Following the Paris terrorist attacks, the activist hacking group known as Anonymous declared war on the terrorist Islamist group ISIS. Now, as one part of its cyber campaign against the militants, Anonymous has announced that this Friday, December 11, is a “trolling day” against ISIS. The “hacktivists” posted an online message asking people to mock the members of ISIS.
The post was listed on the file-sharing website Ghostbin and read, “We ask you to show your support and help against ISIS by joining us and trolling them // do not think you have to be part of Anonymous, anyone can do this and does not require special skills. We ask you to take part of this on Facebook // Twitter // Instagram // Youtube //In the ‘Real World.’”
The term “trolling” refers to the insults, abuse and threats made online to incite ire in the targeted victim. Those making the threats are appropriately called trolls.
Anonymous asked the public to use the Twitter hashtags #Daesh and #Daeshbags. Daesh is another Western name for ISIS, and is considered derogatory. The group also asked the public to post “mocking photos” of the group – such as pictures of goats with captions talking about the wives of ISIS members.
Following Anonymous’ declaration of war, ISIS responded by calling the hacktivists “idiots.” But, the terrorist group must have taken it somewhat seriously as it posted advice to its supporters on how to ensure they are not hacked.
As a sign of the world we live in today, many members and supporters of ISIS have social media accounts. The Jihadist group, operating out of Iraq and Syria, has a relatively strong online presence.
Anonymous claims that to date, it has already removed hundreds of Twitter and Facebook accounts belonging to ISIS groupies.
For anyone questioning Anonymous’ decision to troll ISIS, the online poster stated as follows:
“You may be wondering why we are ‘trolling’ ISIS and planning all these demonstrations against ISIS. But to understand that you must first see how ISIS works. They thrive off of fear they hope that by their actions they can silence all of us and get us to just lay low and hide in fear. But what many forget and even they do is that there are many more people in the world against them than for them.”
The poster further added that, “And that is the goal of this mass uprising, on December 11th we will show them that we are not afraid, we will not just hide in our fear, we are the majority and with our strength in numbers we can make a real difference. We will mock them for the idiots they are.”
