The Further Adventures of Guy Fawkes

From the Baltimore City Paper, the most complete account I've read of the war between Anonymous and Scientology. An excerpt:

In an e-mail, Doc describes Anonymous as "the first internet-based superconsciousness." Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely. A popular picture of sign-waving Anonymous protesters in their trademark Guy Fawkes masks is captioned: "Oh Fuck, The Internet is here."

At the March 15 protest, an anon in his 30s who says he works in homeland security, compares Anonymous to the War on Terror--you can fight terrorists, but you can't fight an idea. Anonymous, he says, is an idea.

As he says this, he's wearing a suit and surgical mask, standing on a street corner outside the Washington Church of Scientology, while someone reads L. Ron Hubbard's military record over the PA system.

A guest blogger at Henry Jenkins' site has more. Whether or not you care about Scientology itself, this is a fascinating study in decentralized, leaderless organization -- and in the ways ephemeral online fandom can evolve into something politically engaged.