The Right has enthusiastically embraced Internet culture, even if the defenders of that culture are sometimes leery of the Right.[...]
We Can’t Control the Internet AnymoreBut while Pao’s removal serves as the most dramatic example of the trend, it’s hardly the only instance of the Left deciding to turn on the Internet, and the Right deciding to defend it. In the “Left hates Internet freedom” category of stories, the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to crack down on Reason magazine’s comments section.
Rep. Kathleen Clark (D-Massachusetts), in a fit of #Gamergate derangement syndrome, has introduced a bill to spend taxpayer money to turn the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a Twitter banhammer for Left-wing feminist campaigners. Hollywood—arguably the Left’s most treasured constituency—reacted with apoplectic rage at Redditors who exposed the nude photos of Hollywood starlets, almost as if sacred icons had been besmirched. Some even accused those who viewed the photos of virtual rape, which I suppose is bad news not just for Reddit, but for Hustler Magazine and the entire paparazzi.
Speaking of Hollywood, their business arm is none too happy with the Internet, either, since it’s made Swiss cheese of their business model. Politically, it looks like there’s nothing they can do about it, if the massive failure of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is any guide.
Not that they aren’t still trying. In fact, it looks as though intellectual property, formerly a wonkish subject, may lay the groundwork for an oncoming culture war, with Silicon Valley and the Internet on one side, and the Left’s traditional rent-seeking coalitions on the other.
For instance, the hack of Sony revealed that Democratic officials are being systematically paid off to target Google and other sites that undermine Hollywood’s predatory reliance on copyright trolling. Speaking of intellectual property (IP) trolling, at least one former Democratic official seems to think that cracking down on people who abuse patents is “an assault on American workers.”
Swartz, the aforementioned co-founder of Reddit, was hounded into suicide by a prosecutor President Obama himself celebrated for overzealous IP prosecution. If you listen carefully, the fight over this issue sounds remarkably like the shouting over free speech generally, with pro-IP forces accusing Internet users of all manner of degeneracy, while the users shout back that all they’re against is government trying to censor Internet freedom.
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The Left Is Now The ManInstead, now it is the Left that is ossifying. When confronted by social science and investigative journalism that eviscerates the hysteria over “rape culture,” the Left retreats into dogmatism. As IQ denialism increasingly looks, to paraphrase the liberal social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, as credible in social science as young earth creationism is in biology, left-wing sociologists cry “racism” and let slip the dogs of war. Rather than debate critics of their increasing turn toward melodramatic paranoia honestly in open court, now dissent is dealt with via Argumentum Ad Title IX. Indeed, any criticism of a left-wing cause, no matter how silly, is often simply met with shrill assertion that one is “on the wrong side of history.”
However, on the Internet, it is still true that nothing is sacred. In 2008, that was primarily a cudgel against social conservatism. Today, that same cudgel is being turned on social justice. If God is dead on the Internet, then “history” is next on the chopping block. Where anti-sin crusaders were once mocked for criticizing porn, video games, and comic books, now anti-sexism crusaders get the same treatment for doing the same thing. “Fundies” were the Internet’s favorite targets for trolling once upon a time; now it’s the “victim” class.
Will the wheel turn again? Certainly, for there will always be new icons to besiege. But if the “disruptive” ethos that thrives on the Internet shows us anything, it is that where old idols fall, better ones can take their place. Creative destruction is in full scale on every iPhone, computer, and tablet in America. And if I had to bet on who would favor creative destruction over the long run, I know one thing: I wouldn’t choose the Left.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/23/the-left-versus-the-internet/
