Sunday, Julian Assange revealed WikiLeaks and Anonymous have teamed up to publish the contents of a massive Stratfor hack members of Anonymous allegedly carried out on Christmas eve. Immediately after Assange’s press release was published, a hoax e-mail in which George Friedman drafted his resignation went viral. Barrett Brown has since claimed responsibility for this hoax and has made yet another empty promise to step down as spokesperson for Anonymous.
Unlike previous WikiLeaks releases, this story has only spread among hardcore fans of Occuponymous and WikiLeaks. The banal information gleaned from the 5 million e-mails included such shocking behavior as for-profit stock trading and at least a single instance of a bigotry. However, the social media echo chamber that is Occuponymous and WikiLeaks has never been more outraged, catalyzed, and radicalized than ever before. Anonymous was fully prepared to take advantage of this situation, and launched the so-called Operation V, which proposes a violent overthrow of the US government.
Although the public really couldn’t care less about Stratfor, Occuponymous hasn’t yet reverted to accusing the media of a purposeful blackout on the topic.