ABSTRACT
This article examines the ethos of the hacktivist movement Anonymous. It considers its subcultural roots and the political and ethical values articulated by the movement. In particular, the paper draws attention to key points of tension within the Anonymous ethos: nihilism and idealism, utopianism and dystopianism, individualism and collectivism, and negative and positive liberty. Existing literature provides varying assessments of hacktivist values. One perspective portrays Anonymous specifically (Coleman, 2011a, p. 511) and hacktivism more generally (Liu, 2004, pp. 361-367) as essentially fluid or “rhizomatic” and thus resistant to stable ideological categories. Another perspective identifies hacktivist movements such as Anonymous with “information anarchism” and libertarian values (Jordan, 2008, p. 77). A further perspective sees Anonymous reflecting liberal ideology while containing seeds of a socialist worldview (Fuchs, 2013). This article aims not to reject any of these perspectives but rather to add a complementary one. Characterizing Anonymous as ostensibly libertarian or, specifically, cyberlibertarian (see Golumbia, 2013) is valuable but underplays ideological complexities and tensions within the movement. Emphasizing the movement’s rhizomatic and shape-shifting qualities, though, risks understating some clearly identifiable political and moral positions of the movement. This article seeks to complement existing scholarship navigating between both analytical poles, suggesting that Anonymous is too complex for a singular ideological label such as “cyberlibertarian” but not so amorphous that it prevents ideological analysis and critique.
