Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com

An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously, but its activities aren't confined to mass global protests, as the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is discovering, according to p2pnet. Says the Examiner, 'Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their "Love Crusades," obnoxious displays of insensitivity and homophobia at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. The controversial if monotone message of the "Love Crusade" seems to be to blame everything that is wrong in the world on homosexuality. The crusades are part of a hate-based mission started in Kansas by the WBC and Fred Phelps.' In an open letter on AnonNews, 'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"

Comments

"An anonymous reader writes"

[gcnaddict]

I smell a conflict of interest.

Re:I don't think they care

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, your contemporary wackjob zealot obtains his morals from a questionable understanding of iron age writings about a sociopathic tribal deity; but often shows an otherwise modern understanding of things like computers and small arms...

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously..."

C'mon, "a serious force to be taken seriously?" Who wrote that?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious force is serious.

Ohhh the irony...

[j4ckknife]

Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "voice of free speech" trying to bully an admittedly annoying and vocal cult into silence?

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[MightyMartian]

Yes, it's extremely ironic. The fact of the matter is that most activists usually reveal themselves to be wannabe-autocrats. I can understand attacking PayPal or Visa websites over the Wikileaks thing, but trying to silence Phelps and his gang of attention whores demonstrates that, at the core, they have that unique activist capacity for not really getting the underlying point of freedoms.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[CannonballHead]

Most people really only like free speech that does not offend them. They tend to claim some sort of right to not be offended or something like that, too.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[anagama]

Absolutely there is some irony and there is an understanding of this expressed in Anonymous' letter, but it seems pretty thin (though long winded), and boils down to something like, "we are proponents of free speech, but we don't like the ideas you espouse or the way you express them, so we oppose _your_ speech."

Anonymous should review the ACLU's defense of Nazis in the Skokie case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie

For freedom of speech to work, unsavory speech must be protected. Indeed, it is bottling up unsavory speech, that makes it so dangerous.

Anyway, this is Anonymous' reason not protecting speech:

Being such aggressive proponents for the Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Information as we are, we have hitherto allowed you to continue preaching your benighted gospel of hatred and your theatrical exhibitions of, not only your fascist views, but your utter lack of Christ-like attributes. You have condemned the men and women who serve, fight, and perish in the armed forces of your nation; you have prayed for and celebrated the deaths of young children, who are without fault; you have stood outside the United States National Holocaust Museum, condemning the men, women, and children who, despite their innocence, were annihilated by a tyrannical embodiment of fascism and unsubstantiated repugnance. Rather than allowing the deceased some degree of peace and respect, you instead choose to torment, harass, and assault those who grieve.
Your demonstrations and your unrelenting cascade of disparaging slurs, unfounded judgments, and prejudicial innuendos, which apparently apply to every individual numbered amongst the race of Man - except for yourselves - has frequently crossed the line which separates Freedom of Speech from deliberately utilizing the same tactics and methods of intimidation and mental & emotional abuse that have been previously exploited and employed by tyrants and dictators, fascists and terrorist organizations throughout history.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[TexVex]

trying to bully an admittedly annoying and vocal cult into silence?

Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. What those people do is not just speech. They take deliberate offensive action targeted at specific people and do them harm. They are bullies, and Anon are bullies, and is bullying a bully ironic? I don't see how.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[clarkkent09]

Not only are Anonymous tactics morally repulsive (you cannot advocate openness and free speech while staying hidden and engaging in selective censorship) but they don't work. This Westboro "church" is a tiny (just one family I believe) group of fringe fanatics that everybody laughs at. Rather than silencing them, Anonymous is just giving them free publicity they don't deserve.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[cpt kangarooski]

I dunno.

Certainly the WBC has the right to say what they like. But that doesn't mean that anyone has to sit there and politely listen to them; counter protesters have just as much of a right to say what they like, and if the volume of the counter protesters drowns out the WBC, I'm not sure that I see the problem, or at least a problem to which there is a solution that protects both groups.

If the counter protesters can convince the WBC to change their minds, or shame them into silence, or simply make it clear that WBC protests won't work, causing them to change their tactics, then the end result is that they're silenced, but so long as they were not forcibly compelled, is that bad?

The usual online tactics of Anonymous seems to be DDOSing. This isn't a very hostile attack and it doesn't necessarily silence the target. It's not hard to see parallels between that and, say, protesters surrounding a building, or holding a sit-in. And WBC can always mount a similar attack right back.

We'll have to see how this all shakes out, of course. But just because you support free speech, that doesn't mean you can't have an opinion, and can't aggressively exercise that freedom yourself.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[TubeSteak]

I can understand attacking PayPal or Visa websites over the Wikileaks thing, but trying to silence Phelps and his gang of attention whores demonstrates that, at the core, they have that unique activist capacity for not really getting the underlying point of freedoms.

The fundamental problem with what you're saying is that it presumes Anonymous should, could, would, or even wants to maintain a consistent ideology or set of morals.

Anonymous is legion and so are its motivations and goals.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[Howitzer86]

What's so wrong about making an exception in this case?

Idealistic human rights aside, if a small group is being grotesquely obnoxious to everyone else (to the point of making the grieving so sick that they barf between wails and tears) - and *everybody* else hates them and what they do - it would not be unreasonable for the vast civilized population to shut them up. It's not even mob rule, it's common sense. You can't yell fire in a theater, you can't threaten another human being, and you certainly can't sexually harass a woman. A lot of that has to do with how other people would respond to it. The panic, the fear, the awkward silence and anger... How is this any different? The list of reasonable exceptions to our great free speech rule is very large, and we're already used to having laws that limit it.

So why not make it illegal to protest a funeral? Who will be disenfranchised by that? Oh boo hoo, some hill-billy backwards family of lawyers isn't going to be able to make the family of the diseased cry. How will they ever make money, once they are unable to sue people who react in extreme but totally understandable ways to their troll-like behavior? Poor Fred Phelps, now that his right to be obscene and grotesquely obnoxious is taken away, what ever will he do? Maybe the family will have to take up real jobs, I bet some clansman ax-murderer would love to have one of them to represent him.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[Kjella]

Most people see that even free speech needs to have some border towards slander, intimidation, harassment and other related topics. I may be far out there on the "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" scale but I wouldn't take any accusation, any threat or any treatment.

Calling me once is not harassment. Calling me hundreds of times at all hours of the day, even after I've told you to stop is harassment even if you've used nothing but speech. Threatening to bust my kneecaps should obviously be a crime. Lying about me to my employer so I get fired likewise.

The question is one of sensibilities as some could feel slandered, intimidated or harassed for practically nothing. I see the problem, but I can't really go to the other extreme that nobody should ever feel that way. And between the clearly legal and clearly illegal I do see shades of gray.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[MightyMartian]

To whatever extent that Phelp and crazy klan can be limited in where they march by public order laws, I have no problem with that. If the idea, as with any group, is to assure peaceful assembly, then that fits within the idea of liberty. But shutting them off the Internet because you don't like what they say. No, that's the work of people with an autocratic streak. People like Anonymous sometimes achieve power, and that's where we get the Maos and Pol Pots and Stalins from.

As to your Neo-Nazi bogeyman, the Weimar Republic put a helluva lot of effort into shutting down the Nazis in the 1920s to no success, and even the modern German Republic has done all it can to make Neo-Nazism illegal, and yet there it is. Hate doesn't get killed by censorship, hate eats censorship like fuel. I'd argue that guys like the Nazis needed censorship to give them their mystique.

Re:Ohhh the irony...

[MightyMartian]

If you try to do that, you'll end up getting it tossed out in the Supreme Court. There's no way that a blanket ban on protests at funerals would ever hold up.

I'm afraid liberty requires that we sometimes put up with some genuinely vile people.

The Internet has grown up a bit Re:Bit dramatic..

[davidwr]

The average mental age on the Internet is at least 13 and the 85th percentile is at least 15.

kind of a boring target, isn't it?

[Trepidity]

The Westboro Baptist Church fills an odd role where they're so extreme and, possibly more problematically, rude, that they have very little support. Will damaging them in some way actually change anything? Even people way on the right already dissociate themselves from them, and they have basically no actual influence on anything.

It's sort of the same with Actual Nazis imo. I'm worried about a certain kind of intolerant right-wing strain in the U.S., but I think Westboro types and swastika-flag-waving types are mostly distractions and not where the real problems lie; the right-wingers who aren't actively shooting themselves in the foot like those two groups do are bigger problems.

It'd go the other way too. Say you were a conservative worried about leftism in the U.S. You could attack the Communist Party USA, but would that be a good use of your time? They're a sideshow.

Do not fall for the trolling

[Kaboom13]

WestBoro Baptist Church is just a media whore stirring up trouble to provoke a reaction. Whoever claims to speak for anonymous is the same. "anonymous" is just a group of people, in the loosest sense of the term, with no leadership or agenda. You can not declare a warning from something you have no control over. As the wikileaks DDOS attacks have shown us, most of them barely even qualify as script kiddies, and are ridiculously easy to catch. There are some that know enough to do SQL injection attacks, or brute force passwords (or use the built in password reset) but super hackers they are not. The mainstream media is laughable in how clueless they are about it. They can't seem to understand that the internet makes it possible to have a group with common goals who is coordinated through group-think instead of a firm leadership. There is no monolithic entity, no membership, no initiation ritual or brotherhood. It's a loose group whose actions are dictated by a herd mentality.

Re:Do not fall for the trolling

[MightyMartian]

So what you're saying is they're two whores fighting over the same street corner.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Prayer: How to do nothing and still feel like you're helping.

Unless God says so Re:Unfortunately they do

[davidwr]

After reading about the pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, I think there may be some truth to this web site's name.

A medical question:
If each cigarette you smoke takes 5 minutes off of your life, but you are an eternal being, how does that work?

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Foobar of Borg]

Why not ask the easter bunny for peace in the middle east?

How do you think all these anti-government protests in the middle east got started? I definitely see the easter bunny's paws in this one!

WE ARE ANONYMOUS

[Dhalka226]

WE ARE ANONYMOUS, VOICE OF FREE SPEECH. OBEY US OR BE SILENCED.

Only twats as self-important as they obviously are could write this sort of thing and not even realize what they're saying. Or perhaps they do realize and just think that they're so great that their hypocrisy doesn't matter. I believe we've seen this sort of thing in history before. It starts with a religion and ends with lots of dead people. But hey, maybe this time it will be awesome.

Westboro Baptist Church and lawsuits

[Wyatt Earp]

The Westboro Baptist Church lives off suing people for infringing on their right to free speech, assembly, etc. If the IRC and 4chan douche bags attack them, then WBC isn't going to have anyone to sue, but will try and waste capital in their attempt.

And yes, they have computers, website, businesses associated with them, so there is crap for anonymous to attack.

I don't normally condone vigilantism....

[GeneralEmergency]

...and I cherish the First Amendment above all the others.... ...but just this once....I'm gonna be spending all my time looking in another direction.

And -Damn you to Hell- Fred Phelps, and your inbred collection of Olympic class haters, for pushing me to this hypocrisy.

Streisand effect

[Kjella]

Pardon me for saying so, but why in hell would Anonymous give PR to this weird little cult? Apart from being grossly disgusting they seem fairly few and harmless and their sole power is the outraged press they garner.

They're the kind of religious nuts you can't reason with because they see everything as proof they are right. Hell, isn't this the same creeps that wanted to show up in the funeral of that 9yo girl that got shot? I think these people are going for martyrdom and hoping someone will open fire on them. I'd be tempted.

They Do It for the Lawsuit Settlements

[Doc Ruby]

Phelps and his gang of Christianist assholes are in the business of provoking angry responses to their hellish displays that Phelps' gang will claim in court violated their rights or damaged them. To blackmail their targets, usually municipalities with the ability to pay, into settling the lawsuit and paying off Phelps rather than pay the extensive legal fees and possibly damages. That's why Phelps' gang is pumped full of lawyers trained at "Liberty" "University", the Christian crusade madrassa.

In this fight, it's Anonymous that's on the side of the angels.

Re:They Do It for the Lawsuit Settlements

[MightyMartian]

The Phelps Gang tests the extreme end of free speech. I despise them with all my being, but if it came to push and shove and I had to either choose whether Phelps and his gang of vile hatemongers or Anonymous lived or died, I'm afraid I'd stand on the side of Phelps. Anonymous is attacking Phelps' right to freely express his views, no matter how noxious. Anonymous is wrong on this one, and should be ashamed of themselves, if they weren't, of course, a bunch of halfwitted scriptkiddies with as much of a hard-on for getting attention from the press as Phelps and Co.

Re:They Do It for the Lawsuit Settlements

[Prien715]

I have no problem with creating a website devoted to hate. What I do have a problem with are their funeral protests.

If someone gives their life in service of the country, the least the country can do is give them a dignified funeral. We already have limits on Free Speech (screaming "fire" in a theater) and I'm not quite so sure adding an additional restriction would lead to repression. I am however, equally happy, that the counter-protesters always outnumber their filth.

Re:Bit dramatic..

[DurendalMac]

Exactly. It seems that the WIkileaks coverage has inflated someone's head to grotesque proportions. Anonymous isn't an "advocate of the people" or "the voice of free speech". Quite the contrary. Anonymous has fucked around with largely random people for years and is a poster boy for the abuse of free speech, quite possibly engaging in activities that will make politicians call for further limitations to free speech. Anonymous is...well, Anonymous. They're a huge group of people who spend too much time on the internet and have engaged in a wide variety of activities, from protesting Scientology to DDoSing Wikileaks to a multitude of lower-profile activities, like screwing people over the internet as hard as possible just for the lulz. And "super-consciousness"? Gimme a fucking break.

Re:Even so Re:Bit dramatic..

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Sorry, but you are wrong.
When two groups of retards attack each other, everyone wins...

Re:I don't think they care

[Weezul]

Worse, I doubt anonymous cares about Fred Phelps. heh

Anonymous must fundamentally be about the lolz. You're welcome to credit anonymous if you get even bigger lolz by inciting Fred Phelps. Yet, I'm not sure that's possible, meaning any normal reaction will already involve lolz. Don't let me stop you from trying! Just please make sure your shit is actually funny before you take on the anonymous label.

If otoh you're just looking for some good ol' internet vigilantly action, may I humbly suggest Muskegon MI Prosecutor Tony Tague. Our dear public servant Tony has clearly got a full plate what with a serial killer on the loose in his town. Yet, he find ample time to prosecute a youtube comedian for tasteless editing. Yes, that right, he's sending some poor kid with a guitar up the creek for 20 years over bad taste in editing.

I'd never call harassing Tony Tague, or the parents that put him up to it, an Anonymous action, well no epic here, maybe if the kid was a funner singer, but meh. I'm confident however that many people feel rather annoyed by grandstanding prosecutors and retarded paranoid parents. And clearly this prosecution goes beyond the pale. So here's your chance to vent some frustration and take a stand against stupidity. Just call Tony Tague's office tell his secretary what an ass hat he is for abusing due process like this.

I'm sure they'll be posting the complaining parent's telephone numbers all over /b/ too, but honestly I doubt America's breeders will gain any collective intelligence just because some get bitch slapped by /b/, something awful, etc.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Yvanhoe]

I think the idea is to overwhelm the target websites with love.
Something like 100,000 kind prayers a second.

Re:I don't think they care

[palegray.net]

If they have anyone technically competent around it would be trivial for them to identify and sue participants in a DDOS, ADDING to their cash flow.

You've just demonstrated a severe lack of knowledge about the basics of DDoS operations. It is most assuredly not trivial, especially when tens of thousands of compromised machines owned by people who are barely aware of the location of the power switch are involved. Even assuming a handful of folks were stupid enough to carry this out in a manner that were to permit their apprehension, there are probably going to be jurisdictional issues to contend with (likely crossing national borders), coupled with the age old adage that "you can't get blood out of a stone." In other words, good luck identifying any actual willful participant, and good luck getting any money out of said person should you manage to drag him into court.

tl;dr version == Ha, good luck with that.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Requiem18th]

Sorry, that was the work of the *middle* easter bunny.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Seumas]

As an atheist, I recognize that posting in threads on the internet and prayer are very similar. :)

Re:Even so Re:Bit dramatic..

[Seumas]

Sorry, but you are wrong.

When two groups of retards attack each other, everyone wins...

Yes, but we're not talking about Digg versus Reddit, right now.

Re:At LEAST it's better...

[kevinNCSU]

Not that I pity Westboro at all (hypocritical demon warshipers)...

Fuck me, who let that crazy church build demon warships?!?!

Re:Hate meets hate?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Indeed. How is it that they (anon) fail to see the hypocrisy here? (emphasis added)

'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"

I don't like anything that Westboro has to say either -- but they damned sure have the right to say it.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[shutdown -p now]

You mean to say, religion is basically God trolling everyone else? ~

Re:Hate meets hate?

[PRMan]

"I find that those who pray experience more coincidences..." - C. S. Lewis

Re:Hate meets hate?

[Seumas]

As do people who believe in numerology and astrology.

Re:Unfortunately they do

[drsmithy]

www.godlovesfags.com

For the life of me I cannot comprehend why people do this sort of thing.

The solution when your chosen religion conflicts with your lifestyle and biology is not to try and reinterpret and redefine that religion's beliefs to align with yours, it's to stop believing in that religion and choose another (or none at all).

The motivations of women who wish to be ordained as priests are similarly mystifying.

Re:Bit dramatic..

[DurendalMac]

So shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, screaming death threats, and publishing blatantly libelous material as though it were fact is protected as free speech? That's news to me.

Re:GodHatesFags.com

[Rary]

Anyone taking bets that Phelps turns out to be gay?

Gay, not quite. Bisexual, almost certainly.

All the really vocal anti-gay fanatics turn out to be bisexual. That's why they're all so convinced that homosexuality is a choice. For them, it literally is, and they assume it's the same for everyone else.

Re:I don't think they care

[plover]

The WBC are definitely not loons. They're barrators with a money stream that looks like this:

1. Select a sign guaranteed to offend people in a 100% legal fashion, and chant carefully worded slogans trolling for a reaction.
2. Receive reaction in the form of ??? (a punch in the nose, or a city council bannination, either works)
3. File lawsuits and profit !!!

What anonymous seems to be failing to understand is that they're just a bunch of amateurs, while the WBC are *professional trolls*. They make their living by trolling. They will not be stopped by other trolls, as they are simply too disciplined to fall for a troll. It's like trying to con a con-artist.

Some of the other God Hates $(foo) groups may be loonies who believe the hateful crap they're defecating on the world, but do not count the WBC in that group. There is actually little chance the WBC believes their own crap. They just substitute the value for $(foo) that looks like it will offend the local crowds the most.

Re:Hate meets hate?

[ArcherB]

You have a Constitutional right to petition your government. You do NOT have the Constitutional right to petition the grieving families at a soldier's funeral.

Sorry, but even free speech is not absolute.

However, even though I'm straight, I would certainly pitch in a few bucks to fly some gay men to WBC for a nice love-in on the steps of the church. I say that as both a Christian Baptist and a veteran.