There exists a reasonable tendency to judge from the past what is possible in the present. This becomes less reasonable to the extent that the environment changes. It is a useful thing, then, to ask every once in a while if the environment has recently gone through any particular severe changes and thereby expanded our options. Over the last twenty years, for instance, the terminology has changed to such a degree that many of todays essential discussions would be entirely incomprehensible to anyone living two decades ago. Never in history has this been so true as it is now, at the onset of the communications age. As the environment has changed, some have already began to take the new options, and more will do so soon. It is time for the rest of the world to begin to understand why.
When a release by Wikileaks to the effect that the government was even more specifically corrupt and horrid than previously realized prompted Tunisians to step up active dissent and take to the streets in huge numbers for the first time, a loose network of participants within the international Anonymous protest movement attacked non-essential government websites (those not providing direct services to Tunisians) at the prompting of our Tunisian contacts; several such sites were replaced with a message of support to the Tunisian people, with the others merely being pushed offline by means of a DDOS attack involving thousands of computer users who request large amounts of data from a website at once in order to overwhelm it. Other assistance programs have begun to follow in the days since President Ben Ali fled the nation that reviled him, with Anonymous and other parties working with Tunisians both in-country and abroad to provide the nations people with the tools and informational resources they need to begin building up new, reasonable political institutions capable of ensuring a freer civic life. Our Guide to Protecting the Tunisian Revolution series - a collaboration between hundreds of veterans of traditional revolutionary movements as well as practitioners of the new activism - has been disseminated both online and in printed copies; aside from tips on safety during confrontation and the like, these also explain how to establish secure yet accessible networks and communications for Tunisians as well as instructions on establishing neighborhood syndicates capable of uniting in common cause. Already, such organizations are now being established across Tunisia, just as they will be established elsewhere as this movement proceeds.
Anonymous is merely a means by which people across the globe can assist in the hard work being performed by the Tunisian people, who have long taken issue with their government but first began protesting in earnest last month when a fruit vendor set himself on fire in response to police cruelty. The Anonymous movement itself grew out of message boards frequented mostly by young people with an interest in internet culture in general and Japanese media in particular; in 2005, participants began attacking other internet venues as a sort of sport, and in the process honed their skills in a way that also proved useful in informational warfare. In 2007 some users proposed that the Church of Scientology be exposed for its unethical and sometimes violent conduct, sparking a coordinated global protest movement that differed from anything else seen and which still continues today; the Australian government was later attacked for introducing new internet censorship laws, and in the meantime those within Anonymous who see the subculture as a potential force for justice have launched other efforts while also building new strategies and recruiting individuals from across the globe, some of whom hold significant positions in media, industry, and the sciences.
In the meantime, there are obstacles to be overcome. Those within the Tunisian government who seek to deny liberty to their people are easy enough to deal with; the greatest threat to revolution comes not from any state but rather from those who decry such revolutions without understanding them. In this case, the idea that a loose network of people with shared values and varying skill sets can provide substantial help to a population abroad is seen as quixotic or even unseemly by many of those who have failed to understand the last ten years, as well as those whose first instinct is to attack a popular revolt rather than assist it. Elsewhere, a number of American pundits have decided to criticize the revolution as possibly destabilizing the region; many of these once demanded the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and greeted every Arab revolt as the work of President Bush but now see nothing for themselves in the cause of Arab liberty. Some have even portrayed the movement as the work of radical Islamists; most cannot find Tunisia on a map. Suffice to say that the results of our efforts are already on display and will become more evident as Tunisians use our tools and resources to achieve their greatest triumph. Those who wish to assist and are competent to do so can find us easily enough; the Tunisians had little trouble in doing so.
Although we have made great progress in convincing individuals from across the world to join this effort and others (such as those now taking place within Algeria and Egypt, both of which have seen government websites taken down and/or replaced by Anonymous operatives), more must be done before the movement takes the next step towards a worldwide network capable of perpetual engagement against those who are comfortable with tyranny. Whatever effort is required, such a goal is not only possible, but rather unambitious. There is a reason, after all, that those of us who have seen the movement up close have dedicated our lives to what is stands for and have even violated the modern Western taboo of believing in something. I have been involved with Anonymous in some capacity or another for about six years now, for instance; looking back at my writing, I have found that my predictions, while always enthusiastic, have nonetheless turned out to have been conservative; when Australia became the first state to come under attack by this remarkable force, I proposed that we would someday see such allegedly inevitable institutions begin to crumble in the face of their growing irrelevance. Someday has turned out to be this year. Today I predict that Anonymous and entities like it will become far more significant over the next few years than is expected by most of our similarly irrelevant pundits, and this will no doubt turn out to be just as much of an understatement as anything else that has been written on the subject. The fact is that the technological infrastructure that allows these things has been in place for well under a decade, but such phenomena as Wikileaks and Anonymous have already appeared, expanded, and even come into play on the geopolitical scene; others have come about since. This is the future, whether one approves or not, and the failure on the part of governments and media alike to understand and contend with the rapid change now afoot ought to remind everyone concerned why it is that this movement is necessary in the first place.
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Nasir Yousafzai Khan
<nasir.khan@aljazeera.net> wrote:
Hey Barrett,
Could you kindly forward the latest version of your Op-ed to Hashem please. With the Egypt situation as it is, I'm sure I can fit you on soon - I'm dying to get this bad boy up!
cheers,
Naz
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