Even if it was true, who cares. “Anonymous” functionally means nobody. Who can take a nobody seriously?

I am at least partially on your side of that debate.

I suspect Anonymous disagrees that Keith’s solution is necessary to end them. There are a lot of unsaid premises at work here. If Anonymous really is Aster, then I probably have the best understanding of her world perspective among the commentators here. And I can assure you that she is not quick to use coercion. I would point you to an active blog, but I don’t think she has one right now.

That said, if the Anonymous person isn’t Aster, then I still don’t read an unwillingness to take the warfare state seriously in their comments. To prefer a ruling class as a contextual necessity or lesser evil is not automatically an endorsement of genocidal warfare. Anarchists and Libertarians have historically argued that statism tends to end up that way, but that’s an argument to be put forward in this discussion. So far, I don’t see it being talked about very explicitly,

I should’ve looked back over all the comments to make sure that Anon had actually not responded to mention of U.S. imperialism. Mea culpa. But, I mean, you can denounce “criminal aggressions” all you want, but if you hysterically react to the idea of taking action to end them, how sincere are your objections, really?

Regarding the issue of insults, I think Charles is into something. I do not care to insult back somebody who insulted you (I probably share that trait of character with you, althought I consider it a character flaw. If you think it, insulting somebody back does not really make you gain any points. Nothing like the cold, reasoned non insulting answer to make anybody look silly when they start calling names).

But I think that even if you are insulting back people, there are ways of doing so. Using innate or physicall traits of the other guy to insult them is clearly low. And in many cases is politically charged to use the stablished predjuices (you know, against women, gays, or race, or socio economic condition) is unaceptable. Is like you are recognizing there is anything valid in using those hot buttons as insults, You may think it is “PC”…so what? Conservatives and right wingers decry “political correctness”, but I haven´t seen them provide a valid argument about the importance of political correctness? Calling a black people “nigger”, as derrogative manner to refer to him or her is wrong, no matter if somebody cries about how evil and “PC” that is. Even on the liberal side I think it is silly to use those kind of insults. Margaret Tatcher was evil, and so were most of her policies, but I don´t need to call her a “bitch” or any other mysogenistic word to insult her. Margaret Tatcher sucks not cause she is a women, nor I am going to attack her based on that. And anyways, why would I when there are so many other ways to insult her without making any calls on her sex?

I’d note that neither Anonymous or Keith has yet to change their basic worldview or gain a legion of “followers” who agree with them. This is illustrative of why I have not viscerally joined either — what Anonymous thinks of Keith Preston and what Keith Preston thinks of Anonymous is less important to me then the ideas under discussion.