Oh, my, the JusticeSec goons have issued a "final warning" to me -- personally, by name.
I'm told I have to take down my critical blogs about Anonymous "or else".
I must "retract lies" about @hausofpain, an Anonymous foot soldier who has been having a shrieking fit since I confronted her with her support of the violent hacker Hammond, and her support of JusticeSec, which has been using vigilante methods in Steubenville supposedly in support of a rape victim, but in my view, as part of a larger more sophisticated social hack and psywar to undermine the independent justice system in America.
I pointed out that when she dug up alleged pornography from journalist Lee Stranahan of Breitbart.com, it was hardly any worse than the grotesque, violent, and misogynous porn found on 4chan -- which is where Anonymous got its roots and where they still indulge in their real nature.
They're one to talk, ranting about "rape culture" when their entire movement is suffused with the logic of rape culture -- a rapist says if a woman is wearing a short skirt or is drunk, she is "asking for it" and "he gets to rape her". Appalling and horrible.
And by the same logic -- although, der, the acts are not equivalent in any way -- Anonymous tells people when they dox them that they can Google witch-hunt and aggregate and amplify their personal data "because they can, it's out there" or because "they have lax security, so they were asking for it". Same exact awful logic which defies the rule of law and constitutes legal nihilism. Anonymous says "we can do what we want by force because we can, fuck you". So do football team rapists. Are they the same in scope or magnitude? Or course not. Rape is a horrible trauma and a crime. Anonymous hacking can range from an inconvenience to a felony, but it isn't on the scale of rape.
You have to oppose the logic anyway, because it's the logic of totalitarianism, and it's how you lose your rights and liberties. It's not a logic that any journalist or blogger should accept, and they should call it out.
I can't "retract" anything I've written about hausofpain because I've chronicled what I saw her tweet and I disagreed with her in good faith. That's what free speech is all about. If anything, she has lied about me, claiming that I deleted tweets -- I didn't. They are all there. She also threw a fit because she felt like I was calling her a "violent bully" because I said:
@hausofpain Hammond is the violent bully, & so are you & your movement for taking away others rights on the Internet.
And I stand four-square by this comment because Hammond has been tried for violent crimes a number of times, and Anonymous and its members like hausofpain *are indeed* violent for coercively hacking, exposing, bullying, intimidating, and silencing bloggers. I don't accept the DDoS as "non-violent". It's not. It's violent. It requires coercion -- hacking to prevent the freedom of the Internet and prevent the use of a site in the way it was intended for revolutionary justice. That *is* violence. It isn't a jackboot in the face -- perhaps it's only a threatened pink stiletto on Twitter or a LOIC attack. It's still violent. Everybody who can think rationally and by analogy and conceptually gets what is going on -- Anonymous is trying to impose totalitarianism by revolutionary force with themselves in charge. No thank you. That's not justice; that's not freedom.
My policy about people who threaten me for my writing has always been to abuse report it and chronicle it. I don't believe in the idea that you "don't feed the trolls" in the sense that you become intimidated into silence of legitimate criticism merely because some thug tells you he's going to get you on the Internet. I've never seen that work, and I've had years of experience.
These thugs can use crude methods like foul mouths and threats on Twitter and Google witch-hunting and scary movies, or they can hack into your email or website. Or they can use more sophisticated methods like trying to get you banned on Twitter or Typepad over some technicality. I'm used to that.
What can you do in a situation like that but continue to document it and challenge it, because eventually, if enough people document these things, the authorities are able to act to prevent people from destroying civil society. You keep doing it until you can't, and then you have to try another subject or other activities, who knows. But it's not like the public's awareness goes away that Anonymous is deep-down a thuggish totalitarian wannabee -- they get it. With each person silenced, whether the public thinks they "deserve" it or not, they get it. And I'm confident that eventually Americans won't allow something like this to prevail over authentic Internet freedom.
I've got to go out on a big job soon and my time for documenting harassment will be limited or non-existence for awhile, but, as they say, expect me, expectorate them!
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