Why Anonymous Will Be In Texas, And Anywhere There Is Injustice

Ben Branstetter of the DailyDot, have recently penned an interesting piece questioning the actions of Anonymous, titled “Why Anonymous Shouldn’t Mess With Texas”. And  our actions SHOULD be questioned; we are after all, being members of the public ourselves, accountable to the people (unlike the corporations, which are accountable to share-holders, the military which is accountable to politicians, and governments which are first accountable to the 0.01% and then the corporate puppets which had bankrolled their bids for election). Let us examine the merit of his article.

He first claims that Anonymous Hacktivists need to be “stopped”, because some of us have been threatening action against a police officer that had reacted violently to black teens at a pool party. Allow me to provide some context with the video below:

Eric Casebolt’s only punishment will be a paid vacation if you don’t speak up now #StopPoliceBrutality #McKinney pic.twitter.com/ffrnGZRZkn

— Anonymous (@OpMcKinney) June 8, 2015

He then claims that we are a group “without a distinct mission, moral code, or centralized leadership,” and have grown too powerful. We have even “earned the constant attention of the federal government as a possible threat”.

Although we lack a centralized leadership, I think our mission and moral code has been substantiated more than once by the majority of our actions, which he himself will helpfully cite later. As for our power, we obtain it from the people, and as such remain accountable to them, to us. Considering the fact that we lack a standing army that is able to invade countries at a whim while simultaneously winning Nobel peace prizes, I think he is slightly overestimating our abilities. As for that last part, I’d take that as a badge of honor any day, particularly when it’s for revealing the truth.

Ben then rightly points out that Anonymous has helped shine light on serious issues being overlooked by mainstream media, including the events of Steubenville, Ohio, in 2013, where two high school students were arrested for the rape of an intoxicated classmate. “Through leaked videos and sustained, coordinated efforts, Anonymous catapulted the Steubenville rape case from a local crime story to one deserving of national attention”. Our exploits seem to include such targets as “North Korea, ISIS, Russia, rapists, child pornographers, and many more”.  Is he still trying to explain why we need to be stopped? Or does he really think rapists and child pornographers ought to carry on? That we are worse than them? If his point is that we need to be more cautious, then he is right. But I hardly think that is his intention, given the tone and the title of his article. We have done more against these evil buggers (though personally, I reckon that he WRONGLY characterizes Russia and North Korea as targets, when it is their governments that were targeted) than the governments have, perhaps he ought to give us the benefit of the doubt…

He claims that this strength of ours, our “lack of structure”, has also led to “disastrous levels of error”. He has forgotten that our police force has a very rigid structure, yet has been proven to overindulge in disastrous errors whenever they deal with unarmed, and particularly black, civilians with zero repercussions.

Our actions are “heroic or exploitive,” according to him. He does not explain why he thinks so.

“McKinney isn’t Steubenville. McKinney isn’t Ferguson. While the underlying issues of racism and police brutality are present in both of the latter instances, the media’s attention is already rapt on this Dallas suburb. The aforementioned video of the incident spread across social media ”.

“So if the officer accused of wrongdoing is under investigation and the pressure of the national media is now on the department at hand, what is left for Anonymous to do?”

“In large part, Anonymous tries to fill in the gaps where the system is not working. But all parts of this incident, from the police department to the witnesses to the media, are responding with appropriate gravity and vigor to right the evident wrongs of these abuses. At best, Anonymous will get in the way of officials attempting to investigate Officer Casebolt and others who might have been involved. At worst, they could implicate the wrong officers and citizens”.

“Anonymous members wrongly accused a Canadian man of attempting to seduce Amanda Todd, the seventh grader who took her own life after being cyberbullied“.

He finally arrives at his main argument, and rightly questions the inherent weaknesses of a system such as ours; anybody can claim to be Anonymous and act as one of us. Even the CIA could act in our name, and any random person with a vendetta could claim to act on our “behalf”.  The ability of such elements to harm others is, however, severely limited by the wider Anon community.

Most of the time, this means that the cases of defamation he is concerned about are rare and limited in impact… unless the mainstream media decides to run with the story. In an example of such a case, like the Amanda Todd incident that Ben refers to, he chooses to cite ONE individual Anon as though he were representative of us all.

How has Ben forgotten to blame the Daily Mail for disseminating this rumor? Double standards much?

The collateral damage from such false accusations can never be fully repaired, however, more caution needs to be used.  On the other hand, I will point out that the police, the mainstream media, and even random anonymous individuals are similarly guilty of pointing fingers and damaging the reputation of innocent individuals and, that often, the law protects them from being accountable for their actions.

Although inadequate, at least Anons depend SOLELY on the people’s support for their activities, and are held to account. Even without Anonymous, such accusers and “vigilantes” would have done the same deeds and sown the same seeds of defamation, and nobody would have been able to hold them responsible.

To blame the collective for the actions of an individual is akin to blaming India for that one person who was rude to you on the subway; it is unreasonable, and a false attempt to rail-road the good Anons do because of the actions of one. We are not a perfect system, but we are the only system that is accountable first to the people.
As a side note, might I point out that a false accusation is certainly less harmful than a bullet, which so often gets lodged inside of a chil- I mean “criminal”….?

The irony is that it is often the mainstream media that is all too willing to spread such rumors, or report from a biased standpoint. Accidents do happen, yet he does not seem to understand this. Perhaps he needs to rephrase his article’s title to: “Why the BBC shouldn’t mess with Texas,” because that is an equally valid argument.

The people want to know what is happening, and as long as reporters like him refuse to engage in investigative journalism, Anonymous will do what is necessary, even if some Anons do react a little too quickly, because, not all of us are trained investigative journalists.

Ben does admit that “Anonymous has proven itself adept and useful for revealing information the public deserves to know”.  But I do not think that it is for him to decide that “the system deserves the opportunity to work the way it’s intended to,” or that the system is even working as it’s intended. That is for the people to decide, for only the people know whether a system that THEY are affected by is working or not. Neither you, nor the police, nor I, nor even those Anons seeking what they believe is the truth can decide this for us. When Ben states that Anonymous should not mess with Texas, what he is really implying is that Texans should not independently question the actions of their own law enforcement.

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Source: Dailydot