Tea Party Nation posted today that the loose-knit hacker group Anonymous had attacked its website. Tea Party Nation said it had been warned that Anonymous would come after the Tea Party movement and the organization specifically.
Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, said that members of Anonymous have posted racist messages online while posing as Tea Party members.
“Two nights ago, one of them posted extremely graphic and disturbing pornographic pictures. We discovered it and quickly deleted them. They then sent a suspended message saying: ‘Expect us,’” the post read.
Anonymous’s slogan is: We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.
“This could have been just a group of people that are associated with Anonymous,” Judson said. “It may not be something that the whole group agrees with, or it may be, but we have no way of knowing.”
The scattered hacker group claims it is not entirely unified and does not have any leader or specific direction.
Anonymous activist Topiary Gardenslayer said,“While all operations are organized and run by Anons, it’s not accurate to say that all of Anonymous is responsible.”
Phillips said he was disturbed that Anonymous, advocates of free speech and anti-censorship, would want to attack the Tea Party.
“I do have a great deal of respect for the capability of this group because I know if they put their minds to it they can take our website down, at least for a while,” said Phillips.
Distributed denial-of-service, which temporarily takes down targeted sites, is the primary method of Anonymous attacks. So far Tea Party Nation has not experienced these type of attacks but rather harassment and abuse in the form of comments and posts.
Philips said that he was against simply shutting down debate out of disagreement.
“I don’t have a problem with anybody who disagrees with me, you want to debate something or argue something, hey, let’s go, I’m all for it,” said Phillips, “May the best idea win.”
So far, there has been no mention of attacks on the Tea Party or Tea Party Nation on AnonNews, a website associated with the activities of Anonymous.