Anonymous’ trumpeted Million Mask March fell short of the numbers its organisers were calling for but still demonstrated that the group is becoming a focus for social disaffection.The midweek march, timed to coincide with the Guy Fawkes celebrations that the masks worn by Anonymous supporters have become identified with, failed to improve on last year’s 2000 people, one of the aims of the organisers.
Observers from Future Intelligence put numbers at no greater than those achieved last year.
The march drew support from an eclectic mix of different groups ranging from anti-phracking protesters, CND, Communists, Hari-Krishna devotees, anti-capitalists, environmentalists and Palestinian solidarity campaigners.
A heavy police presence and the use of frequent loud-hailer announcements reminding the protesters that they did not have the rights to abuse a public space used by others, set off fireworks, light fires, or climb on the structures in Trafalgar Square and that unlicensed music was also an offence, set the tone for the evening.
The protesters cited diverse reasons for their presence on the march, with some stating that they were there because of concerns over paedophilia in the establishment and others claiming a lack of political engagement and worries about the NHS and the prices rises on the rail network.
“I’m here to show solidarity with the marchers because democracy has not worked for us,” said one masked figure who gave his name as Peter Farquhar, who tweets as #renegade_truth.
“The Government has sold us lists of lies and opportunities for too long and that is very close to people’s hearts. We can’t be quietened down any longer by the selfish people at Number 10 and the paedophiles,” said Farquhar, adding that his presence was due to a general dissatisfaction with the current political and economic situation.
“We want a fair crack of the whip. We want to see our taxes being spent wisely, our communities being rebuilt and for the balance in our society to be restored.”
Complaints that were universal across the crowd with many pointing to the issues and the feeling of a lack of political engagement raised by the comedian Russell Brand on Newsnight, who was also present at the march as too was the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.
“We’re tired of being pushed around by the Government. They think that they change something and that we have to just live with it and we don’t have a choice. The rich elite are now inconvenient to the rest of us,” said one protestor, who added that the Snowden revelations about the surveillance of the population had prompted him to attend the march.
Points amplified by a young woman in the same group.
“The system’s not working. We need a system that works for everyone and not just the people at the top.”
A frequent charge and one echoed by a very well-dressed, masked protestor, who said he had deliberately worn a suit as a political statement.
“I believe that there are things wrong with this country that are not being addressed. I believe that there are decisions that are being left in the hands of a minority rather than a majority and that they are making those decisions on behalf of the minority rather than the majority.
“A lot of people here see it as anti-capitalist. There’s too much money concentrated in the hands of too few and politics offers no solutions. The existing political structure is run mostly by those few who have all of the money and they don’t want it to change,” said the man, who like many on the march chose to be anonymous and masked despite, the police enacting Section 60AA across Westminster for the Wednesday evening until 2am the following day, allowing them to compel protestors to remove their masks.
An attack on the symbol of the marchers that has been carried out in other parts of the world. The Canadian authorities have revived legislation to make the wearing of masks punishable by a ten year prison sentence. The masks are banned in Saudi Arabia: the Ministry of Islamic Affairs stated that the mask is “a symbol of rebels and revenge”, and warned imams and parents that “they could be used to incite the youth to destabilize security and spread chaos.”
An ironic position given that most women in Saudi Arabia are forced to hide their faces, while not destabilising security or spreading chaos.
But irony is in short supply for all, in the current confrontation between the haves and the have nots in the new digital order.
Anonymous has its power in the new world of the internet and its capability to wreak havoc. Those who were on the streets seemed to have little in common with the hackers who have proved their ability to damage the internet economy, and if anything, looked as though they were being exploited by a group which, as yet have little clear or coherent political aspirations.
If anything there is an alarming sense of an internet model spilling out onto the streets, where clever computer libertarians, and computer criminals harness other groups to their own ends.
Russian cyber-crime gangs have for a long time developed a model where they sell technology to ‘script-kiddies’ and stolen credit card data to gangs that use a system of ‘mules’, people who are prepared, generally unwittingly, to engage in the moving of stolen money through bank accounts so that money taken from credit cards can be moved through the international monetary system.
A practice that many of the disaffected would see as entirely justifiable, given their feelings of exclusion from a world they do feel a part of or one that rewards them.
That the protesters wear masks is a sign of the times.
In the UK there is now one surveillance camera for every 11 people. In East Germany there was one informant for every 63 people.
Given the degree of government surveillance shown by the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden the protestors use of masks is a legitimate statement that in the UK at least the Government should consider.
The only crumb of comfort for the watchers is that more people went to fireworks displays than to the Anonymous march. What should be worrying them more is that the current poor state of the technology infrastructure means that only a few people could create havoc by employing the services of a few more misguided individuals, unhappy with the status quo and that the answer to that is not by deploying funds into prevention, but by creating gainful employment
