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A great deal has transpired in the world of American Political News in the course of this week and while the injunction against the Arizona immigration law is certainly fascinating, I find myself a great deal more concerned about a far less mainstream story. Earlier this week a faction of internet users known as "Anonymous" went to (virtual) war with the Oregon Tea Party. In so doing they demonstrated the significant and thus far largely untapped power of cyber-attacks in the political landscape. To really understand what happened and why it matters, however, a little background is necessary.
Sometime over the past few months the Tea Party, and more specifically the Oregon Tea Party, went shopping for a new slogan. They desired something pithy, no doubt, that was emblematic of their "every-man" persona yet still sufficiently antagonistic as to communicate the tacit threat the right-wing movement imagines it presents to the nation's political elites.
It is not clear when or why or how the selection was made or even to what extent any formal decision making process was involved. What is clear is that over the past month or so the slogan "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us" has appeared on Tea Party websites, posters, bumper stickers, and billboards.
To natives of the digital realm, the "We are Anonymous" slogan is instantly recognizable as the virtual banner of the erstwhile virtual vigilante group whose name it declares. "Anonymous" is both a group and a meme (and neither) - perhaps the most significant and least frivolous of the ideo-linguistic children of anonymous posting communities like 4chan. Anonymous is, in essence, an angry mob with idle hands and in appropriating their moniker, the Oregon Tea Party provoked them.
Like the "Teabagging" meme that the Tea Party ran afoul of last year, the Tea Party's misstep is likely simply the result of its insular ignorance. With few deep roots in online communities, most Tea Partiers were, no doubt, wholly unaware of the significance of the "We are Anonymous" slogan. No doubt the Tea Partiers meant no offense. Then again, the second sentence of the lifted language is "We do not forgive."
Once the Tea Party's use of the slogan became public knowledge things began to move very rapidly. "Operation Teabag" launched on PartyVan and Anonymous began to gather information on the Oregon Tea Party - web addresses, Facebook group pages, membership, names, addresses, urls, and phone numbers - even the number of children that Geoffrey Ludt, the Oregon Tea Party's webmaster, has was collected, noted, and cataloged.
Then the siege began.
The struck-through links on PartyVan tell the tale better than any prose ever could. Site by site the Oregon Tea Party's presence on the internet buckled and collapsed under constant attack from both hackers - individuals trying to attack the site infrastructure itself - and griefers - individuals flooding social message boards with intentionally offensive content. Within a few hours - a day at most - the Oregon Tea Party had functionally ceased to exist on the internet.
None of that is particularly strange; it is what Anonymous does when it goes to war. What is significant is what that means to a political party. Unlike almost every other organization on line, political parties exist so as to coordinate voters, push messages, and welcome new people into the fold. By forcing the Oregon Tea Party to shut its (virtual) doors, Anonymous denied it the ability to do any of those things. For all intents and purposes, the Oregon Tea Party - at least in its on line capacity - is out of business. Given the importance of on-line organizing in the political world that is a heavy blow to the Party as a whole.
What Anonymous did it did out of a combination of anger and boredom. There was no political motive in its attack and yet almost overnight it brought a (admittedly small and regional) political party to its knees. There is no reason that these tactics would not prove equally powerful when practiced by a dedicated political opponent.
Imagine the confusion if, in early October of 2008, Candidate Obama's extensive web presence had come under siege by thousands of griefers posting racially and sexually offensive content while others infiltrated forums and discussion boards to sew seeds of outrage and discontent. Imagine the virtual equivalent of a thousand Ashley Todds systematically confusing and corrupting the internal communications among Obama's volunteers and supporters in the crucial final month before the Presidential election.
Imagine that and then ask, what political organization - so dependent upon volunteer efforts - could survive such an assault?
With that thought in mind, consider the last message posted on the Oregon Tea Party's Facebook page before it was finally shut down:
Anonymous: We appreciate your resource and admire your tactics. You have taught us more than you know. As you requested, we are no longer using the "anonymous" quote.
