Divide and Conquer and Religious Ideas

Femen leader Inna Shevchenko

Groups like Anonymous, Femen, WikiLeaks, or political movements like The Pirate Party, Occupy Wall Street, or Black Lives Matter are generally considered civic and secular organizations. I think a better way to understand them, though, is as different sects of an underlying religion.

One of the things they seem to have in common is a theatrical portrayal of individuals triumphant against some massive system or powerful political figures. (Similar to Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning). The Femen are nearly naked women staging splashy protests against authorities, for example, cutting down a Christian cross with a chainsaw. It's an inversion of Charlemagne's troops chopping down Irminsul.

A key word here is theater. Beliefs that atomize people destroy their ability to organize politically, or act as a coherent group on behalf of shared interests. Similarly, while the movements depict triumphant individuals in a global media production, they contain countless people chanting the same slogans, and wearing the same mass-produced masks.