Markos posted a very interesting article yesterday. Unlike me, he gets invited to all kinds of conferences and gets to meet all sorts of important people 🙂
Last week, Markos spent “three days at a conference of various leaders of the budding VLWC.” What interested me, were his reflections on the historical differences in coordination between the left and the right, and what he perceives as a similar split emerging between young and old activists within the leftist community today.
The reason the VRWC truly is a conspiracy is that they coordinate behind the scenes BEFORE they write their op-ed pieces, BEFORE they do their mailings, and BEFORE they write on their blogs. Hell, they coordinate before they even launch their blogs.
:::Read More:::
By way of comparison, when I decided to launch this site I didn’t ask Markos for permission, I didn’t call him so we could coordinate our message, and we don’t do that today. He found out about BooTrib only a few days before the rest of you.
That is not how the right operates, as the investigation of GOPUSA/Talon News made clear. Insofar as there is coordination between leftist bloggers, it is mostly open-source and available for all to see. We don’t get a phone call from the left-wing equivalent of Grover Norquist or Tony Blankley telling us to rev up our audiences against the judiciary, or against gay marriage, or whatever the left-wing equivalent would be.
So, while we don’t mirror the right, in some ways the new technology is beginning to bring the two sides into strategic alignment. The old leftist activism was fragmented, with environmentalists gravitating toward the Sierra Club, blacks to the NAACP, women’s rights activists to NARAL, etc. And each of these groups tried to carve out their own little fiefdoms until coordinating and appeasing them all became a task akin to herding cats.
Politicians needed to jump from one group to the next in a ritual Paul Tsongas compared to being a “Pander Bear”. The new leftist activism is very different. Groups like Moveon.org, Dean for America, and the dKos community, are diverse and encompass all these subgroups (although we still need to bring in more minority/inner city people, who lag behind in computer access).
These communities can be mobilized on many topics simultaneously. There is no need to demand orthodoxy, or reach consensus on every issue before a significant subset of a community moves into action.
This allows us to transcend the old politics of single-issue advocacy, and to avoid turf-battles. All that is needed is for the community to remain vibrant and active. And that is the future of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. It’s all out in the open. Each community can have it’s special emphasis, but there is no need to coordinate in secret and behind the scenes.
It seems to me that we have lucked upon a way to fight back against the right, without succumbing to the very tactics we despise.
I think you have struck a chord on the VLWC that will resonate clear, long and loud.
It is best that there is no collusion between party and blogs, and be wholly above board. Vibrancy and unique flavor are what cause me to visit the blogs I habit.
You have a beautiful format here, I love the international tone and obviously, the perspective of opinion here.
Thanks for the props to Welshman, he’s operating a nice pub over at the NET.
Thank you.
I may have to wander over to that pub for a Bass Ale. It is Friday.
New Times, New Ways, New Ideas, create a new “Party”
valid points Boo, thanks
“it is mostly open-source and available for all to see”
therefore it is not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is secret.
It’s nice to see a positive news comment early in the morning. I hope the momentum continues to be ‘vast’ and as you say, not copycat.
it’s not a conspiracy. GOPUSA is a conspiracy.
I love this site it is much nicer than most communities. Plus I actually got a diary on the recommended list the other day ;/
Lucked into it? Yes, that’s probably what’s happened. Now it is up to us to take advantage.
And, as you say, to do so without turning into our own enemies.
is a better word. I think an important aspect is that there are no hidden financial backers behind us. I have to compete on a level playing field, while guy’s like Guckert are secretly subsidized right into the WH.
On the other hand, coordination produces organization, which produces power within a party.
In that regard, I think there’s something to be said for it. (Which is why I support the DNC’s early organization in the four designated states)
I’ve found myself overwhelmed with information lately – yesterday alone I received 7 or 8 action e-mails from various organizations. But communities such as this allow us to share that information and take action in numbers. And we’ll gravitate to the blogs, organizations and outlets that align with our personal values. The difference, from my perspective, (and in line with your example above), is that we don’t have the lockstep component to our approach.
(We were typing simultaneously) Nor do we have the paid shills.
The interconnections are already occuring – not formal – on the right side of your screen on the main page. As you said, There is no need to demand orthodoxy... The cross-connects are beginning to “self-select” into a true distributed network. And I think MovingIdeas is as close to a “think tank” as we have. [Communication].
I do think we need to agree on the basics. Absent from most conversations are clear definitions – statements of principle – about “progressive” issues. A list of issues absent broad consensus is a waste of electrons. ”Labor!”, “jobs!”, meaning we want fairness in the workplace? To enact a living wage? Probably yes. [Consensus].
The devil is indeed in the details. The more well-known groups at that conference probably have at least 50% duplication in their mailing lists. They are all opt-in, and that’s a good thing. But then how to aggregate the data? Combine the resource(s)? [Coordination].
I’m still trying to figure those two questions. Maybe we have a partial answer in the way funds are collected across the blogosphere. Or maybe we should just open a virtual funding system, with the explicit understanding that donations are dedicated to our defined areas/projects of interest. Outside any party structure, with an elected board of directors to allocate resources. A funding “portal”. [Investment].
Our own little C-cubed-I.
slightly wrong. He says, “A new generation of activists seem to be rejecting the myopic single-issue focus of the previous generation” and “At this retreat, it was the younger crowd that gave me hope — a rejection of the ineffective activism of old.
Maybe I’m just sticking up for my generation (b. 1948, here). But it is my recollection that the late 60’s – early 70’s activists were not fragmented in the way he describes. What initially shaped those of us who became lefties, counter-culturalists, hippies, etc. was the Civil Rights Movement. That was at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness during our teen years – the years when our brains were first waking up and we were experiencing the usual adolescent challenging of received wisdom. We began with “racism is wrong.” We soon thereafter had to confront being forced to kill and die in an immoral war (if we were healthy and male) based on lies. Which also had a strong racist component to it.
It was a short trip from questioning racism and war to questioning sexism and then on to homophobia. Since so much of what we grew up with seemed to be based on pathological materialism and greed, “voluntary poverty” seemed the only rational choice. And as the first generation with real access to effective birth control (the pill) and as long as we were rejecting most everything else we had been raised with – sexual liberation together with a rejection of sexism led to a demand for reproductive rights and freedom for women.
In short, (I know, too late) most of us were united on many issues that we would now call progressive or left. I think that it was later, in the 80’s and 90’s, that the fragmentation occurred, with groups becoming obsessed with single issues and more radical – PETA and EDF come to mind.
I think this is typical of the left, united against the right when the right is in control and seems to be taking the world to hell in a handbasket in a multitude of ways, and then fragmenting and forming the typical left-wing circular firing squads when the crisis is less urgent.
We’re back to “hell in a handbasket in a multitude of ways” again, and predictably, coming together again. And our young’uns are rising to the challenge again. As I knew they would. After all, they’re our (my generation’s) kids, and we raised ’em right. 🙂