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Alan Moore on V For Vendetta and the Rise of Anonymous
First time accepted submitter tmcb writes in with a piece by Alan Moore about the influence his comic has had on the hacker group Anonymous. "On Saturday protests are planned across the world against Acta — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty has become the focus of activists associated with the Anonymous hacking network because of concerns that it could undermine internet privacy and aid censorship.
First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character.
Ahead of the protests, the BBC asked V for Vendetta's writer, Alan Moore, for his thoughts on how his creation had become an inspiration and identity to Anonymous."
I'd be lying if I didn't admit that whatever usefulness they afford modern radicalism is very satisfying.
Wow, that's the first time I think I've ever heard Alan Moore expressing anything remotely akin to...dare I say..."happiness."
This article *must* be a hoax.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I expected any external use of his writings whatsoever to cause him to roll-over in the grave which I can only assume he sleeps in every night.
Moore sounds like he is satisfied with his contribution to the movement, but not as satisfied or validated with the achievements of modern radicals (yet).
I love seeing symbols and characters borrowed from history and re-used, or re-purposed. It reassures me that our actions could potentially matter to future generations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_tree_hoax
You say that though /. but I can't believe that in the current climate in that situation in the real world the police wouldn't fire and then chase them down.
I was re-watching the film recently and it was the scene at the end where the mob marches on the armed police and the police use their own judgement and decide not to fire. Maybe I've been spending too much time on
After seeing what happened at the recent protests with police attacking protesters with disproportionate force, the kettling, the staying away from areas where riots were actually taking place I can't believe that with today's police force would do what happened to V's supporters. I honestly found the resolution to be unbelievable because they have shown they're willing to attack huge crowds of protesters for political gain.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Indeed, instead of opposing a fascist government its now about opposing a government controlled by big corporations.
except that even as a non-pirate I can see that the means employed to stop these "anonymous thieving pirates" are becoming increasingly fascist and removed from the principles of enlightenment. Take special note of how "trade agreements" which "must" be agreed upon in secret are used to introduce laws in a step to side-step national parliaments, the overwhelming police brutality and tactics (like transporting people 20km away from a city center and dumping them by the roadside, in the middle of the night if they so wish to, without needing to ensure that they have any means to get home safely. In fact we have had at least one death due to this already as a man froze to death. All perfectly legal) used to make sure protesters can't be there to voice their displeasure at avenues (such as trade summits) covered by the media.
I think the only way to get a grouping of people that doesn't have members that have been murdered by the Mexican Mafia, is to make the group "People who haven't been murdered by the Mexican Mafia."
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
The also rolled back from targeting the Mexican cartel the moment it was clear their lives would be in danger...
My guess is that today's police forces are slightly more independent then the one in the movie. Their commanders are unlikely to be executed or disappeared if they do something that the political leadership does not approve of.
In the movie, the country was extremely centralized, and both of the 'leaders' were dead at the time the barricades were breached. The army could easily have stopped them, and probably wouldn't have felt bad about it. What they didn't dare do was act without orders.
I suggest they do self immolation.
Hilariously, your comment was modded as Flamebait.
Summation 2
I've spotted him laughing along at a couple of comedy gigs in Northampton of late. And showing a great deal of bonhomie with the acts too.
Guess what, we're all human.
I offer you a quote that might shed some light on the difference between Hollywood's version of good guys, and the real thing.
"If soldiers thought, they wouldn't be soldiers."
The line between police and military is becoming grey in the US. They want them to be interchangeable. Once the general public has accepted the fact that your liberties are provided to you by the government, and not your Creator we will be doomed.
Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by Religous people and we will always be fighting to govern it, because we know our rights are provided by our Creator.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
To be honest, i never thought that i would see such thoughts and philosophies, and such awareness about the depravity of the current system in mainstream in my lifetime.
im quite pleased in the direction the awareness is going. i think, even if i dont see the full materialization of these ideals immediately in my lifetime, i can still die a happy camper. however, at this rate things are going, i may actually see the realization of those ideas before i bite the dust.
its exciting. i thank everyone who is participating in these awareness movements to change the world for the better.
Read radical news here
Nah, the news would show some guy taking a dump on the flag, some smashed windows, not cover the rest of the story. The viewers would be telling the trigger-happy police "Atta boy!"
Was that intentional? Like in "King of the Hill" where a character says something along the lines of: I'm not sad, I just feel sense hopelessness and depressed mood. If it was intentional, very funny.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
My parents were my creators. That at least is provable.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
There would be some news reports about alleged police brutality with no facts, images, or video, but with a few interviews of older white middle class people saying that they are glad the police are protecting society from the dirty hobo looters.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Really.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots
or perhaps this.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots#Police_shooting_of_Mark_Duggan
Doesn't matter where you live, people can still lose it...
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
I assume that's the quote you wanted! And since we see Monsanto execs running the FDA and regulatory officials literally sleeping with BP execs, it sure seems spot on.
Moore didn't draw it. David Lloyd did.
Your country (assuming you're American) was founded by people who were either atheists or had very non-standard (for the time, and even by today's standard) religious views. Certainly not "Religious people" of the kind you imply.
Believing your rights and liberties are granted to you by your government is obviously a bad idea - it puts the government in charge. Believing your rights and liberties are granted to you by a creator not only doesn't make much sense (you don't have rights in the jungle), it's ALSO a bad idea - it puts the creator, or rather whoever you believe speaks for him, in charge. Religion was harnessed to be an effective means of controlling the people long before governments came along to try the same thing. And to head off the obvious protestant objection, you most likely still regard some form of holy book as speaking for your creator, and if you're Christian, the details of that holy book are nasty if interpreted literally and/or completely.
You live in a democracy. Your rights are granted to you by society (i.e. the people, i.e. you). When people realize this, democracy will actually work properly and the world will be a better place.
until anyone wearing or owning one of those masks can be arrested for "suspicion of activities detrimental to state security"?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Your rights are granted to you by society (i.e. the people, i.e. you).
Ha, that is most certainly not true. If it was, how do you justify saying "slavery was wrong"? Or don't you? Because if rights are only granted by society, then if society as a whole decides certain people don't deserve certain rights, then they don't get those rights and that is perfectly justified (if what you say is true). Perhaps you meant to add certain qualifiers.
You have to say there are certain rights that humans possess by being human. And then there are certain rights that society can grant later. Basic health care would be a good example: it isn't a basic human right, but it can be granted as a right by a society that passes a certain stage of wealth and medical technology.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Yes, but the masks used by protestors are very much based on the version drawn by Alan Moore (and which the movie intentionally used, being a cinematic version of Moore's work). Had they been directly drawn from the original source, they would have looked more different.
...and not subject to royalties.
Anonymous, thanks for inflating the profits of one of the big media companies you are protesting against.
Advice: on VPS providers
Actually, Moore agrees with you. The film was different from the graphic novel:
I've read the screenplay, so I know exactly what they're doing with it, and I'm not going to be going to see it. When I wrote "V," politics were taking a serious turn for the worse over here. We'd had [Conservative Party Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher in for two or three years, we'd had anti-Thatcher riots, we'd got the National Front and the right wing making serious advances. "V for Vendetta" was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy.
Those words, "fascism" and "anarchy," occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. In my original story there had been a limited nuclear war, which had isolated Britain, caused a lot of chaos and a collapse of government, and a fascist totalitarian dictatorship had sprung up. Now, in the film, you've got a sinister group of right-wing figures â" not fascists, but you know that they're bad guys â" and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It's a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives â" which is not what "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England]. The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it. And if the Wachowski brothers had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn't it have been more direct to do what I'd done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?
(Emphasis mine)
http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/interviews/m/moore_alan_060315/
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For every cut Warner gets, Moore gets a cut.
Nope. He had his name taken off the film and directed that all profits he might be due from the film be given to Lloyd instead.
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They chose continuing to live over making a pointless gesture? Pathetic.
They certainly weren't atheists. The Declaration is one proof of that. Most were deists which, at the time, was a very standard religious view among the more intellectual people, including Jefferson and Franklin. And they most certainly believed in religious freedom.
So.
Although the government of today (In England) is a progressive bureaucratic creeping state of regulation and control, V for Vendetta makes the evil government a Christian Dictatorship? Yeah...that's a believable outcome.
The Hero tortures the Heroine to get her on his side in the grand fight? And he's the good guy?
The glorifying of Guy Fawlkes for his attempt to blow up parliment? What?
V for Vendetta is a stupid movie.
If you want to see a great movie about standing up to an evil state watch "The Lives of Others" A movie based in a believable world, one that really exists. Set in the ex-communist East Germany. It is a beautiful movie with sadness throughout but redemption at the end. Including bravery and doing what is right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
blah
Here in America, the police would just mow down the crowd with machine-gun fire and call it a day.
There in the USA, the crowd would show up armed to the teeth, and the cops would be running for their lives if they weren't fragging their superiors.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The REAL Irony to him getting satisfaction that the V is being used in protests, is that most people would not of even known of his work if not for the movie (which he didn't want made). Sure there were plenty of comic book fans that were well aware of Alan's work, but not as many outside the medium. Not for the last 20-ish years (Same with Watchmen).
How about we make a deal: I don't make up shit interpretations of your religion ("An important tenet for Christans is that cannibalism can be a good thing. This is especially important to Catholics, who interpret their important Holy Communion ritual as literal cannibalism, brough about by magic.") that completely miss the point and you don't make up shit interpretation of the psychology of faith and atheism that completely miss the point?
I don't have the skills to reasonably interpret your emotions around the internals of your religion, and you don't have the skills to reasonably interpret the emotions or reason of people that aren't religious, so if we both stay off saying things about it, I think the world would be a better place.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by Religous people and we will always be fighting to govern it, because we know our rights are provided by our Creator.
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
- James Madison, letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
- John Adams
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
You get the point. They may have been men of FAITH, but certainly not RELIGIOUS. There's a significant difference.
Furthermore, why must liberties be GRANTED? They're quite plainly something that cannot be given; they can only be taken away. The question is not who grants us our rights, but rather who would try to take them away. To which the answer is almost always government. You are correct that others believing rights are granted by government is a very dangerous thing. But believing rights are granted by some deity is equally dangerous. If people believe that our rights come directly from the Christian God, for example, then denying those rights to people who people who get abortions or are athiest or are homosexual seems justified. Believing that rights are granted to you by some entity only makes those rights easier for others to violate.
I think in some ways the UK police are as bad as anything the US can bring. Note the OC mentions kettling. This is a very distinctly European (and especially London/British) police behaviour and terminology.
You know, having lived for years in both countries, and being a dual citizen, I can unequivocally say that the police in the UK are nowhere near as bad as the police in the US.
Not even in the same universe, much less the same ballpark.
Yes, UK police use kettling, yes, they shoved a newspaper man to the ground (but did not subsequently beat to within an inch of his life) whose internal injuries from the later killed him, yes, they are imperfect, and can be as myopic or provincial as anyone. Yes, the chief of police can get buy for years with flagrant corruption and keep his post long past his sell-by date by deftly playing the ethnicity card over and over again, until a victim of his own ethnicity finally outs him in court, yes to all of that.
But that pales in comparison to the harshness of the US police that is part and parcel of daily policing here. Unarmed people here are shot dead in their own home, with alarming regularity, and the police get away with it by saying they 'thought he was armed.' There was just another instance of that in the tri-state area this past week, and dozens more in the 18 months or so I've been back in the states.
The UK police can be criticized plenty, but until you've lived on this side of the pond, you really don't know how good you have it. Your police are positively humane and polite, sometimes to a fault, by comparison.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Absolutely agree 100%.
I always vote third party out of principal. Even if I don't agree with what they say. Even if I know they won't win. The US voters have got into a mindset that there are only two parties.
My vote (and yours, anyones) for a third party is not a wasted vote- it is a vote towards establishing the legitimacy of ANY viewpoint- not just two.
The more people vote 3rd party- the more people will see it as a legitimate stance- which hopefully one day will lead to more than two parties.
I'm actually a huge fan of sortition- or an election/sortition hybrid- I believe that will truly give government the full-spectrum of political beliefs of the country- something that isn't represented in our two-party system.
I also am opposed to political party being listed on the ballot- or the option to vote "straight party ticket". We are electing people- not parties. The party should not show up on the ballot- nothing in our constitution says we are electing parties or that parties should be listed on the ballot. This creates an unfair environment and an unlevel playing field.
If you don't know what party someone belongs to- do you really know enough to be voting for them?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Well... we already know the V mask version of Guido Fawkes and where it came from... but what about the Lulz characters?
Both LulzSec and that new one- whats it called something "S" Sec- the one that got FoxConn recently use a snobby looking character with a top-hat. The two logos are different- but there are obvious similarities... the black tophat for one.
The only thing I can think of is "black hat"- although they're not really black hat hackers... Personally, I think they should be called "Red Hat" because they don't fit the white hat or grey hat definitions either. Red is the symbol for revolution and activism.
Nonetheless- I thought the colour hat referred to Westerns- you know the cowboy in white was the good guy- the guy in black was the bad guy. No?
Anyhow- back on subject- what is the origin of that guy- is it just a coincidence the new groups logo looks similar to Lulzsecs logo?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Slavery wasn't wrong at the time. It was a God given right (and a society given right). Slavery had been perfectly justified for the vast majority of Human existence. Thankfully society decided to make it wrong.
Let's get down to the brass tacks. If somebody has more power than you, what rights do you truly possess? They can force you to work, force you to starve, force you to die. At some point in our history though, we decided that wasn't acceptable. We collectively decided it's wrong to deny certain rights and we use the might of our society to attempt to protect those rights.
You can't out of context say "a person has these inalienable rights" because it isn't always true. You can say "In the US, a person has these inalienable rights" because we as a society have decided to protect them. Replace US with Darfur or North Korea and you see it isn't true - because society doesn't have the strength to protect those rights.
+1 Disagree
Then you're obviously on the wrong site: this is news for nerds, i.e., people who can figure out how to use a URI even if it's not hyperlinked. News for hapless, brain-dead idiots is thataway. (Or even thataway.)
Now go away and let the grownups talk. :p ;)
poormanjoe blathered:
Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by Religous people and we will always be fighting to govern it, because we know our rights are provided by our Creator.
Advocates of a Christian theocracy in America constantly repeat that meme, despite the fact that it's patently untrue.
Christian cultists immigrated to America on the Mayflower specifically so that they could practic religious intolerance free from interference by the English government. Other cults followed their lead over the ensuing century-and-a-half or so, but they were not the only sort of people who immigrated to America. Most of those who came here in the 150+ years before this country was actually founded did so for economic reasons - because land was free for the taking, and opportunities to get rich abounded in the New Woirld.
The founders of the USA - which is to say the delegates to the Continental Congress and its successor bodies - were, admittedly, mostly at least nominally Christian. But the country that they created was, by design, emphatically a secular entity. That, in turn, was because for many decades before (and, indeed, after) the founding of the USA various of those Christian cults mentioned above were in a practically continuous state of war with one another. Take the so-called Great Awakening in Connecticut during the period 1735-1745, a time of tremendous turmoil in the Congregationalist (i.e. - "Puritan) faith. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans even went so far as to hang four Quakers for the crime of not being Puritans. So the founding fathers explicitly made the USA a secular nation, to prevent any of the cults from gaining supremacy over the others and establishing itself as a national religion.
Basically, you and your ilk want to undo that and make the USA into a Christian theocracy. The problem is, you fail to understand that, if the USA became an officially Christian theocracy, chances are that it would be a Catholic one - because adherents of the Catholic Church comprise the single largest denomination in the USA, with more than 65.5 million members (although there are more Protestant adherents collectively, they are fractured into hundreds of denominations with serious doctrinal and dogmatic divisions from one another, and cannot be considered as a single religious entity), with Southern Baptists at just over 16 million members being the next-largest denomination.
If you believe that Southern Baptists would be happy at the prospect of an explicitly Catholic theocracy in the USA, you aren't very well acquainted with Southern Baptists, or their ingrained hatred of and contempt for what they like to call Papists.
So, in conclusion, kindly shut the fuck up, because you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Check out my novel.
I previously worked for a company that interfaced with police agencies all over the country (we were there database software provider). I can tell you that there's really not as much bad shit going on as you think. Yeah, there's some, but most cops just want to punch in and punch out safely, just like you. I can't compare to the UK.
There are so many police officers in this country that of COURSE you're gonna get some racists, nutjobs, or power-trippers, just like any other large enough group of people. Getting up in arms over police abuses isn't the right fight, as those cops are degenerate assholes anyway and would be committing crimes if they were cops or not (the position of authority does make many crimes more egregious though). The right fight is going after the stupid laws and lawmakers that allow these behaviors to continue without removing these officers.
Perpetuating this quotation in isolation is dishonest. See, for example here:
In any event, I assume that was the poster above was getting at by "religious", was that these men were theists and their understanding of rights was that they are endowed by a Creator. That's pretty par for the course in the Enlightenment era.