I am fascinated with Anonymous.

They are the perfect antagonist to Wall Street, and the fitting figurehead of #occupywallstreet. (If you don’t know what Occupy Wall Street is, turn off your TV and get on Twitter.)

Anonymous is the only entity that is fluid enough to disrupt the idea of ‘corporations,’ because they exist, literally, in the same realms as corporation.

A corporation is:

  • Immortal, and can continue living for as long as its hosts will keep it alive. (The oldest corporation, the City of London Corporation, dates back to the 1200s.
  • Amoral, and has one driving force above all others: profit.
  • Legally declared a person by the US Supreme Court, in their disastrous interpretation of the 14th amendment.
  • Capable of using its vast store of accumulated resources to purchase legislation and political leaders with jaw-dropping swiftness

The roots of the Occupy protests (which has spread nationwide) stem from the injustice of having these immortal imaginary friends, constructed entirely of paperwork, running our economic and political worlds.

Despite it’s legal personhood, I cannot take a bounty out on a corporation and kill it. The only way I can affect a corporation’s power and strength is in the realm which it exists; the world of ideas.

I can sabotage the food supply of McDonald’s, giving it lots of bad press, which will discourage people from eating there, and lower its share price in the stock market. This is not attacking McDonald’s directly, but rather attacking the idea of what McDonald’s is.

The only entities that can confront corporations directly are other idea-based entities: labor unions. Militaries. Initiatory brotherhoods. Immortal organizations of people that, like corporations, survive because the host members choose to continue to keep it alive.

The organizations that are now joining the OccupyWallStreet protests are also incorporated entities, but unlike corporations, they do not share the single-minded lust for profit. THAT is the difference between an organization of men and a corporation.

There is one organization in this resistance, however, that is wholly unique: Anonymous.

Anonymous is a leaderless collective, that is populated by anyone who dons a Guy Fawkes mask. As such, its goals are manifested by any individual with the will to declare what the goals are.

YOU are Anonymous.

Once you declare it, that is. And with that declaration, you gain the power to decide what Anonymous stands for.

No shareholder in the Bank of America corporation can stand up and declare what Bank of America will be doing that day. Even the CEO has limitations on how he can drive the behemoth corporation that does not, literally, exist.

But Anonymous? That is driven by any member of its collective.

That presents…very interesting possibilities.

Anonymous can:

These are actions that mortal men cannot take. Only ideaviruses can engage an immortal paperwork entity in direct combat.
Corporations, beware. Anonymous is coming for you.

#wearethe99percent