Hackers on Steroids

by Oisín Sweeney

  All of which brings me nicely to one relatively prominent Anon that is Londoner Malcolm Blackman, a 45-year-old ex-security guard and now self-proclaimed leader of the British branch of Anonymous.

  Yes, you read that correctly. This Anonymous fanatic, and he is fanatical about Anonymous, is 45 years of age. He is so fanatical that for about six months he once lived in the middle of London in a tent flying the Anonymous flag. No joke. When I was in London once I went to visit the tent one morning for a laugh but it was zipped up and he must have been in there sleeping. I took a few photos of it all the same so I could have a bloody good snigger at it again later on in the day.

  Malcolm - or also Mad Mal, Mental Mal, and Malfunction as he is known variously to me - is the single most ridiculous character that I did encounter or even hear tell of in this whole sorry saga.

  Which really is quite a stupendous achievement.

  Malcolm first appeared on the scene on Facebook in or around the spring of 2010, where he started off as an anti-bullying campaigner who was trying to warn people who ran memorial pages about RIP trolls. So far, so good, but at some time or another he started to hang out online with those very same trolls and sparked up something of a very close friendship with them. At this time he was running an anti-bullying group by the name of Hands Across the Ocean (or HATO as it was generally known as, and named after a crime syndicate from Malcolm’s favourite film ‘The Long Good Friday,’ something of which its members were very likely unaware of) and that had around 3000 members, quite a number of whom were close family members of young kids from Britain and America who had committed suicide because they were being bullied, and many of them in turn had experienced harassment from trolls regarding the deaths of these children. Yet here was Malcolm making videos on Youtube celebrating RIP trolling, and at the same time he had set up a Facebook group called ‘The Corporation’ (again taken from the Long Good Friday) and in which RIP trolls who had had their accounts banned by Facebook (an occupational hazard in their world) could come on and find the rest of their vile little friends whenever they made new profiles.

  Bit of a conflict of interests there, isn’t there?

  At the time, I was working with a certain Scottish lady against these same trolls and she managed to convince one of the administrators of HATO to give her admin powers on the group. She then kicked off the rest of the administrators before giving an account I was myself running the power of administration on HATO. We then group-messaged all the members and told them what Blackman was doing as regards the RIP trolls, before handing back power to the original admins (minus Mad Mal). As a precautionary measure we then disabled our admin accounts so that they couldn’t be kicked off the group, something which would allow us to take control of it again later should the RIP trolls’ biggest admirer subsequently take back the reins.

  This all caused a parting of the ways in the HATO group, with some leaving in disgust at what the founder of the group was doing as regards his newfound friends, and others seeming not to really understand any of it and so staying around. Malcolm, now back as administrator himself and enraged that some members were questioning his judgement (he was, he said, ‘merely showing respect and understanding’ to RIP troll predators), changed the name of the group to ‘The Mallory Knox Fan Club.’ ‘Mallory Knox’ is an American male and an RIP troll who was to be found on Facebook in those days. His other trolling name is ‘Ann Hero,’ that trollish reference to suicide. This sick insult – intended or not - to the members of a group that included the parents of children who had killed themselves was the last straw and so both me and the other anti-troll opened up our sleeper accounts and closed the group down permanently.

  When Malcolm’s friends make someone mad they say that person is ‘butthurt.’ Well, Malcolm couldn’t have been more butthurt than if he’d been anally attacked with Satan’s very own 9ft hell-penis. This absurd little creature went into absolute meltdown mode, dancing about like a little demonic imp caught in a glass jar. He genuinely didn’t appear to see the contradiction between what he was doing as regards his friendship with - and enabling of - the very worst bullies on Facebook and on the other hand running what was meant to be an anti-bullying group. He even went along with his psychotic little mates to troll a wall run by the friends of a young South African girl who was in a coma and that they had set up to ask for prayers for her. Something’s really missing in that mind of his. For the next six months or so of his life he spent what seemed to be all of his time making numerous 15 minutes videos or writing long essays the subject of which was the utter evil of anti-trolls, and especially the utter evil of me. It was all because we were jealous of his success, you see. He has made a video in which he describes ‘the rape of HATO’ as ‘probably the most evil act of hate of the decade.’ And he means it. By god he means it. He also went on to blame another Irishman other than me for being involved even though he had nothing to do with it, and started a massive online war with him. Which is apt really, as in the Long Good Friday it is the Irish characters that really, really get the ire of the main mover behind HATO.

  I still can’t for the life of me get my head around the fact that he genuinely can’t see the contradiction. But he can’t. He genuinely can’t. But this is the type of loon that the Net throws up time and again.

  After his anti-bullying reputation had long went the way of the dodo, and after he had his six-month-long very public and very, very funny breakdown, he then latched onto Anonymous and it wasn’t long before this 45-year-old nominal adult could be viewed parading around at Anonymous gatherings all around Britain. Anonymous soon became his entire life (although he does seem to have trouble understanding the meaning of the word ‘anonymous,’ whoring himself out for the TV cameras as a spokesman every chance he gets, including an appearance on BBC’s Panorama documentary series in which he talked about how much he respects the RIP trolls). For this strange and bizarre little man, who when on Facebook was hanging out with two 13-year-old girls whenever he wasn’t playing around with RIP trolls, being part of Anonymous has turned him from strange little loner into strange little deluded fantasist. Because for Malcolm, Anonymous is at war and at the end of that war it is going to rule the world.

  Malcolm had his first taste of the horrors of this war at the Battle of the Bullring Shopping Centre, which took place in Birmingham, England, on 20th August 2011 and that was filmed by one of the Anons who was there. This was ‘The day the people of the UK lost their freedom,’ according to Malfunction. What happened was that a bunch of circus clowns all of whom had for some reason forgotten their red noses and makeup and were wearing Guy Fawkes masks instead had lost their way to the circus and wandered into the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham while playing loud rap music from a ghetto blaster, and had been civilly asked by the security staff to either turn the music off or to leave. When the clowns, then 44-year-old Mental Mal among their number, refused to stop playing the music, the security guards were forced to physically eject them. As this was happening the extremely emotionally unstable clowns broke down hysterically and began screaming things along the lines of: ‘FASCISTS!! NAZIS!! THESE MEN ARE CRIMINAL NAZIS!! YOUR GRANDDADS FOUGHT AGAINST PEOPLE LIKE YOU!!’ at the much bemused and equally amused security guards.

  When Malcolm got home from the battle he wrote about it on Youtube: ‘Was pretty surreal. Like ‘43 Nazi Germany. For sure man.’

  Well it is true that Hitler was notorious for having the SS remove from shopping centres mentalist buffoons intent on causing trouble. It was one of his most notorious war crimes.

  Needless to say, the first 15 minute Youtube video Mental made to expose this horror to the world in a bid to seek justice for it (‘WE DEMAND THIS SECURITY COMPANY HAS ITS LICENCE REVOKED IMMEDIATELY!’) became another instant classic of his. I especially love the warning he gives before the actual video footage itself begins: ‘The scenes you are about to see may shock you. This is not done intentionally.’

  Thanks for the warning
, Mal, but I still get shocked every time I remember that you aren’t 10.

  And are instead 45. Yes, that’s right: He’s forty-fecking-five years of age.

  Four-tee-five.

  His second video was even better, making demands for a public inquiry as to the events of that day of infamy (‘the day that took the ‘Great’ out of Great Britain,’ according to Malfunction) and calling on the people of the UK to take part in mass campaigns of civil disobedience until the police were held to account for failing to stop this carnage.

  Here!! Passes matches to the fail sat in his armchair talking, talking, talking. And talking. You sit there on the sidelines. Leave the heavy lifting to us.

  That was the message which grizzled insurgent Malcolm Blackman, fresh from the Battle of the Bullring Shopping Centre, gave to someone on Youtube who was slagging off the revolutionary actions of the Anons on that day. When I read that I was overcome with a powerful vision of Malfunction, his chin darkened with stubble from being too long in the trenches, his piercing, glowing eyes fearless and wide open and like lasers cutting holes right into the belly of the corporate beast, his Guy Fawkes mask pulled up over his face and sitting proudly like a beret atop his beautiful head as if placed there to crown him ‘Prince of the People.’ I thought then to myself: ‘That man deserves to be on a t-shirt.’

  And like a damaged Vietnam vet who can’t leave the horrors of the war behind him, Malcolm can’t forget about his time as a security guard and wherever he goes with Anonymous he wears his old work uniform, to which he has added the word ‘Peace’ across the front of the coat. It must be tough forgetting.

  But who are we to laugh at Malcolm and the battles he has fought? Who are we to laugh, man?! We weren’t there, man! We don’t know what it was like! We weren’t in the freaking jungle along with all the Anons, man - he was! He was fucking there, man, he saw this shit happening. Oh he’s saw some things all right. He’s looked the security guards of the Birmingham Bullring Shopping Centre right in their beady eyes, man - HE WAS THAT CLOSE! And he ain’t even scared to go back and do the same again. He ain’t even scared at all. WHO ARE WE TO LAUGH?!?

  He also made a video warning us that a meteor was going to strike Earth on 26th September 2011. Those monsters in the secret world government were keeping this news from us but luckily Mental Malcolm had found out and was giving us forewarning. All this from a leading member of Anonymous must have scared the meteor off and made it change course. Thanks for saving us all from this doom, Malcolm. I know I would have been scared too if I were that meteor.

  Shortly after this, Malcolm, a cadaverous little creature of no more than seven stone in weight and who looks like a rat’s penis on legs, started talking about arresting British Prime Minister David Cameron on war crimes charges. Referring to an event Cameron was expected to attend, Malcolm wrote: ‘I will be in attendance on this day and will happily effect the arrest. I have made several in my time, am comfortable with the process and Miranda Rights and would be more than happy to remand him into custody until he can be handed to the relevant authorities, in this case probably Interpol. Just say the word.’

  Most people would probably assume that he had Afghanistan or Libya in mind here and the UK’s involvement in the wars in those two countries when he was talking about arresting Cameron in the name of Anonymous (and all presumably while wearing his old security guard uniform). But knowing Malcolm the way I do, I have a real suspicion that it may be related to the Battle of the Bullring Shopping Centre.

  But for me, the high point/low point of all of this hilarity so far has to be the time when Malfunction began making videos threatening that he was going to use the powers of Anonymous to bring down the British government in the wake of the August 2011 multi-city riots in England. Apparently, he and a lot of other people in Guy Fawkes masks were going to march on Parliament Square in London and demand that the UK government stand down and hand power back to the people. Malfunction was genuinely convinced that faced with the massive people power of Malfunction and the millions upon millions of Anonymous members who live inside of his head, they would do just that. The scene he had in that magical little noggin of his was one which takes place at the end of the celluloid version of V For Vendetta when an army of people in Guy Fawkes masks march to the Palace of Westminster to see it explode, heralding the revolution that is about to take place. All of his videos were accompanied by the now familiar warning of: ‘We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do forget. EXPECT US!;’ the latter put in capitals just to make sure that David Cameron and the rest of them had sleepless nights right up until the forewarned day of judgement (5th November 2011 - Guy Fawkes Day). Presumably the Battle of the Bullring Shopping Centre was just a practice run for this - their real plan to take over the world.

  And Malcolm wasn’t anything but deadly serious either. He wasn’t trolling, or doing it for a joke. He never is with this stuff. Malcolm, bless his poor wee heart, really was going to take down the British government and take power ‘for the people.’ He may even have went so far to have made himself Prime Minister and then those SS security guards who had to remove those shrieking nincompoops from that shopping arcade in Birmingham could have been brought up to answer charges of war crimes. Of course, some might say that Malcolm and his fellow survivors from the Battle of the Bullring couldn’t have done a worse job than most governments in most places in the world are doing at any given time, but let us not get into that here.

  In the end only 100 turned up for the march, were quickly rerouted by the police, and David Cameron awoke the next day still PM of Britain. Personally myself, I blame the giant lizardmen from space for foiling Mal’s plans. It’s always the giant lizardmen from space who are to blame when things like this fail. One Anon on Facebook did though in all seriousness theorise that all those millions of Anons who didn’t turn up for the revolution were the victims of a government-induced flu sent out to kill the insurrection before it could begin. Perhaps Mad Mal made a strategic mistake in giving forewarning of his plans?

  Have I mentioned yet that Malcolm is in his 40s? I think I may have, but I did it again there just to be sure.

  But that’s the delusions of grandeur which being part of the Anonymous craze can give to some mad, mad, mad little beings like Malcolm Blackman. The Anonymous brand allows any tragic mentalist like Malcolm to delude themselves into believing that they are part of some global network of the elite, and they begin to play out their infantile fantasies both on and off the Net. Blackman, who sometimes likes to wear scarves over his face when faced with a camera so that he can pretend to himself that he is some sort of urban guerrilla, speaks in terms of ‘Anonymous cells’ and ‘ground activists,’ and he calls things like the Battle of the Bullring ‘ground ops.’ Only problem is, Anonymous ain’t going to be able to help out some poor kid facing 20 years in jail for being part of one of its stupid and ultimately meaningless computer attacks. There are many, I suppose, ‘in’ Anonymous who make their utterings tongue-in-cheek, but it is clear that there are also far too many like Mad Malcolm Blackman who are embarrassingly earnest in all which they utter. Sitting in their bedrooms thinking in robotic voices, pretending that they are a cog in a cold, efficient machine which spans the entire length of the globe and beyond (some Anons have talked of getting an Anonymous satellite into orbit). How far gone in a fantasy of power that some connected with Anonymous are is illustrated perfectly by a 2011 incident in which some Anons started talking openly of taking on the mass-murdering Mexican drug cartel the Zetas. Anonymous threatened to name names and then backed down when the real gangster movement that is the Zetas promised to murder 10 people for every member named online. Pretend bedroom mafias aren’t really going to come out of a confrontation with the real thing looking too healthy.

  It is the nature of the ‘organisation’ that any oul group of fuckwits can get together and style themselves as being ‘Anonymous,’ and as we have seen with Mad Mal and his fellow Bullring survi
vors, any oul group of fuckwits often do. Saying that, Anonymous on the face of it is still quite a powerful idea and it will continue to generate news and some small and relative excitement, most especially by its leaking of secret and damaging corporate files like, for example, those hacked from the computers of the right-wing global political analysis group Stratfor and which show that the company worked with American law enforcement to infiltrate climate protest groups (okay, this doesn't excite me but I'm sure that it excites some others). It obviously won’t bring down the system but the whole trend is something to watch anyway. It’s all mildly interesting in some small ways, just not anywhere near as interesting and dangerous as its adherents – and a mainly hysterical and quite clueless media – seem to think it to be. Who knows, though: Anonymous hackers could end up finding top secret files that expose a global conspiracy to keep alien abductions secret - although perhaps that would only be if Malcolm Blackman hacked into his own computer. What is a very loosely affiliated ‘underground’ culture filled with all types from the intelligent and talented to the utterly moronic, from those just sick in the head to desperately sad and needy crackhead, crackpot fantasists ready to go off at any time, ‘Anonymous’ is a boiling pot of ideas, lunacy, decency, thuggery, general paranoia, and brilliantly mad conspiracy theories. One writer has described Anonymous as being a handful of geniuses surrounded by a legion of idiots. Me, whenever I watch one of their ludicrous videos with the computer-generated voices and the juvenile fantasies of world revolution, I just think: ‘What an awful pack of silly little fannies. I hope the bigger, badder boys round where they live don’t find out that they prance about their bedrooms in Guy Fawkes masks while pretending that they’re taking on The Man, because they’ll probably get some severe kickings from them then.’