an idea and persona that can be claimed by anyone at any time and that idea is what will ensure its continued presence for years to come.

When confronted with viewpoints opposing their own, humans tend to seek refuge. They find it, relaxing with like-minded friends, free from discourse. Some advance as far as to suggest conflicting ideas be eradicated. One side must argue against an imaginary foe, simply to pacify the public, with any other ideas exiled. Should identity politics rule? Should trigger warnings conquer facts and humanity bow down to political correctness? Is ANTIFA peaceful, or hypocritical? At the heart of the debate, censorship and political correctness.

This article written by Lance Barnette explores the distinctions involved in the internet and mass media to provide an structural output of socially global activism. Barnette states that “as various media become interactively connected, information flows easier across boundaries” (Barnette, 2003). To this distinction, I agree that interactivity of social media allows for consumers/readers of activism propaganda to truly participate in the movement. Whether it is in the form of a video, poll or meme, some participants may unknowingly partake in the activity and share that form of propaganda. Overcome boundaries were “technological, social and geographical” (Barnette, 2003). As long an any device is capable to connect to the internet, it becomes an agent for delivery of information.

In Here Comes Everybody, Shirky suggests that digital tools enhance democracy, (Shirky, 2008) and this paradigm shift indicates that individual voices can be heard in the digital era; for instance, the use of social media platforms including status-posting on Facebook and tweeting on Twitter. Moreover, the mounting popularity of online social movements deserves a careful examination. Castell believes that the digital social networks are decisive tools which facilitated modern-day movements, and that the Internet empowers people to exchange emotions, which then become the impetus that transform collective feelings into collective actions. (Castells 2012, pp. 1-19) In the light of the Arab Spring, it is evident that the protest organizers had strong online presence, and the Internet acted as a bridge from the activist core to the mass publics. While this echoes with Castells’ idea of the creation of counter power and the Internet being the cradle of society communicative autonomy (Castells 2012, p. 1-18), the analysis of the Arab Spring suggests that this concept could be somewhat reductive. In the wave of protests, the megaphone effect exceeded all the other results brought by the social media. According to research, majority of the online clicks came from outside of the stakeholder countries – this may illustrate how the Internet is drawing external attention instead of being the nucleus

Manuel Castell believes that the networked society is a global society. However, he noted that not everyone is affected by the processes in the global society. Critical activities that shape and control human life irrespective of where they live. Example are the distribution of goods and services, mass media, multi-purpose communication, entertainment, sports, etc.