It’s prob­a­bly for the best if this par­tic­u­lar fac­tion of the Occu­py Wall Street lead­er­ship offi­cial­ly sells out like this:

Pan­do Dai­ly
Occu­py Wall Street leader now works for Google, wants to crowd­fund a pri­vate mili­tia

By Yasha Levine
On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2014

Remem­ber Jus­tine Tun­ney? The OWS-anar­chist-turned-cultist-Google-employ­ee who bashed my report­ing on Google’s for-prof­it sur­veil­lance? Well, today she hit the big time.

Over the last few days, Tun­ney has been caus­ing a Twit­ter out­rage tsuna­mi after she took full con­trol of the main Occu­py Wall Street (OWS) Twit­ter account, claimed to be the founder of OWS and then pro­ceed­ed to tweet out stream of ridicu­lous anar­cho-cor­po­ratist garbage. She railed against wel­fare, described the gov­ern­ment as “just anoth­er cor­po­ra­tion,” argued pover­ty was not a polit­i­cal prob­lem but “an engi­neer­ing prob­lem” and told politi­cians to “get out of the way.” She also debunked what she thought was a mis­con­cep­tion: peo­ple thought OWS activists were protest­ing against con­cen­trat­ed cor­po­rate pow­er, and that, she claims, is sim­ply not true.

As I wrote before, Tunney’s sud­den epiphany that not all cor­po­ra­tions are evil just so hap­pened to coin­cide with her deci­sion to take a well-paid job at Google. Since then she has become an astro­turfer par exel­lence for the com­pa­ny, includ­ing show­ing up in a com­ment sec­tion to bash my report­ing on Google’s vast for-prof­it sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion. “It nev­er ceas­es to amaze me how far peo­ple have to stretch in order to denounce the one cor­po­ra­tion that gives away every­thing for free,” she wrote.

It’s impor­tant to real­ize that, before tak­ing her job at Google, Tun­ney wasn’t just an Occu­py foot sol­dier, but a promi­nent spokesper­son for the move­ment. She’s been writ­ten about in the New York­er and The Nation as one of the found­ing mem­bers of OWS in Zuc­cot­ti Park, and was instru­men­tal in set­ting up and run­ning OWS’s main Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion hub, OccupyWallSt.org. In media pro­files, Tun­ney described her­self as “just anoth­er geek try­ing to help out with the rev­o­lu­tion,” and you can see her in pho­tographs with oth­er hi-tech rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies occu­py­ing a table in Zuc­cot­ti Park, hunched over lap­tops, wires and com­put­er gear.

And this week Tunney’s shift away from her for­mer Occu­py pals broke the Twit­ter troll bar­ri­er. Her tweets caused such a social media back­lash that even Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray felt com­pelled to cov­er it:

Occu­py Wall Street is dead — but its Twit­ter account is alive, and it’s become a fas­ci­nat­ing hotbed of infight­ing between rival fac­tions of the group that once slept out in New York’s Zuc­cot­ti Park.

Activist Jus­tine Tun­ney, a Google engi­neer, has wrest­ed con­trol of the main @OccupyWallSt Twit­ter account away from oth­er activists and is tak­ing shots at impor­tant fig­ures from the move­ment, includ­ing aca­d­e­m­ic David Grae­ber, con­sid­ered by some to be the intel­lec­tu­al father of Occu­py. Though Tun­ney found­ed the account in 2011, oth­er activists once had access to it.

The big ques­tion: who found­ed Occu­py?

But actu­al­ly Tunney’s claim that she found­ed Occu­py is by far the least inter­est­ing part of the sto­ry. Buzzfeed’s Gray missed a much weird­er and sin­is­ter devel­op­ment: Tun­ney — a Google employ­ee — has been push­ing a crazy cru­sade to fund a paid mer­ce­nary pro­test­er army to fight against Wall Street — all via Kick­Starter.

No joke, grrrrls and bros! Tun­ney wants to crowd­source a pri­vate army rev­o­lu­tion!

Jus­tine Tunney@JustineTunney

If we raised $1m to kick­start a non­vi­o­lent mili­tia for #occu­py w/ week­ly train­ings, would you guys be inter­est­ed? @OccupyWallSt@VFPNational
6:33 AM-25 Sep 2013

(Pos­si­ble Buz­zfeed head­line for this sto­ry: ten things only Googlers who occu­pied Wall Street and want to crowd­fund a mili­tia will under­stand)

Tunney’s call to arms was sec­ond­ed by Mic­ah White, for­mer edi­tor of AdBusters who now runs a bou­tique social move­ment con­sult­ing busi­ness. White describes his busi­ness as a “social change con­sult­ing firm found­ed by the Amer­i­can cre­ator of the Occu­py Wall Street meme” which “serves a hand-picked inter­na­tion­al clien­tele of social rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and move­ments.”

...

OWS Founder Calls on Oba­ma to Appoint Google’s Eric Schmidt ‘CEO of Amer­i­ca’

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/20/occupy-founder-obama-eric-schmidt-ceo-america

the founder of Occu­py Wall Street wants the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to resign and appoint her boss, Google’s Chair­man Eric Schmidt, to a new post, CEO of Amer­i­ca

@Dál Ria­ta: Yeah, you almost have to won­der if Jus­tine Tun­ney’s respon­si­bil­i­ties at Google includes per­son­al­ly test­ing Google’s next gen­er­a­tion inter­face tech­nolo­gies. That might explain the enthu­si­asm.