On the surface these hackers might seem like any other radical fringe group, just with more technological savvy. However, there is something darkly sociopathic about these shadowy characters that strikes me as quite evocative of spree killers; those outcasts who suddenly burst from their gloomy exile to cause great harm and chaos. In a word: Dangerous!
Violence is lurking all around us, hinting at something that should make us all guarded, and alert. These attacks on Roman Catholic relics, holy places, websites, etc. are indicators of potentially violent acts to follow. Escalation occurs when these actors become emboldened, and they push ever further toward some tipping point.
Hatred and violence have an historical symbiosis. We see (read about) the palpable hatred directed at the Roman Catholic Church which is allowed to flourish in our culture. It seems that our Church is excluded from all of these protections heaped upon the myriad groups and faiths which have been deemed sacrosanct by the elites who determine such things. It is suddenly acceptable to defame, slander, demean, degrade, and outright attack all things Catholic. It has been allowed to become too easy an undertaking.
We had better wake up to this new reality we find ourselves in, and we had better be very aware and alert to potential danger. The fires of hatred are being stoked, and I fear that desecration, vandalism, and cyber-terrorism, are merely precursers to actual violence. Nothing just happens in a vacuum; it builds, and builds, and if you are circumspect, you can identify the patterns that lead right up to the lighting of the fuse, or the pulling of the trigger. Perhaps escalation won’t occur, but caution (and prevention) seem like wise tactics to me.
