Movimentos de Protestos Virtuais da Anonymous no Brasil: unidos como um e divididos por fakes

Abstract

This thesis, entitled "Movement of virtual protests by the Anonymous in Brazil: united as one and divided by fakes," presents an analytical evaluation of the Anonymous Protests Network, since its inception, in the site 4chan, to show dissent against the World Cup Brazil - 2014, having reached its peak in the June 2013 Demonstrations, in which Anonymous had influential participation, either through online activism practices as in direct actions offline. The ideology supporting Anonymous is characterized by a form of political struggle which aims at achieving human emancipation through hiper-democracy, technocracy and complete freedom of expression, information and communication. The process of a successful establishment of these ideas would take place through the practice of new models of social mobilization, that is, by an autonomous educational process - self-vigilant, anonymous - which would develop a horizontal movement without leaders, without interference from political parties and without ideologies. This model differs from the political form of struggle of the twentieth century, characterized by the traditional split between left and right movements with leaders in a personality vertical hierarchal power line, guided by explicit ideological tendencies. In order to understand the development of the Anonymous protest actions in Brazil, it was used as a empirical research base several virtual sources such as Facebook pages and YouTube channels of Anonymous cells in Brazil and abroad, as well as observation of street protests, such as "Operation September 7" and "Operation No World Cup", besides interviews with Anonymous activists. The process of analysis of the sources was weighted by the study of the contents and the various forms of languages used in the actions of cyberactivists. It was found that the development of political struggles based on ideas spawned by Anonymous, as far as it proposes to break the traditional model of political action, in spite of counting with significant number of activists, the Anonymous ideology was not understood by most of his followers and activists. The very form of creating Anonymous cells in Brazil had a distorted start and was conducted in vertical fashion, anonymity allowing activists to follow plans established by small groups or unknown organizations, as well as appropriation of Anonymous cells by fakes, which led to certain mobilizations guided by political interests of a partisan and ideological nature. This fact resulted in divisions, ruptures and complaints by parts of some cells. As an example of this situation one can cite Anonymous FUEL, which remained active, but with a vigilant stance on Anonymous ideology, and two other branches, Anonymous Paraná and Anonymous Curitiba, which declared themselves inactive, given misrepresentation of Anonymous ideas by other cells that assumed militarist causes and defended a coup d’état in Brazil. For this study, the methodology used had as reference discourse analysis of Bakhetin (2002) and Ducrot (1987). For themes that permeate the study, such as cyberspace, hacktivism, postmodernism and social movements, it was used as a theoretical basis the contributions of Castells (1999), Levy (1999), Melucci (1989), Tilly (1978), Vegh (2003), Harvey (2008), Santos (2000), (2002), Giddens (1991) and Beck (2000).