Future historians will recall the war between 4chan and LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner

Razer g2s at riseup.net
Wed Aug 30 09:26:15 PDT 2017


The Alt-Right and Antifa Are Waging a New Kind of Internet Warfare

Jacob Siegel, Vice
Aug 30 2017, 8:25am

Intelligence and surveillance powers that once belonged only to
militaries and state spooks are now available to anyone with a
high-speed internet connection.


Live long enough and you may hear future historians recall the war
between 4chan and an art collective called LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner.

They'll tell the story of how anonymous, interconnected imageboard users
gathered clues from public video footage, like passing aircraft and the
position of stars, to geolocate the roving, anti-Trump art project He
Will Not Divide Us, put on by actor Shia LaBeouf and his collaborators.

Records will show that the people on the group's trail—pro-Trump
activists, impish saboteurs, and budding neo-Nazis—didn't need high-end
spy gear. Instead, they found their mark by collecting and processing
public information through decentralized and supposedly leaderless
networks. It might one day look, in retrospect, like a form of social
automation: continuously updating intelligence assessments converted
into real-world effect by volunteer foot "soldiers" acting without orders.

Or maybe the saga will be remembered as a trial run of sorts, when
tactics later used in domestic guerilla warfare first appeared as
sinister pranks. Whatever happens next, the genie is out of the bottle,
and intelligence and surveillance capabilities that once belonged only
to militaries and state spooks are now available to anyone with a
high-speed internet connection.

Military theorist and futurist John Robb, who wrote the influential 2008
book Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of
Globalization, developed the concept of "open-source insurgency" to
describe emerging forms of conflict. You can see a version of it at work
in the current season of political upheaval and clashes in American cities.

Of course, it's violence in the streets that captures most of the
attention, especially after a car plowed into a crowd amid the neo-Nazi
spectacle in Charlottesville, killing counter-protester Heather Heyer
and injuring many more. But in the background, much of the fighting is
being done online. Memes, trolls, bans, doxes, sock puppets, and
targeted disruption campaigns like the one used against LaBeouf, Rönkkö
& Turner are being deployed in a cycle of attacks and counterattacks
that, much like traditional military intelligence and information
operations, set conditions for the next round of physical confrontation.

The foundation of open-source insurgency is what Robb calls
"superempowerment": "an increase in the ability of individuals and small
groups to accomplish tasks/work through the combination of rapid
improvements in technological tools and access to global networks." That
increase, Robb argues, "has enabled small groups to radically increase
their productivity in conflict."

It's a concept that helps make sense of the seemingly outsized cultural
clout of the alt-right, a movement built on beliefs that fail to attract
more than fringe support in national surveys...


In full with links:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xxmad/the-alt-right-and-antifa-are-waging-a-new-kind-of-internet-warfare




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