Project Chanology: Anonymous and its “war” on Scientology
As Wired reported on Wednesday:
“A loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous have declared war on the Church of Scientology by flooding its servers with fake data requests, describing the attacks as punishment for the Church’s alleged abuse of copyright laws and alleged brainwashing of its members.”
The original declaration of hostilities was delivered over YouTube. Follow this link or you can watch it below.
With the matter receiving increasingly widespread attention, Anonymous has also seen fit to release a second message directed to (and critical of) the mainstream media. Follow this link or watch it below.
As noted above, critics of Scientology have made a variety of negative allegations about it over the years. The problem for the normal person that has no personal involvement in such a dispute is that it’s difficult to assess the veracity of such claims if they have not received a great deal of media attention. I don’t have a variety of investigative resources and the opportunity to use them. You probably don’t either. The so-called mainstream media, though, certainly does.
That these allegations are now offered as the rationale for attacks on the Church of Scientology means that careful attention must be paid to analyzing them in the context of the libertarian non-aggression principle. This will determine which party is in the right.
Here’s what I think can be said about the matter from a radical libertarian perspective…
I certainly stand by and support anyone’s natural right to hold their own religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be. That certainly includes Scientologists, regardless of my personal opinion of their beliefs.
I also stand by and support the right of anyone to act on their religious beliefs, provided such actions violate the rights of no others.
I don’t have enough reliable information to evaluate claims of Scientology “human rights violations”. The seriousness and persistence of the allegations certainly causes me to hope those allegations receive more widespread scrutiny.
What can be known with certainty, IMO, is that the Church of Scientology has used copyright law to suppress criticism, in violation of the rights of its critics (in terms of natural law & natural rights).
From a libertarian perspective, it is this overt use of state violence, in particular, that has made Scientology’s communications infrastructure “fair game” ethically. Attacks on it are not an initiation of force, or aggression, but a response to aggression instead. They are thus permissible under the libertarian non-aggression principle.
I support the efforts of all to exercise their rights and to defy or attempt to thwart injustice — regardless of whether such efforts violate any of the state’s so-called “laws” or not. Thus, I support Scientology in its struggles against the IRS, for example, and I also support Anonymous in its efforts at retribution against Scientology, provided those efforts remain proportional to the wrongdoing they are a response to and do not otherwise violate the libertarian non-aggression principle.
If you’re curious about the particulars of the attacks, LinuxHaxor has the rundown on them. The official soundtrack is reportedly provided by Raidchan via streaming audio.
UPDATE: Events sometimes move fast. In the time it took me to write this blog post, Anonymous also unearthed information documenting the CIA ties of Scientology head David Miscavige.
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