For those not paying attention, this past weekend Anonymous’s war against Scientology entered the real world with coordinated protests in several major cities.
Anonymous – a loose coalition of Internet denizens and so-called “hackers” who tend to congregate at Web sites such as 4chan.org – declared war on the religion in response to Scientology’s efforts to remove video of Tom Cruise pontificating on the church and its role in the world.
Anonymous’s efforts had mostly been confined to things like denial of service attacks to bring down Scientology’s Web sites and floods of pointless faxes to waste the church’s paper and ink. However, the group decided to increase the campaign and actually appear in person.
Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Australia and the United Kingdom – among other places – saw groups of masked protesters outside Scientology compounds. Fear of retribution from Scientology’s lawyers prompted the masks, protesters said.
Anonymous seeks the revocation of Scientology’s tax-free status, arguing that the group forces members to pay large sums of money to advance in the religion.
Scientology views Anonymous as a group of religious bigots who simply use modern tactics.
Regardless of the final outcome of this “war,” it’s an interesting look at the growing power of the Internet. Anonymous has no known major leadership, instead relying on the power of a group to decide and act individually in a way that benefits the group. In many ways, it’s very similar to a lot of grassroots political efforts being utilized in the current presidential election.
In all likelihood, Anonymous is the face of the future.