“Anonymous, c'est une identite commune,” said Slim Amamou in a TEDx presentation in Carthage, Tunisia, in September 2010. It could possibly translate into, “we are all anonymous.” Flipping between French and Tunisian colloquial Arabic, Amamou, a web entrepreneur, went on to describe the function of anonymous identities in our life, as they are behind everything from great works of art and literature, like Kelila and Demna and 1001 nights, to usual everyday objects like chairs and tables. In the virtual space of the Internet, those identities thrive and help shape the way our cultures unfold. Amamou refers to the “autonomous creative mass” that operates everyday on the Internet and freely distributes different cultural products (even in the form of banal statements in forums) with no central orchestration. When theoretically framed, these interactions provide for an inspirational model of collaboration that can be used for a plethora of ends, notably political ones. Beyond theorizing about the “anonymous” construct, Tunisian techies capture its immense potential as a strategic tool to reverse the fait-accompli that is state policing of freedom of expression. It is the “zero identity”, as Amamou puts it, that, next to the multiplicity of identities, becomes crucial to social (re)building, just as the zero construct as a value was the crucial invention of mathematicians in the 9th century AD. This is not solely about digital activism that centers itself around individualistic online identities. Rather it is a collective unnamed force that creatively stands against “big brother is watching you”, a Western symbol for excessive government power that remains relevant to the Arab World today. In the context of “anonymous”, the “you” becomes elusive, unidentifiable and hence un-targetable. With this spirit, a loose clique of hackers set on attacking Tunisian online government targets in the wake of the latter's systematic censorship, especially with the release of diplomatic cables bearing new revelations about the incumbent regime's oppression. “You are anonymous. You are legion. You shall not forgive. You shall not forget. Together we shall forge an army against corruption and gain freedom of speech around the world,” reads a promotional banner put together by Optunisia, a name the clique has adopted. The hackactivists' campaign does not engage in overt self-celebration, a practice common to many digital activism initiatives in the region. At the end of the day, it is about anonymity and not heroism. It's about tactics and not scene creation. The campaign introduces a new vein of life into the buzzing world of digital activism, heralded today as the popular salvation against the restricted freedom of expression in the Arab World. Amamou was arrested on the afternoon of 6 January, after tweeting a few messages suggesting that he is being followed. His arrest might seem paradoxical, as it can easily put into question the value of anonymity he preaches or its function as a plausible challenge to Arab regimes. My wishful thinking has it that his arrest is only a price but not a compromise over the concept. This price has to be paid given the public role that some Tunisian techies opted to play in their quest to preach anonymity. In a way, they gave a face, almost a brand, to their zero identities, just for fellow Internet users to ponder the idea and reproduce it. When the official website of Alexandria's state university in Egypt was hacked more than a year ago, the perpetrator of the attack wrote, “my identity is of no concern to anybody, but I would like to say that I belong to no terrorist group as our ministry of interior likes to think as a start for anyone who expresses himself in a ‘unique' way.” The attack was dubbed as one “for the sake of Egypt”, where the hackers sought to expose corruption in some of the university's financial deals. For the non-techie that I am, those acts of insurgency are inspirational. Their conceptual drive transcends the digital world to inform other forms of activism, where what can be done without the distortion of inducing identities can be of much more power. Banksy, the anonymous British graffiti painter whose politicized satire deployed in his street art and dubbed as sheer vandalism by state officials, is a point in case. When anonymity becomes a brand of identity, the focus goes to what it does. Tunisia's “Anonymous”, like that of the rather modest Alexandria university attack, both define a new frontier of freedom in our part of the world and deploy ample creativity in presenting themselves.
