Fighting the Fascists Using Direct Action Hacktivism

Fighting the Fascists Using Direct Action Hacktivism

Sunday, March 28 2010 @ 01:16 AM UTC


Anti-Racist ActionThe past few months have manifested a number of internet attacks on white supremacist organizations ranging from destroying websites to releasing internal communications. Let’s analyze what happened to further discuss what tactics are appropriate and effective in our movements.


Fighting the Fascists Using Direct Action Hacktivism by tHoughTCRiime

Taken from the most recent issue of the anarchist hacking zine HackThisZine published by Hackbloc. Grab copies at https://hackbloc.org/zine

The past few months have manifested a number of internet attacks on white supremacist organizations ranging from destroying websites to releasing internal communications. Let’s analyze what happened to further discuss what tactics are appropriate and effective in our movements.

The most recent incident in December involved the release of Mysql database dumps for ten neo-nazi websites and forums including private messages, emails, password hashes, everything. For anti-racist activists and researchers, there is a bottomless goldmine of information available in these databases.

You may find information such as pictures, phone numbers and home addresses for affiliated white supremacists in your area who would probably very upset if you make and distribute posters in their neighborhood. You may also find that some are involved with more mainstream conservative organizations such as the Republican Party or the Tea Party Patriots who would also be very upset having their Nazi affiliations exposed. You may also find out when and where white power groups are organizing meetings, and pass that along to anti-racist groups who could shut the event down and/or get the jump on em.

(Example: A quick look at the database dump for http://volksfrontinternational.com reveals that Andrew Yeoman of the Bay Area National “Anarchists” attended the Althing white power gathering in Missouri - and that his phone number is 415.309.7863. Give him a ring!)

Our only criticism is that the scope of these recent attacks seems rather narrow in only attacking white supremacists when there are other perfectly suitable targets such as anti-immigrant vigilante groups like the Minutemen(see http://swarm.mahost.org), Third Position nationalists, or groups like the Tea Party.

Furthermore there are other tools that can be utilized and some of the best are not surprisingly developed by the government. From the 60s to today, counter-intelligence programs attempt to identify and exploit weaknesses and divisions in progressive movements by infiltrating organizations and/or making false accusations about movement leaders. We could be using similar tactics to dismantle white supremacist movements by creating fake profiles on nazi forums to gather information or set up nazis to fight against each other.

--Free Speech for Who?--

While these attacks are very disruptive and embarrassing to fascists, some white hat “hackers”, right wingers and even some rich liberal types are often quick to criticize such actions in that they violate “free speech”. (Never mind the fact that everywhere the Nazis go the police are there to protect them while cracking down on the leftists). The oppressors already have their stage; the mainstream media bombards us with racism and sexism every day, creating space for more blatant neo-nazi groups who if they are not exposed and confronted with militant action they will continue to grow and thrive. The tactics used by Anti-Racist Action have proven to be effective in driving out white supremacist and other racist organizations and individuals. The ARA Network has this to say about free speech:

"We think that hate speech, turning people into scapegoats and targets for hateful action, is an abuse of free speech and that people’s lives are more important than the right of someone to publicly encourage others to target certain groups for a campaign of murder, rape, assault, genocide, ethnic cleansing and terror. A cross burning, for example, is not free speech or the free exercise of religion -- it is an act of racist terror and intimidation.” (http://www.antiracistaction.org)

The purpose of these actions is not to defend the free speech rights of racist scum - it is to disrupt and dismantle white supremacist organizations. The idea of direct action itself is not about appealing to politicians or police to solve our problems or to attempt to win any sort of ideological battle - it’s about taking matters into our own hands and wrecking what wrecks us. By breaking into their computer systems, exposing their correspondence, and shutting down their communication systems we hope to make it more difficult to spread their hate, recruit new members, or organize on the internet at
all.

--Direct Action Hacktivism--

Bashing the Fash on the internet is one campaign that we can draw some lessons from and apply it to other struggles. Let’s suppose the goal of direct action hacktivism is to cause the target organization enough stress and damage that they can no longer perform their services, individual members will quit and/or turn against each other, and even collapse entirely. What kinds of tactics are most effective, and why? Here are some points to measure how effective an action is:

* Creating a financial burden for the target - making it costly in terms of money and labor to return services to normal (such as having to buy a new server, or having to put hundreds of hours in to rebuild)

* Causing loss of irreplaceable data - the trashing of site content, databases, and backup files making it difficult if not impossible to ever restore services (such as deleting site content, customer records, research files, backups, etc)

* Bringing attention to the atrocities and injustices committed by the target - articulating your message clearly so as not to be dismissed as petty vandals or criminals, and ensuring that those reading about the action understand it and dig it

* Exposing harmful or embarrassing information - uncovering internal documents that if released would turn the general public against the target and possibly be incriminating (such as posting personal email correspondence, internal policies or research, personal information such as phone # and addresses on individual members)

Following these points should help

ensure an action is significantly damaging to an organization and will hopefully cause it to collapse entirely. But it can all be for nothing if:

* The cost/benefit ratio isn’t worth it - it might bring legal heat down on you or other allied organizations, or (warning, some liberal bullshit right here) there is public backlash against your choice of tactics be-cause it “makes you look as bad as them”.

* The action is not in synchronicity with already existing campaigns and movements that with well defined goals and demands. Hacktivism is not ever a substitute for on-the-ground community activism.

Recent Timeline of Internet Actions Targeting Fascist Organizations

...Late 2008...
Anti-fascist hackers calling themselves “Daten-Antifa” (data-antifa) broke into the nazi forum Blood & Honour
and released complete database dumps of tens of thousands of members including names, emails, passwords,
private messages and other internal information. The information was uploaded to a variety of torrent websites and
was described by the hackers as a “laboriously prepared cloak-and-dagger operation”.
http://de.indymedia.org/2008/08/225641.shtml

...August 2009...
Private emails belonging to a chapter of the National Socialist Movement(NSM) were released to WikiLeaks. The
contents of these emails include personal correspondence, information on other accounts the user had access to,
and the contents of the NSM’s internal discussion email list.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_National...5_Aug_2009

...November 2009...
The websites of holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer David Irving were defaced by “Anti-Fascist Hackers” who
released private email correspondence, secret locations of his speaking tour, and detailed information on people
attending his events which included members from various white supremacist organizations. This information was
also posted to WikiLeaks.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009...id-irving/

...December 2009...
In possibly the best score yet, mysql database dumps of ten white supremacist and neo-nazi websites were released
to WikiLeaks. The information is 54MB compressed and contains usernames, email addresses, password hashes,
and private messages belonging to the following websites: http://volksfrontinternational.com(Volksfront International),
http://hammerskins.net(Hammerskins Nation), http://aryanfront.com(Aryan Front), http://newp.org(North East White Pride), whit-
http://erevolution.com(White Revolution), http://finalstandrecords.com(Final Stand Records), http://enationalism.com(eNationalist),
http://ecwu.org(East Coast White Unity), http://bloodandhonour.com(Blood & Honour, updated version!), and creativity move-
http://ment.net(Creativity Movement, formerly World Church of the Creator).
The filename is ten-neo-nazi-sites-plus-2009.tgz and is available on various torrent websites. Much work is needed
by hackers to parse this information, crack giant password hash lists, and publish the information in human readable formats!



(από το infoshop.org το παραπάνω αγγλόφωνο άρθρο που μιλάει για διάφορες διαδικτυακές δράσεις που έχεουν γίνει κατά ακροδεξιών)