The Department of Anthropology is pleased to share a new publication from The University of Chicago Press Journals and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory which features a talk by Gabriella Coleman, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, titled “From busting cults to breeding cults: Anonymous h/acktivism vs. the (a)nonymous far right and QAnon.”
"First emerging from the anonymous imageboard 4chan.org in the mid-2000s, the aptly named “Anonymous” unexpectedly transformed. In the aftermath of a campaign against the Church and Cult of Scientology, it went from a chaos-inducing troll brigade to a media-savvy activist ensemble in 2008. Not long after, in 2011, different Anonymous nodes hatched off from the imageboards, and engaged in high-profile hacks. By 2015 new political formations sprung forth from 4chan and similar imageboards, like the little “a” anonymous far- and reactionary-right and the conspiracy-driven QAnon. In contrast to Anonymous, these two latter formations work against the cause of social justice and, in its stead, spread reactionary, racist, conspiratorial, or fascist political planks. But like Anonymous, these other two formations have, at times, played outsized roles in politics. Anonymous, for instance, helped cement the now-common hack-and-leak tactic (Coleman 2017); the anonymous far right helped radicalize or in their parlance “red pill” people into racist and misogynist worldviews (Donovan, Dreyfuss, and Friedberg 2022). And followers of QAnon, who helped spread conspiracies, have elected officials among their ranks and helped drive the storming of the US capitol (Donovan, Dreyfuss, and Friedberg 2022).
My talk starts with a simple question: How are we to understand the relationships between these three currents? How, in other words, could imageboards, like 4chan and 8chan (and others), act as the initial springboard for political formations that embrace such different—even diametrically opposed—political sensibilities and epistemologies around truth?"
Read the full article here.