ANONYMOUS

BY: Jeff Daugherty

Two weeks ago, hacktivist group Anonymous returned with a vengeance. Their first major act in over five years? A video message to the Minneapolis Police Department, threatening to expose the MPD’s crimes to the world in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

In the following days, Anonymous crashed the MPD website, accused actress Naomi Campbell of involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking ring and, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, alleged that President Donald Trump is directly responsible for Epstein’s death.

Anonymous has been around in some form or another since the early 2000s, but their legacy as a structured, cohesive organization that could use their hacking talents for good began in 2008 when the group infiltrated the Church of Scientology. Since then, Anonymous has been synonymous with hacktivism. In 2012, TIME Magazine named them among the 100 most influential people in the world.

Anonymous’s new operation is called OpDeathEaters on Scribd and Twitter after the eponymous villains from Harry Potter, known for their sadistic nature and blind devotion to a powerful demagogue. OpDeathEaters includes alleged documents from court cases involving Epstein and Trump. One standout doc, the shocking Jane Doe testimony of a young woman who claims the two men raped her at age 13, has made the rounds in political forums before, but this is the first time it has been hoisted into the media spotlight.

Anonymous has made it clear that while it will not let go of Trump’s past sins (the group’s slogan has long been “We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”), they also have their eye on the present cruelty plaguing the nation. The Buffalo Police Department in upstate New York is their latest target following the unwarranted shoving of 75-year-old Martin Gugino. The hacktivists successfully took down the Buffalo PD website; when webmasters apparently got it back up, the group hacked it a second time.

Two days ago, Trump, in perhaps his most flagrant display of sociopathy yet, suggested on Twitter that Martin Gugino was an ANTIFA provocateur. Like early iterations of Anonymous, ANTIFA is not necessarily an organized group but a blanket idea, in this instance antifascism, that members of other groups identify with. Anonymous responded to the tweet by bringing back a story from 2019 alleging that William Barr visited the Metropolitan Correctional Center at the time of Epstein’s death.

So far, the accusations made by Anonymous have been met with skepticism. In an era where the leaders of the so-called free world traffic in conspiracy theories, it’s hardly unusual to see the president and his lapdog (and the star of 2003’s The Ring) as the subject of such theories. Now that Anonymous is back and making headlines again, it’s only a matter of time before their next big scoop. In the meantime, the group’s grassroots activism in the fight against police brutality has made their return a welcome new addition to the Resistance.