Transformations in Hacktivism: the case of Anonymous

Tue, Apr 30

Guest Speaker: Gabriella Coleman (Harvard University)

Prof. Gabriella Coleman joins us for our final class of the semester to present the talk " From Busting Cults to Breeding Cults: How to understand Anonymous's relationship to the anonymous reactionary right and QAnon."

First emerging from the anonymous imageboard 4chan.org in the mid-2000s, the aptly named Anonymous unexpectedly transformed. In 2008, after targeting the Cult of Scientology, Anonymous morphed from a chaos-inducing troll brigade to a media-savvy activist ensemble in 2008. Not long after, in 2011 different Anonymous nodes hatched away from the image boards, and engaged in high-profile hacks. By 2015 different political formations sprung forth from 4chan and similar image boards, like the little "a" anonymous far and reactionary-right and the conspiracy driven QAnon. In contrast to Anonymous, these two latter formations work against the cause of social justice spreading reactionary, racist, conspiratorial, or fascist political planks. But like Anonymous, these other two formations have, at times, played outsized roles in politics. Anonymous, for instance, popularized the now common hack-and-leak tactic; the anonymous far right helped radicalize or in their parlance "redpill" people into racist and misogynist worldviews. And QAnon followers, which helped spread conspiracies, have elected officials among its ranks and helped drive the storming of the US capitol. In this talk, I ask (and partially answer) how are we to understand the relationships between these three currents? How, in other words, could imageboard/s, like 4chan and 8chan (and others), act as the initial springboard for political formations that embrace such different—even diametrically opposed—political sensibilities and epistemologies around truth?