Anonymous Declare 'Total War' On Donald Trump, Threaten To 'Dismantle His Campaign' (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes from Business Insider's article: Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective have vowed to relaunch cyber-operations against US presidential candidate Donald Trump [on April Fools' Day]. They threaten to "dismantle his campaign" by taking his election websites offline in a large-scale and orchestrated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. In December 2015, Anonymous officially "declared war" on Trump after a radical speech in which he said Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. The operation at the time resulted in a number of websites being targeted by hackers, but failed to have lasting impact. A new video statement has been posted to YouTube which claims the "loyalists and veterans" of Anonymous have decided to ramp up cyber-operations against Trump -- dubbed #OpTrump -- on a far larger scale than ever before. "Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing. Your inconsistent and hateful campaign has not only shocked the United States of America [but] you have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideas. You say what your audience wants to hear but in reality you don't stand for anything except for your personal greed and power."
The websites targeted in the attack (so far) include trump.com, donaldjtrump.com, and trumphotelcollection.com. In addition, the hacktivists are also planning to release some of Donald Trump's personal information including a SSN, phone number, and contact information of his agent and legal representative.

Comments

Morons Just Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

EVERYTIME some group has "declared war", insulted, demeaned, became "outraged", etc. about Trump or supporters, his popularity and support grew.

The actions of this immature group of mother's basement dwelling mouth breathers will only cement their reputations as such and make more Trump supporters.

Just from a rational point of view, shutting down political speech is never a good thing, no matter what that speech is. Because if they can do it to one candidate, it can be done to others.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[The-Ixian]

This is how I feel as well.

It is eerie how similar the Trump rise to the head of the ticket is to the Obama rise. From Iowa in 2008 nobody expected Obama to win anything, then, every state after that where Obama won it was an "upset" to the establishment.

I see the same exact thing happening again.

People want change and they love an underdog.

The more people tell them they are wrong, the more it cements their position.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[gweihir]

Just from a rational point of view, shutting down political speech is never a good thing, no matter what that speech is. Because if they can do it to one candidate, it can be done to others.

Indeed. A fascist approach does not become any better because some "good" guys use it or because the goal is "noble".

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[Darinbob]

Except that in the Democratic primary race 8 years ago, Obama actually sounded like a sane candidate. Most candidates dropped out after Iowa. And from then on Obama was the front runner and never the underdog. But people didn't think of him as a frontrunner from some reason. Despite any possible Democratic candidate providing change over Dubya's administration, Obama was the only one pushing that message. Clinton was running on a campaign of "I'm the inevitable winner so you may as well vote for me now".

Most of the candidates other than Obama were longer term insiders than Obama, so that probably helped him out a lot. Probably a lot of people tired of both Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush years. Edwards in third place was the only other candidate to get any delegates, there was not a long drawn out multi-way race like we have this year with Republicans (and I swear, I can't remember a damn thing about Edwards campaign). Obama really was very similar to Rubio; first time senator yet treated like an outsider, young with appeal among younger voters, occasional breaches of established party doctrine, etc (I'd have expected Rubio to do much better if the Republican demographics skewed a bit younger).

As for Trump, he didn't even start as an underdog, everyone assumed he was just there because he was bored and needed something to do with his money. His incessant claims that Obama wasn't a citizen meant most politicians of all stripes thought he was a kook so he was ignored. But he never acted like an underdog, from the very start he campaigned as if he were the best and most popular candidate, he just will never shut up about his poll numbers. He actually acts more like a rabid dog than an under dog, always on the attack. And this is really confusing political pundits because he's doing everything wrong and it seems to be working.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[quantaman]

This is how I feel as well.

It is eerie how similar the Trump rise to the head of the ticket is to the Obama rise. From Iowa in 2008 nobody expected Obama to win anything, then, every state after that where Obama won it was an "upset" to the establishment.

I see the same exact thing happening again.

People want change and they love an underdog.

The more people tell them they are wrong, the more it cements their position.

I honestly see almost nothing in common.

Obama came from relative obscurity starting small and expected to stay small, Trump was already a huge celebrity starting huge who people expected to implode.

Obama was seen as a current and future star of the party (just not the nominee that year), Trump was first seen as a joke and then an existential threat.

Obama sold hope, Trump sells fear.

Obama is a minority, came from a relatively middle class family, and stayed middle class for much of his adult life, Trump is white, from extreme wealth, and more or less stayed that way.

Obama's fundamental appeal was leading forward progress for a better tomorrow, Trump's is forcefully repealing progress to return to a better past.

Aside from the fact they were both underdogs they're almost polar opposites.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[Mashiki]

Ive noticed this as well, its become more and more clear over the past 3 weeks that is the case. I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump. its the rubber band effect. the side of political correctness has pushed too far, now its bouncing back in the opposite direction where people are starting to relate to trump due to what some see as non political correct and what others call hate speech. It was bound to happen

And you'd be right. And it's the same reason why Rubio and Cruz lost somewhere around 1m twitter followers between them after they started going off on the "Trump is really the one responsible for what happened in Chicago bit." People are tired of the regressive left doing something, and everyone going "but they're really not to blame...IT'S THE OTHER GUYS...HONEST..." And the second that Kasich decided that the "Illegals are the bestest things evar, and I'm going pro-amnesty" he started dropping in in the polls and losing followers faster then a rock dropping from orbit. People have simply had enough of the establishment pulling this.

Couple of other examples to back up your point, would be the University of Missouri, and the 20% loss of first year students, the $32m budget shortfall, problems retaining students on campus. Their solution? We're gonna do everything we can to get students in! Tell your friends! The email from the temporary dean even went as far as saying that "anyone who'd applied would be accepted as a student." If that doesn't people what happens when absolute craziness from the regressive left and SJW happen, it should by that point.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[ultranova]

I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump.

How about blaming the Republican voters who are voting for him?

its the rubber band effect. the side of political correctness has pushed too far, now its bouncing back in the opposite direction where people are starting to relate to trump due to what some see as non political correct and what others call hate speech.

If Republican voters find Trump to be the candidate who best embodies their political ideas, that's the fault of said voters and their party, not their opponents.

But it's always good to get a reminder of what conservatives actually mean by "personal responsibility": never their fault.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[DrJimbo]

I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump.

The Republicans have also been blamed for resorting to the politics of hate. The best explanation I've seen has two components:

1) The inclination of some people to turn to authoritarianism when times get rough.

2) The concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is making things rough for the working class. Things aren't really bad yet (like in the great depression) but people's prospects are bleak. They are worse off now than they were 10 years ago without much hope in sight.

If this simple analysis is correct then the problem is not Trump. There are always Trumps around. The problem is that economic times (more accurately, prospects) are bad enough that a sizable fraction of the population is turning to a strongman/bully who promises to protect them even if those promises don't make any rational sense.

This has several implications. First, if there is a successful large-scale terrorist attack in the US then this could easily raise the overall level of fear enough to sweep Trump into the White House. Second, if the powers-that-be stay in power and continue their policies of transferring wealth away from the working class then the levels of economic distress and fear will grow, creating even more support for Trump or the next authoritarian strongman/bully who comes along.

The only real solution is to stop waging economic warfare on the working class. Unfortunately, even if Bernie Sanders gets elected, it is going to be nigh on impossible to quickly change the course of the best government that money could buy.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[shilly]

I also don't know why the Dems are so against him. Between Cruz and Trump, Trump has _far_ more liberal policies/tendencies. He'd actually raise taxes if they pushed for it.

Perhaps because they are morally outraged by the idea of a politician rising to power on the back of policies last enacted by Nazis: bans on a religious group entering the country, a national register for a religious group, etc? I do know that my grandma, if she were still alive, would slap me in the face for forgetting our family's history and her murdered aunts, uncles and cousins, if I so much as contemplated voicing even mild support for Trump. And she'd be right to do so.

Whether he believes in these policies or sentiments is besides the point. He is creating a safe space for these ideas to creep back into political life, and that is a pernicious legacy that will cause great harm irrespective of whether he is elected or not.

Somebody is fighting irrelevance...

[gweihir]

I think Anonymous is largely irrelevant and powerless these days and its members know it.

There's a much easier solution to Trump

[neilo_1701D]

Vote.

Taking down servers, defacing websites... all petty vandalism. Vote on election day; the one day when your voice is heard and counts.

Re:Yawn...

[AchilleTalon]

The brain dead script kiddies declare war on Trump. Really?

Do they know anything about democracy? Let the people not choose Trump as President and that's all. Left the democracy alone and get a life anonymous kids.

Free speech...publicizing contacts

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> taking his election websites offline

Were they wearing brown shirts when they "declared war" on a candidate exercising his right to free speech? Have they forgotten why free speech is a good thing in the first place or are we just going straight to "thought police" mode?

>> contact information of his agent and legal representative

Um...isn't this information public anyway? What's an "agent" or a "representative" worth if they can't be contacted?

Re:Free speech...publicizing contacts

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Were they wearing brown shirts when they "declared war" on a candidate exercising his right to free speech?

The irony here, is that the Nazis used disruption to come to power. The Nazis only had a few folks in parliament, but through disruption, they managed to derail the democratic process and grind the operation of government to a halt.

I bet these "protesters" would be surprised to learn that they are using tried and trusted methods of the Nazis.

And the most famous "Total War" speech I can think of was the one made by Joseph Goebbels.

Even Bernie said on the weekend, "You have a right to protest. You do not have a right to disrupt."

Now if only the people who think they are supporting him would only listen to him.

the vote itself

[argStyopa]

As much as I despise DT himself, do they not understand the impact of their self-righteous vigilantism?

If they'd just *quietly* attacked him, slowly DDOS'ing his sites and businesses, it could have been months before the news got out, all the while doing damage to the campaign.

But the "look how awesome we are fighting evil" grandstanding is going to resonate in PRECISELY the opposite way with the bulk of US voters who will - I guarantee you - sympathize with him against a 'shadowy internet mafia'.

The only way they're going to HURT him now is if you're able to hack the voting machines; thankfully Diebold almost certainly installed backdoors for (the Republicans/the Democrats/the Russians/the Illuminati/whatever cabal you prefer to fear) so maybe that's still possible.

I vs I

[HalAtWork]

Time to fight idiocy with idiocy?

Words mean more than actions to Anonymous...

[XxtraLarGe]

Obama orders ten times the number of air strikes as Bush, and nothing, killing thousands of Muslims (many of whom were non-combatants) and nothing . But Trump bloviates about banning Muslims and Anonymous loses their heads...

No, I'm not a Trump supporter. Yes, I support offering refuge to Syrian refugees.

Re:Words mean more than actions to Anonymous...

[rahvin112]

Say what you will but Obama put in place some strict restrictions on strikes and he took the fight to the leadership, not the foot soldiers. His campaign effectively neutered Al Queda because the leadership had to stay in such strict hiding. Most of the Bush strikes targeted low/mid ranking fighters often in their homes with kids and relatives present.

Under Bush one of the first drone strikes targeted a man for being tall. Seriously, they shot a hellfire at a guy for being tall. They also routinely hit houses full of women and kids to get one guy. Under Obama the rules of engagement changed dramatically, the rules now require that there be no known civilian casualties. Most of the time now they watch people for days and wait for them to get isolated in a car with other fighters on some lonely highway before they hit them. The number of civilians killed in strikes has dramatically decreased. The Islamist routinely kill far more Muslims than the US now. In fact this was one of Bin Ladin's greatest fears and why he tried to stop Al Qaeda in Iraq was because they were routinely killing hundreds of Muslims including lots of women and children while the US was occasionally killing 4 or 5 fighters and no women and kids. ISIS has done more damage to the Jihadies sympathies with Muslims than the US could ever undue.Obama deserves credit for halting the indiscriminate killings with bombs and missiles and focusing his fight on the leadership. Something that Clinton had focused on and Bush had thrown to the wayside.

Re:~50%

[arbiter1]

Yet more deserving people get left alone aka Hillary and Obama

Whose side are you on?

[westlake]

Hackers affiliated with Anonymous threaten to "dismantle [Trump's] campaign" by taking his election websites offline in a large-scale and orchestrated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Trump isn't running a web-based campaign.

But he is damn good at demonizing his enemies and making then look like fools when they try to take him down.

How SJW of them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump says something they don't like and they whine and try to bully him into silence any way they can.

Just like crybully SJWs

Get out the pop-corn

[Tablizer]

Politics and humanity's future aside, this election is turning out to be THE most exciting one of my life-time.

In terms of entertainment value, I never thought they'd top Palin. I was flat wrong. She was just the warm-up act.

And it's not just Trump. Sanders adds a different spin, kind of like the grumpy Lorax who only comes out of the wood-work when things get too screwy, shaking his finger: "BEWARE!"

Dr. Seuss couldn't script a zanier election. (He'd run out of ink for Trump's hair anyhow.)

Outsourcing, offshoring, automation, inequality, leaky borders, and a confused mid-east together seem to be making a lot of people very nervous, giving non-traditional candidates attention they otherwise wouldn't get. The world is changing and the old ways of viewing things politically don't seem to apply anymore. The electorate is ready to experiment.

Prioritize

[Livius]

There's vigilanteism, and then there's disrupting an election. People attempting to silence political opinions that they disagree with are a far greater threat to civilization than Trump is.

I really don't want to take Trump's side on anything but in this case there is no contest.

Of course, the Trump phenomenon goes away on its own as soon as the Republican Party puts up a candidate worth voting for. The problem is they've never done that before and they don't know where to start.

Re:~50%

[Anonymous Coward]

If Hilary doesn't count as a psychopath, then what the hell is she? Well, I mean, beyond somebody who if we lived in a just world would be in prison right now.

Re:~50%

[amRadioHed]

I feel the best way to destroy the Trump campaign is to keep letting people hear him.

Re:~50%

[fluffernutter]

That's placing an awful lot of faith in the ability of the average American to think logically and rationally for themselves.

No Longer a Fan of Anonymous

[Irate Engineer]

To a certain extent I was a fan of some of Anonymous' shenanigans, but this isn't right. I am by no means a fan of Donald Trump, and the electoral system is far from perfect, but to have a third party with foreign membership fucking with our elections is a direct attack on our democratic ideals (flawed though they may be).

Anonymous - please fuck off. You aren't the Robin Hoods of the Internet any more.

Re:~50%

[johanw]

If I were American I would vote for Sanders. However, if the choice was between Trump and H. Clinton it would be a close call, I'm not sure which of those I dislike the most. My guess is that Trump is a little less a warmonger than Clinton.

Re:Nothing to see.

[matthewv789]

Among other things, "other people" are not running for President of the United States of America.

With Hillary, yeah, you could say "so what if she's corrupt as shit and lies through her teeth? Don't all politicians do that?" And I think most politicians today are at least somewhat like that, but I feel that she's worse than average, at least worse than average among Democrats. But still, if nobody better were running, sure, she might be the least of all evils and many people would overlook that, well, cause she's a Democrat with a capital D (it worked for Bill). And she's a Woman, too, and don't we all want to elect the first female president, regardless of who she is?

But actually, all of her scandals and the awkward things she says (to put it very politely, I really mean the incessant stream of bald-faced lies) are sort of never-ending, with another scandal or mis-statement right around the corner seemingly daily, and are signs of a much deeper problem. And that problem is the whole reason why so many people are so thoroughly disgusted with politics and the entire American political system in the first place. Therefore, since they're trying to change that oligarchic, plutocratic, corporatistic, corrupt, war-oriented system of power and money that's taken away our democracy and ignored the voters (aside from lying to them to try to get votes), and since she's the shining example of everything that is wrong with that system, why would they want to vote for her? Why would they refrain from calling out her corruption and lies every time they see them?

Re:Nothing to see.

[DaHat]

As has been well documented, when she was in office there was no regulation saying that a secretary of state couldn't use their own e-mail server

You forgot the part about policies regarding classified information... the laws regarding which she is being investigated for

Oops!

Sorry to destroy your narrative.

Idiots

[rsilvergun]

Trump is not the enemy. He's just a reflection of the hate and desperation white working class Voters feel in the face of an eroding standing of living. Rubio, Cruz, Kasich. Their your enemies. They're the ones who openly attack the working class and drive down wages while raising taxes on the poor and working class. Take care of them, protect the Workers and bring back the middle class and the fear and hate Trump is reflecting back will dissipate in the wind.

No one gets it.

[gabrieltss]

The media, the republicans, the democrats and now Anonymous - they all don't get it. If you QUIT talking about Trump, quit showing him on the news he would become irrelevant and people would forget about him. The more people talk about him, berate him, attack him, show him all over the T.V. the more popular he gets.

If they REALLY want to get rid of Trump they need to IGNORE him! Just stop talking about him, stop putting his face all over T.V., he will just go away and people will forget about him. I mean really, it's not rocket science folks. But then again.... Maybe they all WANT hm to WIN. It could be you know....

We should be spending more of our time hammering the candidates about the problem with the H1B Visa program - like SHUTTING IT DOWN! This is what's really affecting people! Think Disney, Hertz, and all the others that are destroying American jobs for CHEAP foreign labor.

Re:~50%

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, Hillary's totally not a psychopath...

Why are you hardcore leftists/"progressives" always the absolute biggest hypocrites? You constantly accuse others of acts you or your heroes are guilty of. You claim to be against hate, but you do nothing but spew hatred. You claim to be against racism, yet you constantly make every topic about race, and demand unequal treatment based on race. You demand to be treated with respect, yet you show no respect for others. You demand peace from others, yet throw violent tantrums when things don't go your way. You demand restrictions on the free speech of others, yet expect your speech to be heard and uncensored.

Nobody takes you seriously. You're the running joke of the 21st century. A failed societal experiment. A product of "no child left behind", "affirmative action", and garbage child psychology.

Re:~50%

[LynnwoodRooster]

So President Obama telling people to bring guns to knife fights, to get in their faces, that's not violent and fascist? Telling the opposition party to get to the back of the bus, the sit and be quiet is not fascist? Using the power of the State (the IRS) to penalize political opponents isn't fascist? Virtual State control over an entire industry isn't fascist? You have an interesting definition of fascism... I posted mine (a well accepted one at that); what's yours?

Oh, and about the "beating" of hecklers? Never really happened now, did it? Of course, with the media literally lying about the hooligans disrupting the rallies (those hooligans, you know, sponsored by MoveOn.org and other darlings of President Obama and SecState Clinton) it's not a surprise you're confused. You only need to ask yourself if Trump was the problem, why is the ACLU siding with him over these rally disruptions?