Blast from the Past: Anonymous 1, Oregon Tea Party 0

I concluded Blast from the past: Sarah Palin's Naughty Monkey Shoes with the following tease.

I do think I have one more blast from the past to share: Anonymous 1, Oregon Tea Party 0.  Stay tuned.

I now present this diary from July 2010, which became the seventh most viewed diary on Daily Kos published during 2010, for Throwback Thursday.




Anonymous 1, Oregon Tea Party 0.

That's the score in one of the more unusual online political disputes so far in what is already a very strange political year--and it all began when the Oregon Tea Party decided to use the slogan of the infamous Internet group Anonymous.

Join me over the fold for the story as it unfolded yesterday.

Until yesterday, it seems that the Oregon Tea Party has been using the most famous and menacing of Anonymous' slogans: "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."  At first, it showed up on a sign held by a woman at a Tea Party protest.

Then, the Oregon Tea Party started printing the slogan on their bumper stickers.



Yesterday, all this came to light.  Over on Reddit, user choochy posted the image of the bumper sticker above with the comment Found this on my conservative parent's fridge. It is real.
There was some skepticism, but user Tissues2 pointed out the following.

Actually look real
http://oregonteaparty.ning.com/
An internet meme just escaped into the real world. It's like Tron in reverse.

Another user, strolls, elaborated.

It obviously has a lot of users, logging on regularly to post comments.

So people realized that the bumper sticker was legit and so was the group.
By the way, keep those Reddit users' ability to read the Oregon Tea Party's site yesterday in your memory.  It will come in handy.

Some Anonymous person then emailed the Oregon Tea Party to see if the sticker really was legit.  Here is the response.

At this point, technology sites started paying attention. Geekosystem picked up the story, followed by The Next Web, and finally Gawker.

This meant that 4Chan, one of the homes of Anonymous, found out as well.  That's when the fun started.

If any of you are familiar with Anonymous, you know they are
a bunch of trolls and script kiddies(ETA: also intrepid crusaders against Scientology--Anonymous has a good side as well) who will go after anyone.  In fact, it was someone from Anonymous who hacked into Sarah Palin's email account during the 2008 campaign.  They do not like it when anyone impedes their ability to have fun, and they will stop at nothing to have their fun.  So, you can probably guess what happened to the Oregon Tea Party's Facebook page.

By 2:50 PM, Anonymous was flooding the wall of the Oregon Tea Party with macros, desus, and flames.



By 4:33, the Oregon Tea Party had had enough.


By midnight, all comments had been wiped off the Oregon Tea Party's Facebook Wall.  Tonight, the Oregon Tea Party's Facebook page page is apparently no more.  Click on the link; you'll be directed to Facebook's main page.

Oh, and as for the ability to read the Oregon Tea Party's Ning page, that's no more as well.  Here is what you will get for your trouble.



Anonymous 1, Oregon Tea Party 0.