Anonymous activists and K-Pop fans enjoy unexpected allegiance as they join Black Lives Matter protests

'Anonymous stans ALL KPop allies!' popular Twitter account posts

A screengrab from the original threat, posted on YouTube

Online activist group Anonymous and fans of K-Pop have found an unusual allegiance as they both join in protests sweeping the US.

Anonymous became famous in the last decade for its online hacktivism as well as offline protests against everyone from the Church of Scientology to PayPal, but in recent years its media profile has dimmed somewhat. Over the last week or so, however, it has become hugely popular once again, with its posts being shared and viewed millions of times.

That resurgence has been partly because of a new commitment to support the protests against racial inequality and police brutality that have swept the US in the wake of the death of George Floyd. But it seems also to have been boosted by new supporters among fans of Korean pop music, who have boosted Anonymous posts and now seem to be runing affiliated accounts of their own.

The influx of support from K-Pop fans has been noted by one of the group's most high-profile accounts, which gave its backing to the new and unexpected allegiance while expressing some surprise that it had happened.

"Anonymous stans ALL KPop allies!" a tweet from the @YourAnonNews account read. "HACK THE PLANET!"

It also praised K-Pop fans for their online activism, which has included flooding racist hashtags with irrelevant information. "Thanks kpop stans!!!" it wrote, in response to one action.

YourAnonNews had previously expressed bemusement at the vast levels of interest in its recent tweets. It tweeted nonsense while asking people not to share it as an experiment, and those tweets continued to gain massive engagement.

Some accounts that became very popular Anonymous-affililiated accounts even seem to have begun life as K-Pop accounts. One known as AnonNews had some 120,000 followers and had been promoting information about the protests – but its "likes" showed that it had been engaging with posts about Korean pop music long before then.

The account was suspended by Twitter, which told Reuters it had taken the measure because of "spam and coordination with other spammy accounts".

"We have seen a few accounts change their profile names, photos, etc. in an attempt to visibly associate with the group and gain followers," said Twitter spokeswoman Liz Kelley.

The nature of the Anonymous group means that anyone is able to claim affiliation with the group, which is most closely associated with its visual branding of Guy Fawkes masks and hoodies.

K-Pop fans have also been launching online activism projects, of the kind run by Anonymous, of their own. That has included shutting down a police app by posting a flurry of "fancams", or videos of stars, as well as flooding hashtags positioned against the protests with new content that made them unusable.