Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down:

Anonymous have been clashing with the CoS for a while now, attacking servers, defacing websites etc. Now it seems the pulling of this Scientology promotional video featuring Tom Cruise (something they have a history of)has put them over the edge. War has been declared. BUT, this time the war will not be limited to teh internets. This flyer started appearing on the net a couple days back, putting the call to swarm the London Church of Scientology on Feb 10th. Check out Threat Level for more background or watch the report on SkyNews.

So who are Anonymous? I have seen some more MSM sites calling Anonymous an “internet-based group.” That is giving them too much credit. Anonymous is the ubiquitous handle for the users of sites like 4chan.org. They are commonly described as a bunch of 15 year olds with too much time on their hands. In other words, Anonymous is a class of internet subculture rather than a group with any cohesiveness. You find them trolling on Usenet, posting YTMND and eBaumsWorld, and raiding from partyvan. They even have an irc channel irc.711chan.org #xenu (lol)

Not that this kind of thing hasn’t happened before, but this particular incident seems to be getting some play outside l33t circles. Moreover, I’m interested to see if their netwar tactics are able to result in an actual mobilization next month.

So, can a call out to a stateless, dispersed class of Internet jihadis by an anonymous leadership be considered 4GW? Have your say in the comments.

Somewhat related: The scenarios from Strategic Communication.

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