I dislike Anonymous but I dislike Westboro Baptist Church more. I am ashamed to be from Kansas because of them. And all the wheat but mostly because of them. If Anonymous does things like this more often then perhaps I could start to like them.

Now that everyone knows where they live, I wonder how long it will be before attacks on them become physical.


L. Spiro

Now that everyone knows where they live, I wonder how long it will be before attacks on them become physical.

And this part is what I am uncomfortable about.

WBC are contemptible a-holes, some of the worst, most wretched people I have ever heard about, but I just don't think that answering their scummy behavior with illegal attacks, identity theft/credit card fraud and physical violence is any kind of good idea at all. We should be trying to become a better people, not worse. Stooping to their level, matching villainy for villainy, has never resulted in a better place for anyone.

Still, though, I intensely dislike those WBC people, and it really is difficult to not wish them harm.

I hear ya about the wheat, though.

[quote name='JTippetts' timestamp='1355719730' post='5011528']
And this part is what I am uncomfortable about.

I agree and it is why I do not normally support Anonymous. I want WBC to be taken down, but through legal means. Unfortunately, there are not too many legal avenues at the moment.

Hopefully that petition will be taken seriously by the White House and their tax exempt status will be rescinded along with them being listed as a hate group. That alone should bankrupt them. If Anonymous can get people to Connecticut to physically block their protest, all the better.
[/quote]

For the record, I am also uncomfortable about listing groups as "hate groups". This feels too much like thoughtcrime to me, and I don't know that we should be looking to 1984 as our guidebook to more effective government. Free speech is free speech, and if we aren't willing to defend free speech, regardless of our personal beliefs regarding the speaker, then we all will eventually lose our right to free speech. Laws that can be used to label and criminalize one group can easily be turned to label another, based upon the whims and prejudices of the ones in control of those laws.

Revoking their tax exempt status, though, I am 100% in favor of.

I find it interesting that people can like/dislike "anonymous", as a group, because they're just a name, like "Al Qaeda", for an idea, not a real organisation. They don't really exist, which is the point.

When I was growing up, I had a few friends that were what you'd now call "script kiddies" (or what the media would call "hackers")... Some people from this era used this hobby within their own ethical frameworks, like attacking NASA when they were planning a mission that could've potentially dirty-bombed the whole world... however, my friends just "hacked into" random corporate networks, and got random office workers into trouble by deleting their spreadsheets and launching instances of Doom on their workstations...

"Anonymous" as an idea, is a magnet for these trouble-makers, and shows them that instead of getting up to random mischief they can belong to some kind of "movement", and direct their mischief towards some perceived enemy of mankind. In that sense, it's quite a powerful idea that's creating political and social awareness within intelligent but troubled youths -- not creating or reducing trouble, but focussing it.

For the record, I am also uncomfortable about listing groups as "hate groups". This feels too much like thoughtcrime to me, and I don't know that we should be looking to 1984 as our guidebook to more effective government. Free speech is free speech

There's a difference between hating gays and voicing this opinion, and picketing the funerals of massacred children. I don't necessarily think they should be labeled a hate group for the thought of hate, but for the sick, disturbed manifestation of that thought (that is, this isn't what I'd call a thoughtcrime).

I am waiting for Westboro Baptist Church’s reaction. Do they even know they are under siege? They aren’t likely to be the most Internet savvy group of people.
Are they just going to find out one day their credit cards are empty, their social security numbers are blocked, etc., and look around dumbfounded?


L. Spiro