The tyranny of the net - by Richard... Thursday, November 26, 2009

The tyranny of the net - by Richard... Thursday, November 26, 2009

Nick Cohen writes a thought-provoking piece on the role of the internet and freedom of speech in this week's edition of Standpoint magazine. Amongst the passages which stood out was this:

The overwhelming majority of political writers on the internet do not fact-check allies or warn them that they are making a mistake. Indeed, the standard web author rarely sees the need to spell out what his or her side believes in and argue for it in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, they encourage group loyalty and group-think by denouncing opponents. Free access to content makes the building of tribal identification by ritual jeering at opponents the dominant style.

That seems to be a singularly apt analysis of the failure of the British political blogosphere. Rather than developing as a free-ranging forum of ideas, argument and intellectual discourse, it has simply reinforced the inherent tribalism, with dominant players in each tribe awarded with the approbation of their respective claques, with a tight circle of cross-links that create a virtual community just as narrow as the real thing.

Thus, of Guido Fawkes, Cohen writes that he: 

... does not argue for right-wing policies. Like most other conservative bloggers, he takes their inherent merit for granted and devotes his time to disparaging the Left. Instead of conducting a thorough debate on why its government has failed, Left-wing blogs imitate the Right and respond in kind. For neutral readers, it is like watching drunken football fans shouting abuse at each other.

There is a reason why such blogs are so singularly unattractive, and Cohen has just articulated it. Outside their narrow group of tribal supporters, they have no depth of interest and offer nothing of any consequence. Thus does Cohen conclude:

Whether they are communists in China, mullahs in Tehran or censorious libel judges in London, all opponents of freedom of expression must be grateful for the cover such empty-headed determinism provides. They can carry on as before, while their deluded citizens believe that the mere fact that they can blog and tweet is enough to free them from the long, grinding and often dangerous tasks of political reform.

Sadly, the man speaks the truth.

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Sure-footed? - by Richard...

In a week where a goodly portion of the blogosphere has been dominated by the "Climategate" scandal, The Daily Scarygraph offers a leader which tells us: "The Conservatives have shown this week just how sure-footed they have become on green issues."

The stupidity of the Tory position (part of it), which argues for financial incentives for recycling, could be understood by a junior school student – in the days before they taught economics and thus wrecked the subject. Simply put, producer-led (as in waste production) incentives, without there being a matching demand, lead to massive and expensive surpluses (have they learnt nothing from the CAP?).

One of the dirty secrets of the recycling movement – although it has been exposed often enough – is precisely the accumulation of those surpluses, together with the attempts to dump them on third world markets, leading to the most appalling conditions and mass exploitation of the poor.

Now, it would seem, the putative Tory chancellor is displaying his economic "acumen" by proposing to bribe British households (using their own money, of course) with amounts which exceed the annual per capita incomes of many third world workers.

The effect of this will be to generate even more unwanted surpluses, which will doubtless be dumped on yet more third world markets, where conditions continue to deteriorate. And this, theScarygraph believes is "sure-footed"?

More to the point though, when Gerald Warner is writing in his own blog - on the newspaper's own website – of Senator James Inhofe's determination to carry out an investigation of the "Climategate" scandal, the Tories have been totally silent on the issue.

Their opportunity came with Wednesday's PMQs, but Cameron instead, chose to claim that two schools linked to a radical Islamic group had received cash from public funds designed to tackle extremism. That attack, as it turns out, was misplaced, leaving the Boy with egg on his face – and yet again demonstrating the inadequacies of Tory political research.

Even worse, the failure of the Tories to challenge the global warming orthodoxy – when public support is rapidly shifting away from the warmist agenda – demonstrates quite how out of touch Cameron's quasi-tories really are. "Climategate", therefore, could not only bring down the warmists – it could seriously damage the quasi-tories as well.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD