Type No Evil, Read No Evil
This column was written by Matthew Yglesias.
First they came for Joe Lieberman, and I did not speak out — because I was not Joe Lieberman. Then they came for the liberal hawks, and I did not speak out — because I was not a liberal hawk. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.
~ Martin Niemoller, pastor and social activist
In the weeks and months after Sept. 11, the nation was afraid. And confused. We faced a new enemy, an apparently brutal and skillful one, that we little understood. A grateful nation's eyes turned to Christopher Hitchens, whose neologism "Islamofascism" established a key precedent for the age: in this new era one would not be expected to know what one was talking about in order to have strongly held opinions as to what needed to be done.
As Ron Rosenbaum explained in a classic January 2002 New York Observer article, Hitchens was, along with Andrew Sullivan, a George Orwell for our times. Coining the term "Islamofascism" was a "brilliant stroke … devastatingly effective in describing who the terrorists, the al-Qaeda/Taliban nexus, really are."
Yes, yes. Paul Berman did us the further favor, in his book "Terror and Liberalism," of revealing that, despite appearances, not only were Islamic jihadists the same as Nazis, but both were also the same as secular nationalist Baathists. For that matter, despite decades of superficial rivalry, Syrian Baathism was the same as Iraqi Baathism. And, of course, as Hannah Arendt taught us long ago, if something is the same as fascism (as many things are these days) then it's also the same as Communism.
This was all very enlightening, needless to say. But the threats of the past are now obsolete — since the liberation of Iraq, neither Islamofascism nor Baathofascism nor even Naziofascism need trouble us much.
The world, then, has recently been dangerously lacking in "-ofascist" (or perhaps O'Fascist, like in Ireland) threats. Thankfully, New Republic culture critic Lee Siegel has now uncovered the most insidious threat of all: bloggers.
"The blogosphere," he told us last week, "radiates democracy's dream of full participation" but is, in fact, "hard fascism with a Microsoft face." Some thought Siegel was engaging in a little ill-advised overstatement. But no. The bold truth-teller was all too serious, as he revealed in his follow-up post, "The Origins of Blogofascism" — a work of Arendt-ian import, if not quite scale and scope.
As Siegel explained, if bloggers don't like something you write, they may respond with posts — or e-mails — expressing that disagreement stridently, much as Hitler (or, for that matter, the obscure but equally brutal Croatian ustashe) did.
"Two other traits of fascism," Siegel writes, "are its hatred of the process of politics, and the knockabout origins of its adherents." The author puts on his Discerning Reporter hat to reveal that leading progressive blogger Markos Zuniga was, indeed, largely indifferent to politics, when he was 9. As for knockabout origins, suffice it to say that Zuniga used to live in El Salvador and went to law school … but never practiced law.
In short, there's an enemy out there who lurks. A grave and gathering threat to the republic — indeed, to Western Civilization itself. The enemy is not, of course, precisely the same as previous totalitarian foes. While Communism and Nazism posed threats through control of powerful states, the blogofascist menace is, like its Islamofascist counterpart, more of a loose network of highly motivated individuals.
The blogosphere itself is primarily organized around a cell structure, with any given node (or "Web site" to use the Pashto term) linked to a number of other nodes through a so-called "blog roll." The network is, however, capable of reconfiguring itself both through periodic revisions of the roll and through more transient links embedded in individual blog "posts."
The posts themselves are encoded in hypertext markup language, making them difficult to decipher without a Web browser or equivalent tool. Further deepening the dilemma, several of the largest and most sophisticated nodes have multiple authors, sometimes operating under pseudonyms.
The characteristic blogofascist mode of attack is name-calling, with the insults often following previously established conventions. "Wanker" is a particularly common weapon, although "whiny-ass titty baby" ("WATB") is widely considered to be more deadly. The best intelligence available, however, indicates that some blogofascists seek to construct posts of mass destruction (PMD), including invective, sarcastic dismissal, and encouraging readers to send hostile e-mail.
I used to think I was immune to the blogofascist threat. After all, I was one of them. A blogger, that is. Not a fascist. No knockabout origins for me — bachelor's degree from Harvard, mom went to Cornell, the closest I've ever come to El Salvador was an "eco-tour" in Costa Rica, etc. It's all on the up-and-up.
But as is ever the case, the rise of a new totalitarian threat requires moral clarity. It is not enough to not be a blogofascist. This moment, this historical epoch, requires anti-blogofascism. And not a weak and doughfacey anti-blogofascism, either. Rather, a robust anti-blogofascism, one whose core tenets — whatever they are — belong at the very center of contemporary liberalism.
Sadly, too many bloggers who may not be blogofascists themselves have been taken in by a sort of anti-anti-blogofascism. Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, I'm looking at you. Change your ways; fight the rising tide of blogofascism — before it's too late.
Butterflies don't live here, in the blogosphere.
By Matthew Yglesias
Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect, 5 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. All rights reserved