| Sarah Blumpkin |
28 december 2010 08:50 |
Anonymous: brief aan Chomsky
The Letter:
Greetings, Dr. Chomsky.
We are writing you today because your work has attracted our attention. The current generation of teens and young adults is growing frustrated with the political environment. The Internet, a tool which has been available to many of us for our entire lives as an outlet for free speech, is under assault. Our peers are being sent off to die in wars started when many of us were too young to speak out against them. And our futures are being looted by the greed of corporate interests. Wikileaks has begun to show us how deep the roots of fascism have spread. The branches of media, government, and corporation have gotten tangled together.
We have had enough, and we would like to request your suggestions for increasing the efficacy of our actions.
An alarming culture of complacency has arisen in America today. This ongoing debacle can be seen taking place in airports across the country, as Americans drop their pants and allow government officials to grope their genitals. Too few voices can be heard speaking out in criticism of these and the miriad other policies that came before them to devour our rights and shred our constitution.
We see this apathy, and worry. We worry that if things do not change soon, current power structures may become cemented in place. With the censorship of the internet, we will lose the greatest engine of free speech ever built. The cost to our future would be as great as if Gutenberg's printing press had been locked away in the castles and monasteries of the elite soon after its creation.
Some of us would like to see Anonymous maintain its momentum, and become an engine for social change. While other protests have been largely ignored by the media, like Daniel Ellsberg and the hundred plus other men who chained themselves to the White House fence last week, ours were making front page headlines. We have received criticism for those digital attacks, but who can blame us for attempting to protest from the safety of our homes? In the UK, for instance, the government has shown that it has no qualms about sending riot squads to harass teen-aged protesters. How much doubt can there be that one of the goals behind the reaction to the London protests has been to demoralize this generation, and prevent them from speaking up in such a manner again?
Dr. Chomsky, we truly want to see the world change for the better. While there are those among our ranks who are no doubt just out to cause mischief, many of those who would consider themselves to be "Anonymous" are intellectuals, who have joined the effort because they see it as a chance to finally affect some social change.
We have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people from all over the world amongst our numbers. For the past two days, a subgroup of Anonymous has been DDoSing Spain as a protest against the Ley Sinde law, which would allow the Spanish government to shut down website domain names containing illegal content, a move which many fear could lead to censorship. We've just received word from Spain that the Ley Sinde law that had been proposed there under pressure from the United States, was rejected.
Unfortunately, these may be the biggest victories we get, as at this time we lack adequate direction for our momentum. We are unsure how to even begin to bring the American people out of the haze of political theater, tabloid journalism, and complacency that seems to arisen in plumes over the nation in the last decade. We have the traditional tools of protest: picket signs, megaphones, and posters and glue, but we also have technology at our disposal. We have only seen the beginning of the protest opportunities for these readily available programs.
The problem is, Anonymous is, and must remain, a loose group of people with no formal organization or structure. If you are so obliged, we would appreciate your advice on maintaining and organizing our system so that we can greater magnify our impact on the world. We also welcome any guidance you could offer us on moving Anonymous away from its position in the American psyche as a group of internet anarchists and radicals, as it has been in the past, and towards becoming a more open social movement towards reform. Of course, for any change to happen we must be able to speak freely, and so protecting our freedom from censorship is always one of Anonymous's primary goals.
We thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We would be honored to hear back from you.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
Chomsky's Response: Glad to learn of your concerns, and willingness to speak out. I don’t really have advice beyond the obvious. In the past, significant change has come when popular movements were willing to engage directly in bringing it about. Organizing requires interaction. Doubtless the new opportunities afforded by the communication systems now available improve these prospects. Beyond that what past achievements tell us is that it takes hard, dedicated work, focused on the issues that are of serious concern to people. In the US, the top issue for most people is decent employment with some sense of security. Other problems should be brought to the level of very high concern, like global warming, or we are lost. And it’s easy to go on, but I doubt that there are any strikingly new techniques of carrying out these traditional tasks. At least, I haven’t heard of any.
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