The hacker collective “Anonymous” succeeded in hijacking the digital infrastructure of the lateral thinker idol Attila Hildmann, who fled to Turkey. Whistleblower Kai E. tells us in a zoom chat how he did it.
At the end of this extraordinary zoom call, the scenery becomes almost eerie. Kai E. is sitting in front of his laptop – probably somewhere in Turkey – and gives selected journalists back home in Germany information on how he and the hacker collective Anonymous hunted down Attila Hildmann, the most prominent German conspiracy ideologist. As dusk falls, his face with the blonde hipster beard in the penumbra takes on the features of the mask behind which the Anonymous activists have been hiding since they were founded in the mid-noughties. When asked about it, E. laughs and pulls out the Guy Fawkes mask himself that he has on the table in front of him.
It is probably one of the most spectacular actions that Anonymous Germany has managed to date: The 22-year-old E., who had stood by Attila Hildmann’s side for months as a confidante and IT administrator, allied himself with the collective. And made it possible to take over the digital infrastructure after he was able to gain access to various Hildmann channels and accounts. Since then, that legendary “Anonymous” face has spoken on various Hildmann sites and proclaims the successful occupation in a distorted voice. Allegedly around 100,000 e-mails and messages, including information about Hildmann’s network and his contacts, are in the hands of “Anonymous.”
Anonymous: “Authorities do not keep up with work”
On Wednesday evening, E. presented himself via zoom chat and explained some of his motives. When checking a business cell phone, he found that Attila Hildmann had been collecting Hitler photos and the like for a long time. Kai E., who describes himself as a “conspiracy theorist”, was initially “open” to getting to know Hildmann. “I wanted to help him, thought they were radicalizing him through the media hate speech – but that wasn’t true, he was a Nazi from the start.” And: “He’s an anti-Semite, a racist, a fascist, a stupid guy who is uptight in his worldview.” Hildmann “love the war, love the fight”.
In advance E. read a statement from “Anonymous”, who introduce themselves as “representatives of a loose collective of activists, hackers and bored 14-99 year old basement children”. First the successes of paralyzing the “apparently rapidly growing” lateral thinker party “Resistance 2020” are pointed out. “Attila Hildmann caught the eye of the collective among all the oathers because he misused the anonymous claim ‘We don’t forgive – we don’t forget – expect us'”, it says. They have started to limit Hildmann’s range to Telegram, infiltrated his administration team and banished thousands of members from the chat with admin rights, for which Atilla put a bounty on members of the collective. In addition, there was a call against the so-called “Antifa-Anonymous”, which the collective classified as dangerous.
“We are in a situation in which the authorities are not doing their job, large corporations write and enforce their own rules instead of laws, and politics has not addressed these abuses effectively for years,” denounce “Anonymous” in their pamphlet. “To fill in the loopholes created by this failure as part of society, Anonymous sometimes chooses means outside of the legal framework.” (sic!) An explanation that has to be seen in connection with the blocking of the Anonymous account by Twitter, where the group is accused of violating the community rules. The video clip announcing the boarding from Hildmann’s side is now also blocked.
From trust in Hildmann to anonymous activist
Who is this Kai E. now? According to Anonymous information, he was born in Bavaria in 1999. At the beginning of 2020 he himself began to post various conspiracy theories on Instagram, Telegram and Facebook under various aliases, which were hastily radicalized through the contact with the former vegan chef and conspiracy ideologist Hildmann. One of the Anonymous blogs shows that E. had been in their sights for a long time, so the astonishment for the activists was all the greater “when Kai E. of all people reported via chat on August 18, 2018.”
The page also says: “If the fact that Kai got in touch was surprising, it was increasingly what he revealed and offered: Attila’s world at our feet,” reads the blog AnonLeaks . Hildmann’s temporary companion had “somehow found Nazi shit” in a business cell phone belonging to the former celebrity chef. “Hitler, swastikas, National Socialism, pictures, texts also on other devices, even before 2018.” When asked, E. confirmed that he clearly considered him a Nazi – and dangerous: “If there is no action now, then it is negligent homicide”, so his urgent warning.
When exactly Kai E.’s inner change took place remains unclear. In the beginning he was even at his side as his roommate, “was constantly on site in his villa in Wandlitz, at demos, gave him the feeling: I’ve fought for him for so long, I sometimes need a vacation.” He was finally able to follow him on the run from the German prosecution via Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria to Turkey, where Hildmann went into hiding in several villas in the village of Kayaköy near Bodrum.
E. emphasizes that she is not a Nazi himself and that she has secretly prevented Hildmann’s contacts with right-wing extremists. For example, when “really, really dangerous people” appeared, representatives of the neo-Nazi party “Der III. Weg” reported and tried to ally themselves with Hildmann. Even then, he reported radicals to the German authorities – without success. There were some of them. “There was a guy who no longer has control over himself” who said “the Antifa has destroyed his life, he is killing everyone, so I immediately reported it to the police, who said they would look at them, it never came.” what back. “
“He is highly manipulative and self-indulgent”
The arrest warrant led Hildmann to become radicalized and began to act openly anti-Semitic. What direct danger does Hildmann pose? “I can understand the question well, it is absolutely unpredictable when it escalates, but I got to know it as a loud, threatening, but small sausage,” says Kai E. “He threatened a lot but never did anything, built himself up in front of people and said: I’ll break you up, but all he can do is scream. ” Hildmann’s followers are “an absolutely incalculable source of dangers.” See these people as absolutely dangerous. “Although their number is overestimated, after all, he himself bought most of them” for a few euros “.
How sick does he think Attila Hildmann is? “I’m not a doctor, to be able to say, is he mentally ill?” said Kai E. “My personal perception is that he is highly narcissistic and manipulative, totally in love with himself. But most of his success story and the supposed drive behind why he is waging this fight is a lie. He’s a tearful kid, a ridiculous guy , pathetic. ” A lot of bitterness and disappointment can still be felt in the statements made by Kai E. Were there any good moments when he really liked Attila Hildmann? That was a long time ago. “There were moments when I felt compassionate when I was pretty open-minded and thought it might be a good one that was just radicalized.”
One of the most exciting questions in the Hildmann complex was always how the apparently successful businessman, vegan hero and cookbook author could give up his entire career and become a seducer. A representation that Kai E. strongly contradicts. “It was all based on fake,” he says. Hildmann was “heavily in debt” before Corona, “with six-figure tax debts”, as he claims to have found out. “He already had nothing more to lose, he’s one of the biggest failures.”
Kai E. describes himself as a conspiracy theorist
Kai E. clearly criticizes the public dealings with Hildmann and his radicalization. “Everything we did in response to him, including the media that took him for walks in the woods, that was all wrong.” Whereby it is not clear to what extent his own media-effective revelations about Hildmann could differ from it.
The question arises as to where this Kai E. actually stands, who at the beginning did not go to Hildmann’s environment without a coincidence. “I see myself as a conspiracy theorist,” he says, and he believes that “this pandemic is not how it is portrayed.” But he could not go into it further, that would lead too far, “would have to go into the development of society in the last decades or even centuries.” Which is maybe better. In any case, he is someone “who not only sees black and white”, but also “sees the shades of gray”.
Hildmann has now reported on new channels, threatens, provides ultimatums. “We have a lot up our sleeve and we won’t let the man get away with it.” More people have been smuggled into Hildmann’s environment – “the good thing is, he doesn’t know who”. More revelations are likely to follow in the coming weeks, and some of Hildmann’s comrades-in-arms will tremble. Finally, it must be suspected that Hildmann had received information about his imminent arrest that few people in the judiciary could have known about. Even now this story has a downright Shakespearean dimension, which could go down in history as one of the great narratives of disappointment and betrayal.
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