Matt Welch has written a farewell lament in Reason on what he describes as the demise of warblogging. He harks back to the explosion of the grassroots media after 9/11 when many Americans found that their assumptions about the Middle East and terrorism were turned upside down. From this development, he defined the warblogger as a writer who transcended old partisan divides due to the defining event of a terrorist threat to the homeland.
“What do warbloggers have in common, that most pundits do not?” I enthused. “I’d say a yen for critical thinking, a sense of humor that actually translates into people laughing out loud, a willingness to engage (and encourage) readers, a hostility to the Culture War and other artifacts of the professionalized left-right split of the 1990s…a readiness to admit error [and] a sense of collegial yet brutal peer review.”
Man, was I wrong.
Now, Welch has acquired a new job on the Los Angeles Times, and argues that the political blogging movement has reinforced partisan politics rather than bridging this supposed gap. Yet, the developments that Welch cites to bolster his thesis are disparate and amenable to alternative interpretation. He argues that the “current-events bloggers” have taken a strident approach to particular issues within the Culture War:
The Culture War, which seemed to take a back seat to the genuine article in those traumatized days of late 2001, has come back with a vengeance, with current-events webloggers taking a central role in the hysterical Red/Blue scrums over Terri Schiavo’s comatose body, Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple, and the pressing national security issue of whether people of the same sex should be able to obtain a marriage certificate.
His other examples are the inability of the blogosphere to create a permanent alternative to the mainstream media, like the Pyjamas website and the use of bloggers to galvanise activist support, especially within the Democratic Party. Welch does also emphasize that weblogs are now far more useful for the dissemination of knowledge and the procurement of differing viewpoints on particular issues. But he still views the development of warblogging as a lost opportunity:
But as I look back at December 2001, and prepare to hang up the blogging fun of Reason’s Hit & Run for the stodgier print pages of the L.A. Times, I can’t shake the feeling of nostalgia for a promising cross-partisan moment that just fizzled away. Americans are always much more interesting than their political parties or ideological labels, and for a few months there it was possible for readers and writers alike to feel the unfamiliar slap of collisions with worlds they’d previously sealed off from themselves. You couldn’t predict what anyone would say, especially yourself.
To which the answer is: if you just look at blogs from the political perspective, it will appear more partisan, as activists have established and learned how to use these tools to their advantage. More importantly, many of those who blog on current events have strong and individual voices ranging over a wide spectrum of subjects. Warblogging did not run into the sands or fade away. After a while, bloggers preferred to jaw-jaw on more than just war.
Great insight. I feel the blogosphere is still evolving and that this site is one of the few that has not allowed the “mainstream” media to set the agenda. The result, all too ofthen is blogs that simply respond to other media from one narrowly defined camp or aother.
“Cross-partisan”, what does that even mean? Not having an opinion? Politics happens because people disagree.
Blogs have realized what the media haven’t: there isn’t any such thing as “non-partisan”. There’s just overt opinion, or unstated assumptions. The latter being less honest.
It seems odd for Mr. Welch to lament creeping “partisanship” in the warblogs when he himself takes a job with one of the USA’s most partisan news papers.
The Milblogs may appear “partisan” to a left wing type since they tend to support their brothers and sisters in arms, excoriate lazy and false MSM reporting and deride 3 years of venom from the Dead Tree media who use Al Quaeda talking points to inform their war coverage.
I don’t Janet Jackson’s nipple caused much of a stir. IMO, one must always make a distinction between the General populace and the media. Media declared hysterias, aren’t.
What Uain said.
When anyone changes sides, they feel a need to justify themselves.
I started blogging a few months ago. Like many others, the events of 9/11 changed my outlook on the world. I was working in New York at the time and lost a friend.
But i didn’t start blogging until the London bombings last July and after discovering blogs such as this one. I was surprised to discover how much greater was the information available to readers of blogs than to readers of newspapers and TV. I guess i woke up to the fact that liberty is not the natural order of man and needs to be defended.
I have been appalled at the recent progress made by the far-right; anti-Semitism is now back in fashion, moral relativism and multiculturalism are de rigeur in schools and the values of religious fundamentalism (misogyny, homophobia and religious intolerance) are accepted and even promoted by public bodies.
With the destruction reaped upon the world by the twin totalitarian forces of fascism and communism, you might have thought that people would fight to the death if they found themselves up against a new totalitarian regime (for example, Islamic fundamentalism). But no.
Mr. Incredible sums it up best,
“No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for… for ten minutes!”
I got into this gig over 5 years ago (kerist, was it that long ago?) because I enjoyed the fun element of crashing into the usual political rightwing/leftwing categories. The remains one of my motivations.
It is not always very easy to keep up one’s motivation, though. I may give this whole thing a break for a while, as is the case with David Carr. The wells of creativity are running a bit dry and other more important things are taking up my time at the moment.
That would be a shame, Johnathan. Your posts are one of the main reasons i come to this site.
pommy, that is very gracious of you, thanks. any hiatus on my part will be temporary, be assured. I am getting married to a stunning Maltese woman, am up to my ears in work and non-work commitments, and need to recharge the batteries.
I have also got a bit depressed at some of the comments on the site from various racist types. I know I should not let this sort of puerile crap get me down, but it does.
You just have to let a story tell you it must be written. I’m in the midst of tech startup, pre-VC times, while chairing two NSS committees and trying to keep bills paid… it ain’t easy. But I still get in the occasional post or story series. No excuses Johnathon 😉
I have just moved the family to Australia and am in the process of setting up my own hedge fund (easier than setting up a blog, strangely enough – the competition isn’t as great), so time definitely not accepted as excuse!
I hear you on the racist comments though. Samizdata has always attracted a much more intellectually rigorous crowd than most blogs but it does seem to pull in some murkier types too.
Good luck with the wedding..
It is difficult for me to find words which express quite how irrelevant to anything JJ’s nipple is.
There are full-blown shooting wars in Iraq and the stan and at home Western, classically liberal values are under constant threat from jihadis, nutters and the left.
And you expect me to give a flying fuck over an ailing popstar getting her tits out? At the Superbowl? I don’t even watch American football. Abetted by Britney Spear’s ex… Sheesh.
Nick, lol — well stated. Americans have a tendancy to claim offense at the slightest moral provocation.
Fact is gang, the proliferation of media online and otherwise has emboldened (and in some cases, forced) media news to polarize their coverage in order to shore up their consumer base. Luke-warm coverage from a truly impartial perspective isn’t sexy enough anymore.
Let’s hope the classically liberal persepctive can battle as well as others in this new media anarchy
Welch is going to work for The Man — said newspaper being, as noted above, one of the most partisan and biased newspapers in the world — and therefore HAS to distance himself somewhat from all those smelly blogs and their pajama-clad proprietors.
And I have to take issue with blogs forcing the mainstream media to “polarize” their coverage and opinion. They’ve only been impartial in their own minds — the rest of us figured them out a long time ago for the grubby liberal shills that they are.
Odd. I can’t recall seeing any overt racism on this blog. The only exception would be in the quotes from papers like, say, the Los Angeles Times. In fact this is one of the few blogs I’ve found that dares to explore the truth about race. But I guess to some people the truth must necessarily be racism if it collides with received wisdom.
Mr Speirs,
If what you’re saying is what I think you’re saying you’d best exit stage left persued by a bear. At best it would apear thast your comment was a complete non-sequiter, at worst an example of the deeply esteemed Eurostatician’s “Racial Realism” rearing it’s ugly head once again. This is a blog for libertarians, not for fascists.
Philip, thanks for something new, for a change.
As you say, Welch argues that the political blogging movement has reinforced partisan politics rather than bridging this supposed gap.
Sadly, he is probably right.
The misfortune is that the more bloggers blog and the more commenters comment in their own ideological niche, the less like they are to examine the other side – whether they are socialists who never got beyond Rawls, or libertarians who consider Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose to be the incarnation of Truth Itself, or gung-ho neocons who believe that the divine mission of the US is to force democracy on the Arab world, or paleocons who have persuaded themselves that the Islamic jihad would evaporate tomorrow if America were no longer at Israel’s beck and call.
It really does require some intellectual courage to walk a mile in the other man’s boots rather than to devote oneself to rehashing the same old ideological boilerplate again and again. Blogging in many ways just adds to self-imposed redundancy and is parasitical on conventional media. Instead of reinforcing our prejudices once a day with ‘The Guardian’ or ‘The Telegraph’, we reinforce them several times over by tuning in to our favourite blogsite and reading all those cross-references to articles in, well, ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Telegraph’. Many bloggers don’t argue – with drooling encouragement from their acolytes, they sadly degenerate into pubertarian name-callers (e.g. Montbiot = Moonbat) rather than admit to themselves that one’s adversary might be an intelligent, truth-seeker from whom one might actually learn something.
That applies right across the political spectrum, of course. Racists bang on about white supremacy, anti-racists bang on about the evils of imperialism, anti-Semites bang on about Jews being the source of all evil, Zionists about the virtues of a (de facto) expansionist ethnostate, etcetera… ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad total forking boredom.
How much more pleasant and comfortable it is to be an opinionated zealot and to groom one’s own prejudices, to seek the mote in another man’s eye rather than the beam in one’s own!
Such is human nature, no doubt – and that’s one thing blogging hasn’t altered.
Nick M beat me to it. My sentiments exactly. In any event, even if one could honestly show marked differences between races, so what? What jot of difference would it make to the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The Founding Fathers certainly did not predicate their liberal model of society on the fact that people were equal in all respects, only that they should be treated equally under the law.
But there have been a whole nest of racist commenters on this site, usually making rude comments about the main contributors here, prattling on and on about how genetics somehow makes our ideas irrelevant (oh really?). We have had a commenter verbally attacked for marrying a non-white. I did not imagine that, I read it and felt almost physically sick.
Anyway, to repeat, I am taking a wee break.
That’s a real pity, Johnathan. Congratulations and best of luck with the wedding, and here’s to your expeditious return to these pages.
Incidentally, I just had a look at the Majority Rights vs Samizdata flame war you mentioned. I’m sure you have many happy years with your beautiful wife to look forward to, despite the fact you may be – how did they put it? – “acting against the interests of your race”. Good god. What a bunch of fucking dolts. And over at their blog, they were bragging about how they scored a famous victory.
“This is a blog for Libertarians, not for fascists”? And where is that stated? Ayn Rand is definitely not a libertarian. And how does looking at the facts about race make one into a fascist? How about a little sequitur yourself, NickM?
Mr Speirs,
You are a rude man. I think Samizdata pretty much says on the tin that it’s a libertarian blog. Your comment about Ayn Rand is farcically irrelevant. I don’t give a monkey’s about the opinions of a dead Russo-American novelist. Neither do I give a damn about you or Eurostat’s crypto-fascist posturing.
Eurostatistician, thank you for your eloquent post.
Ayn Rand is definitely not a libertarian.
It is true that Rand attacked the Libertarian Party in the United States (she disagreed also with anarcho-capitalism), but to say that she was “definitely not a libertarian” is bizarre. The woman has had a huge impact on encouraging libertarian movements: she championed capitalism, private property rights, opposed the military draft, opposed collectivism in all its forms, both of the right wing and leftwing varieties, etc. By any logical, objective (!) standard, she was part of the classical liberal tradition. Yep, there is plenty to disagree with in the Objectivist movement, but on the whole I rate Rand as a key libertarian influence, alongside Rothbard, the Friedmans (father and son), Robert Nozic, Tibor Machan, John Hospers, etc, etc.
Majority Rights welcomes those who wish to put scientific arguments (preferably up to date, cited and linked) against race realism. They don’t ‘ban’ people with bell, book and candle unless they publish libels or are as potty-mouthed as James Waterton in the mistaken belief that it proves their maturity, masculinity or virtue. MR will discuss things with you. Not being in thrall to ‘libertarian’ principles makes it more gentlemanly, level-headed and tolerant, you see.
Be warned that MR also goes in for threads about history and culture: matters somewhat slighted here, since the moderators show no sign of having read much since they left school. But participation is not compulsory.
So if you’d rather test your ideas on the whetstone of disagreement than huddle together for warmth in a world that rejects them… or if you’re merely a little bored with Verity’s 9,377th reason why Cherie Blair is the Devil’s handmaiden… come on over to
http://www.majorityrights.com
and help make it even more lively.
Majority rights. I can’t think of a concept less likely to get a friendly reception on an individualist/libertarian website.
On majority rights, although posted for another reason, this post cites Mr Mill’s views on the topic – I think on balance I’ll stick with him.