I feel like your description could exactly (well, maybe slightly higher age/class) be used by the UK royalty to dismiss American revolutionaries. (note: I'm not actually conflating the two groups, just saying, your criticism seems a little pointless to me. My response would be "So?")
To that end, I think it all depends on the issue, the strength one feels for it, and from which direction they're coming. Definitely some people are just bored, without dedication to a cause, and looking to start shit on a scale that makes them feel important. That makes them feel like they've contributed to something. But to completely toss out a group because they're being led (knowingly or unknowingly) by those who have purpose? That's crazy.
Of course you are. If you weren't you would explain in what way the two situations are related instead of throwing out some one-off vague analogy in an appeal to nationalism or some insinuation of elitism.
> My response would be "So?"
My underlying point is that supporting or apologizing for a group whose raison d'être is to fill the void in its members' lives a la Project Mayhem of Fight Club is wrong. But of course that point is predicated on the reader's belief that that sort of motivation is bankrupt
(morally and intellectually).
I was just pointing it out.
If by 'tossing out' Anonymous you mean 'rejecting the validity of its raison d'être', then that is what I'm doing and I don't see how it's crazy.
Given I don't know your nationality, it wasn't an attempt to woo you by comparing them to anyone. I'm simply saying "they feel disenfranchised, so they're acting out" is kind of stating the obvious to almost any group. One could just as easily use that line to describe almost any group fighting for anything. I chose the American Revolution after reading another comment here literally comparing them to terrorists. I initially almost went with "Nazi Germany," but saw that and decided "it can go the other way, too," with such a generalized statement.
To attempt to word it another way, I'm trying to say "so what if some/many/most of them feel that way? Apparently SOME of them care, if they chose this cause. The cause of Internet-freedom/piracy/copyright. And often, battles (literal and not,) are done at the behest not of those doing the fighting, but the decision makers who convince/force them to take up the cause." (See? That can be read as a slight to the American revolutionaries. Hardly an elitist view of them!)
To that end, I think it all depends on the issue, the strength one feels for it, and from which direction they're coming. Definitely some people are just bored, without dedication to a cause, and looking to start shit on a scale that makes them feel important. That makes them feel like they've contributed to something. But to completely toss out a group because they're being led (knowingly or unknowingly) by those who have purpose? That's crazy.