One of the major problems for independents is funding, so one of their favorite tactics has become the effective and affordable "guerrilla website."
We asked motomynd to tell us more. [Our questions are set in italics]:
What is a guerrilla website? What, for example, is guerrilla about romneyhood.org/ and democraticunderground.com?
Basically I consider any website with a hidden agenda and secret backers to be guerrilla. The better they are at seeming evenhanded, while effectively pushing their agenda, the more guerrilla they are. The two you mention are marginally guerrilla because even though we don't immediately know who is behind them, it is obvious what they are about.
A better example is the Tea Party. Even today, many people think they are just a small, grassroots organization of people with minimal political background. The public at large is generally oblivious about the history of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers who are reportedly the main Tea Party backers. The Tea Party folks may seem nuts at many levels, but give them credit where due. They shook things up, revealed the Republicans for what they are, and Tea Party-backed candidates won a lot of elections.
There are many other well-organized groups out there with a clear but hidden mission, like the Brookings Institution on the left and the Heritage Foundation on the right. To me they are all "guerrilla" because only people who really dig in and learn about them know their hidden missions.
Have you heard of Canada Free Press? It published an article titled "How to Wage Political Guerrilla Warfare." It doesn't mention websites, but how does it apply to what you're talking about?
Canada Free Press is a conservative Canadian website that pushes a right-wing agenda much as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox News do here. In the piece you mention, author Gerry Nicholls stresses the need to inspire people to react to emotion rather than fact, so yes, that is a classic guerrilla tactic. Nicholls, by the way, is or at least was a Senior Fellow with the Democracy Institute, whose Founding Director, Patrick Basham, was and possibly still is heavily involved with the Cato Institute, which is a Washington, DC-based Libertarian think tank. The use of misleading or noble-sounding names for organizations is another classic guerrilla tactic.
What can you tell us about thelindenrow.blogspot.com/'s role in all this?
The blog describes itself as "Equal Opportunity Criticism and Political Opinion" so I assume it is anything but equal opportunity. Same as I was immediately on guard about a news channel announcing it was "fair and balanced."
Lindenrow reads as if it assumes it has clout in important circles. It may, but I find it almost unreadable, so I can't tell you much about it. It may just be me, but I like to read articles that get to the point quickly. Or at least quickly let me know they have a point they plan to get to.
We believe that newint.org isn't "guerrilla" in the real-world sense you mean; how is it guerrilla in some other sense?
New Internationalist might be viewed as guerrilla by Americans used to mainstream media simply because it is so different. If there is such a thing as somehow combining the goals and ideals of Libertarians, Socialists, and the devoutly religious, New Internationalist does it. If you were to attempt to create an American-based equivalent you would probably need to find a way to bring in the NAACP, The Tea Party, the Mormons, NPR, and Fox, and maybe Apple and Microsoft, all as equal partners. Good luck with that.
What about independentvoting.org, which we believe bills itself as pushing "post-partisan reform"?
The president of this organization is Jacqueline Salit. She is a writer and speaker on the independent movement and she helped run Mike Bloomberg's NYC mayoral campaigns. She was heavily involved with the New Alliance Party, which described itself as pro Socialist, and she was editor of its weekly newspaper. Given that background and that she and many of the "indy" players date back to Ross Perot's shockingly strong 1992 run for president as an independent, this organization would seem to be very serious about promoting independent thinking and voting.
The website front.moveon.org started as an upstart and is now almost forgotten. In what ways, if any, is it still a potent guerrilla force?
Its tagline reads "Democracy in Action" and it raises money for the campaigns of what it calls "progressive" candidates. What it doesn't say, and what many people still don't know, is it was founded mainly in an effort to prevent the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton, and it basically does for liberal candidates what the Tea Party does for conservatives. So yes, it is guerrilla, and it is very effective.
One sort of clearinghouse website is indymedia.org. What could you tell us about it?
This is another one of those situations where it wouldn't seem guerrilla to people in much of the world but would be considered that by people who are used to mainstream American media. As an example, here is an IMC (Independent Media Center) lead paragraph: "Yesterday in Kabul the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan held a protest against the 10th anniversary of occupation of Afghanistan by USA." That probably would seem a shocking sentence to most American readers, but much of what we believe about events depends on how it is presented. IMC definitely brings a different perspective.
Another guerrilla website is freewayblogger.com, which even has a page on conducting guerrilla activities on the radio (freewayblogger.com/funwithhateradio.htm). What should we know about "hate radio"?
"Hate radio" pushes the limits of free speech but most of the time it doesn't have all that much impact because most fans, as the wags say, "are listening for affirmation, not information." The problem is that some listeners take the rhetoric too seriously and don't understand much of it is the media and political equivalent of professional wrestling. Then they get all worked up over some marginally true story, overreact, and go out and attack or kill someone over some pointless argument.
And what about vdare.com?
The Southern Poverty Law Center reportedly considers this site a white nationalist hate group, so I guess this could be called "hate web" instead of "hate radio." Frankly, given its roots, I don't know if its strong anti-immigration message and ultra conservative tone is sincere or if it is some sort of bizarre, over the top, tongue-in-cheek effort. It was founded by Peter Brimelow, a former editor of Forbes and National Review, and his wife, who is active in the website, majored in philosophy and English at Loyola. This is obviously not the usual resume of extremists.
Any questions we haven't asked or any closing comments?
One can go on and on with examples of websites and other "guerrilla" publicity campaigns, but there is no way to list them all. If people are going to be aware of them they need to do a little research. When you hear an "expert" quoted on Fox or NPR, instead of just believing it, do a web search about the expert and his or her organization. When people hear a phrase like "Democracy in Action" or hear of a group called "Blue Ribbon Coalition," the words sound so positive they instinctively want to support them. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and sometimes it takes a couple of minutes online to find out the truth behind the words.
Just a couple of minutes? Are you serious?
Yes, a couple of minutes, and yes, I am serious. Most people waste hundreds of hours every year watching pointless movies and TV shows, and cruising the web for entertainment. Then they decide how to vote based on one televised debate, or on a catchy 30-second soundbite in a political ad. People gripe about the state of affairs in this country, but as long as they put more effort into tracking the latest showbiz scandals than into becoming informed voters, what do they expect?
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Copyright © 2012 by motomynd
Excellent overview of the spectrum of political opinion on the Web.
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