Whether the anonymous attack was perpetrated by American acktivists or whether it was perpetrated by state actors is a different question. But there's no point asking "is it genuinely anonymous"; rather, ask "was it genuinely instate disaffection or is it concocted interstate action". (They don't ask that question. They don't get close. But the only questions worth asking are this one and "who did it".)
It's not a single homogeneous, coordinated/regimented organization or even an irregular gang affiliation. It's an equipment choice. Yet we have people writing about "the black bloc" doing this or that, as if that were informative.
It's strange how easily corporate media outlets can be short-circuiuted and subverted to produce an almost robotic, knee-jerk reflex, when attempting to cover a story.
It's not even Gell-Mann Amnesia. It's more akin to a kindergartner explaining fidget spinners to grandma.
Completely different from a bunch of script kiddies on 4chan getting together Friday night and ddosing for the lulz, or any subsequent incarnations that are true to the ephemeral spirit of anonymous.
(There are still some more moderate and reasonable bastions in some boards, but most boards are thoroughly infected by /pol/.)
"Anonymous" has been disconnected from its origins for well over a decade now.
This isn't quite right. 4chan is more right leaning than almost any other place online (save for voat and 8chan among others), but all political views are expressed on 4chan. You may get shouted down but you won't get banned for saying almost anything. The trouble is that "right wing" ideas are overexpressed on 4chan because these people are being totally deplatformed everywhere else.
This is dangerous because when you silence one of a two party system, you're actually silencing a range of ideologies that aren't "left leaning enough" and create an illusion of consensus, when in reality you are forcing thousands of political dimensions, and millions of people, into two generic boxes. I think part of the alleged rise of "white supremacy" is actually a response to being forced into the conservative box and dehumanized with accusations of Nazism and such.
>>the group has targeted groups over race relations in the past.
>>The "hacktivist" collective has no face, and no leadership. Its tagline is simply "we are legion", referring to its allegedly large numbers of individuals.
A decade later and the media still doesn't understand anonymous. It never is a group. It is mask, a word, used by any number of different groups at different times. One should never ascribe any group identity to anonymous, no more than one would group individuals who choose to wear a particular color of hat.