Should we celebrate the fact that the Web has allowed numerous obscure social movements -- especially those that would otherwise be forgotten by history -- to flourish and gain new global following? 

In most cases, the answer is an unqualified "yes" since the effect on international affairs is generally benign. For example, the world's knitting community must be delighted to have sites like Knit Together, which provide a shared cultural reference point for knitting enthusiasts around the world (and almost certainly resulting in new horizontal connections - and, of course, better knitting). Sites like MeetUp sprang up precisely because it became possible to form new alliances and movements in very cheap and effective ways on any subject.

This mostly positive side of the story -- "the power of organizing without organizations" -- has been fairly well-covered by thinkers like Clay Shirky (the above quote also happens to be the title of Shirky's book). But what's happening on the other darker side could potentially be much more interesting. Why not study how technology helps various nutcases to join forces as well? Wouldn't this help us draw more insights into technology's "net effect" (excuse the pun)?

Take the world of conspiracy theorists. Arguably, it has flourished on the Web. Actually, there has never been a better time to be a conspiracy theorist than in the age of Google, when every single dubious resource is digitized and available for quoting. It doesn't matter if there are many more authoritative sources that disprove the theory; usually, this only strengthens theorists' distrust of the mainstream media.

Often, there is also a weird variation of the Streisand Effect at play here: the more authorities or the media try to reign in or engage with the conspiracy theorists, the more popular they tend to get. In this case, the best scenario is to really leave them alone for any additional publicity is only going to help them recruit new members. This is why I think the cyber-attack campaigns launched by Project Chanology against the Church of Scientology are likely to backfire; they're unlikely to silence that church forever, but it's now quite possible that more people will learn about Scientology by reading the story about cyber-attacks online.

Some cases are, however, unique in their weirdness. I doubt that the story below would even be possible in the pre-Internet age; that four people who live in different countries but are united by some weird belief would be able to meet, plan and executive a sabotage act is possible largely only thanks to email, Facebook, and instant messaging.

But even without the Internet angle, the story below - pasted almost in its entirety - is so rich in its eeriness that it could easily put any of Roberto Bolaño's novels to shame.

The four people accused by the Mozambican police of using a supposedly "highly corrosive substance" in an attempt to sabotage the Cahora Bassa dam are in fact members of a lunatic fringe group called "Orgonise Africa".

The four have now been named as Georg Ritschi (a German architect), Carlos Silva (a Portuguese hotelier), Tino Phutheso (a Botsanan aircraft pilot), and Joseph Ngusato (a South African self-styled "prophet").

There was nothing clandestine about this group's visit to the Cahora Bassa lake. They advertised it on their Internet websites, where they called the journey "Operation Paradise".

"Want to come on our next Zambezi expedition, April 2009?", asked Georg Ritschi on an "Orgonise Africa" blog. "Our next big expedition will be the continuation of our last great water gifting effort on the lower Zambezi", said Ritschi.

What can they possibly be talking about? Orgonise? Gifting?

It turns out that Orgonise Africa is a band of dedicated followers of the Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, who died in an American jail in 1956. Reich did some valuable work on human sexuality in the early part of his career, but in his later years switched his political allegiance from left to right, and showed signs of mental illness and paranoia.

He claimed that he had discovered a universal form of energy which he called orgone. This energy - undetected by science both then and in the 52 years since Reich's death - was responsible for everything from the weather to gravity and the formation of galaxies. Reich built machines called orgone accumulators were supposed to concentrate orgone energy. This would be a good thing since, according to Reich, illness and diseases are caused by insufficient orgone.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) correctly described the orgone accumulators as fraudulent, banned their sale and outlawed all "orgone therapy". Which was why, after he defied the injunction obtained by the FDA, Reich ended up in jail.

........

The theory espoused by this group is that everything wrong with the planet is due to a lack of orgone. To set matters right, the dedicated followers of Wilhelm Reich, engage in "orgone gifting". This involves dumping "gifts" of a substance called orgonite into the place - in this case, Cahora Bassa lake - that is to be cured of its orgone deficiency.

So that is what the four arrested "saboteurs" were doing - heaving lumps of orgonite from a boat into the lake.

I find it quite amazing that such fringe groups can be extremely effective. Just look at the Web-site of Orgonise Africa -- it has a pretty map, a blog, an online shop, and even an affiliate program. Not only does it look legit to most people, its narrative is appealing enough to help recruit new supporters on a monthly (if not weekly) basis. Not surprisingly, the Web plays a significant role here too:

...Enthusiasts for orgonite tell us how to make the stuff on their Internet sites...A site called organite.info tells us "Quarter-inch-wide aluminum curls are very common and very effective for use in orgonite, but any kind of copper, iron, brass (including brassed aluminum), bronze, nickel or even steel shavings will work fine. Just bring a bucket and some work gloves to a local machine shop and ask them if you can fill your bucket with metal shavings".

Even more interesting is the ambivalence with which some of these groups treat technology. For them, it's not only a good weapon, it's also a weapon that is increasingly used against them -- or so they think: 

They don't like cell phones either, and claim that "the ubiquitous microwave transmitters, sold to the populace as necessary for cell phone communications play a major role in the undeclared war against humankind".

Orgonise Africa declares that its mission is "to reverse the negative effects of entropic technology and secret bio-chemical warfare" on Africa. Its strategy is to lay down organite and orgone devices so as to "neutralise at least most of the entropy transmitters in one country and other obvious sources of negative energy such as battle fields, ritual murder sites, prisons, police stations and Masonic lodges".

It's quite disturbing to watch how technology is amplifying the impact of groups like this one: they are really too weird and obscure to be on the radar of most people - and yet, recruiting even four people could be enough to dump quite a lot of useless junk into a lake. Perhaps, some of my recent fears about Twitter and misinformation were not so ungrounded; I can see how a group like the Orgonise Africa would be all over it, if only to recruit one extra member...