There’s a piece that has been posted all over the damned place, as well as here on Green Mountain Daily. It starts with:
TO THE CONGREGANTS OF WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH:
It continues with a long litany about WBC, none of which I disagree with. Then it gets to the meat of the matter:
ANONYMOUS cannot abide this behavior any longer. The time for us to be idle spectators in your inhumane treatment of fellow Man has reached its apex, and we shall now be moved to action. Thus, we give you a warning: Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011, return to your homes in Kansas, & close your public Web sites.
Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS: We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover. It is in your best interest to comply now, while the option to do so is still being offered, because we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines.
This is unacceptable.
No matter how hateful, bigoted, pathetic and disgusting the behavior of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, they have the right to be bigoted. They have the right to be vile, sad, disturbed people with a twisted view of their own sense of purpose. They have the right to believe that gay people deserve to die and the right to say so, provided they do not cross over the line into violence or threat of violence.
This is Democracy at work. Even the people we find most disgusting have the right to their opinions.
And the minute we find anonymous attacks on those rights to be acceptable, even to the point where some of us may cheer them on, we forfeit part of our right to engage in discourse. The minute we decide that silencing our opposition is of more value than even simply shunning them? At that point, we are no better than the members of the tea party who would rather shout down their opposition than allow them a voice.
I do not know who “anonymous” is. I don’t really care. Nor do i care about Phelps or his group of thuggish degenerates.
I care about what we do. And we have an obligation to oppose systemic DOS attacks on those whom we dislike. We have a moral imperative to allow those who would speak against us and our rights to do so.
It’s really that simple.
This is counter-productive and plays right into the hands of those who attempt to create false-equivalencies between the fringe right and fringe left.
I have this conversation all the time with my foreign friends. They simply can not believe that America allows the KKK to march, neo-nazis to wear swastikas, or Westboro Baptists to demonstrate.
I remind them that the same rights that allow our side to gather in mass protests are exactly the same rights they have to do the same activity.
As an American I fully support the rights of Westboro Baptists to go out there and make total idiots of themselves.
The best response to these boneheads is to gather in counter-demos and laugh at them. When the KKK came to NYC, there were maybe a dozen of them and maybe 2000 local residents counter-protesting.
It was glorious.
I find it interesting that Julie Waters finds it acceptable to promote hate speech under the guise of “democracy at work.” Freddie and his merry band of degenerates have been promoting violence against gay people for years. Those like Waters who defend them are just as disgusting as those who are holding the signs that say things like “die fags die” and “God has fags in his crosshairs.” One normally doesnt expect much of an intellecutal nature to come from Waters, but this article is over the line even for her. I can only hope that the gay community in Vermont and their friends and families have the chance to hold Waters responsible for her choice to become Vermont’s champion of the Westboro Baptist Church.
I absolutely believe in Phelps’ right to assemble and engage in hate speech. That said, I have a hard time getting incensed over the behavior of non-governmental agents who launch non-violent DoS attacks. Phelps ain’t Elijah Lovejoy, dying to defend his presses from a pro-slavery mob, but a bigot with a website. Rather spend my time on government attempts to kill unions or deny equal rights, ‘cept when I pose this very scenario in my infosec ethics lecture…
Anonymous doesn’t carry any stamp of public or official approval for their action — they are by definition, ungoverned anarchists acting on their own volition. You can disagree with their methods, but I think the argument that they’re “censoring” Phelps is an exaggeration: they’re simply marginalizing Phelps’ ability to spread his sick message beyond those who might bother to show up in his living room and listen to him talk. They’re not denying him the right to speak — they’re simply taking away the megaphone that is the internet from him.
You can argue (as some have done in this thread) that such a tactic may backfire and draw undue attention to “poor” Phelps as a victim of these cyberbullies, but given that even die-hard Republicans are unable to condone much of what Phelps has to say, I think there is little risk of drumming up more support for him with this action.
Anonymous had a huge win for everybody (and for true freedom of information) when they recently outed HG Gary and their disgusting work for Bank of America — they’re a force to be reckoned with on the new “virtual” battlefield.
I’ve said for years that if I’m killed while serving in the military, I want the Westboro Baptist Church to be INVITED to my services.
Acknowledge them during the eulogy — “Hey, Westboro Baptist Church, thanks for being here today!”
Ask them to attend the reception afterwards — “Reverend Phelps, I hope you’ll attend the reception and get something to eat. You guys must be starving what with all that yelling and sign waving.”
The Westboro Baptist “Church” is interested in confrontation to generate publicity. Deny them the confrontation, and they have no reason to be on site.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2…
However, according to at least one faction of Anonymous, the supposedly threatening open letter is the work of WBC itself, which is inviting an attack in order to garner sympathy for itself as well as running a honeypot designed to capture the IP addresses of attackers for subsequent lawsuits.