I’m writing about the hacker collective known as “Anonymous” today because someone calling herself “Annie Oakley” shared a video on her Facebook page. Apparently, according to the video, a homeless couple in Missoula were treated unfairly by local law enforcement and the video footage, which is NOT shown in the 7 minute clip below, has grabbed the attention of these masked internet trolls turned activist wannabes.
On the unofficial victim-scale that assigns outrage-value for the broader public, a homeless woman getting roughed up by cops and unintentionally showing thong in the process is a sexier sell for outrage clicks than a woman COP initiating a lethal confrontation with a male schizophrenic.
For those with a sense of history, like knowing how the real Annie Oakley tried getting the U.S. Government to allow women to go full-combat with the men, this video getting promoted by an Annie Oakley impersonator is pretty ironic.
Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898, “offering the government the services of a company of 50 ‘lady sharpshooters’ who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain.”
The Spanish–American War did occur, but Oakley’s offer was not accepted. Theodore Roosevelt, did, however, name his volunteer cavalry the “Rough Riders” after the “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World,” of which Oakley was a major star.
While the historic Annie Oakley wanted lady sharpshooters to kill Spaniards for Uncle Sam, the historic origins of “Anonymous” can be traced by consulting materials from people who do actual research beyond YouTube videos and write actual books about it.
Since I have this book in my library I grabbed it and started flipping around. The author, Gabriella Coleman, makes an interesting contact, who she opens her book with and, after exchanging pleasantries on the previous page, I found this exchange with “Dirk Diggler” (later identified as “Weev”) and “biella” (Coleman) to be very interesting for reasons I’m not going to fully get into right now.
Who is Weev? Great question. Maybe his Wikipedia can help.
Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer born 1985), best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, he has been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. He has used many aliases when he has contacted the media, but most sources state that his real first name is Andrew.
…
In 2016, Auernheimer was responsible for sending thousands of white-supremacist flyers to unsecured web-connected printers at multiple universities and other locations in the U.S. Since his release from prison, he has lived in several countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In 2016, he told an interviewer that he was living in Kharkiv. In 2017, it was reported that he was acting as webmaster for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as “a neo-Nazi white supremacist” known for “extremely violent rhetoric advocating genocide of non-whites”.
Putting aside what I now know about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s national role and curious relationship with the Montana Human Rights Network, Weev still doesn’t sound like the kind of dude a left leaning person on Facebook, spamming anti-Data Center slop to her “friends”, would support if she, you know, actually knew about history and could think critically about the content that floods the outrage-market.
Speaking of markets, the “justice” market has an amazing mechanism of putting legal moves, like filing an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court, into the “cost-prohibitive” category for a broke, pro se lawyer NOT getting paid to defend his ability to do citizen journalism, which also doesn’t pay well.
What does that mean?
It means the Fourth Judicial District Court, in Missoula, does what I imagine ALL courts do, and that’s contract with a third-party court-recorder to officially document court proceedings. For a 100 page transcript, that works out to $355 dollars.
If anyone has a “hack” around this absurd cost, drop a comment below. Otherwise, that’s it for today’s post (time to put my lawyer hat on).
Thanks for reading!
Does it have to be an official transcript? Becasue a non certified might be cheaper or possibly a video copy of the hearing if it was recorded
It doesn’t appear there is any way around the cost.