Rheta Dorr, Kerensky watching the funeral of victims of the July Bolshevik risings, summer 1917
Ankle-biters on Twitter ask me why I keep replying to @evgenymorozov's tweets and keep posting comments on his blog when he ignores me, probably because one of his Facebook friendz told him "don't feed the trolls" blah-de-blah.
And the answer is: not because I'm a "troll" ( a notion I generally repudiate as the geek's chief censorship tool, except for some narrow constructions), but more to the point, because I don't let duplicitious stuff like this stand.
A post like this is a typical cunning concoction from Morozov -- he's forced to make this post because a previous blog post of his applauding the uncivil "civil disobedience" of 4chan in support of WikiLeaks was now being displayed as support by Anonops, which is running the DDOS attacks.
On the one hand, he looks as if he is seriously and intellectually and even -- gosh -- morally mulling over the proposition of the DDOS-as-sit-in. But if you dig down deeper into the piece, you see that as he mulls, he sets up markers in fact to preserve the DDOS as a moral act, never really challenging its morality even as he pretends to.
So, I tackle it head on -- you never know when somebody reading in the comments, which you can reach over Morozov's shoulder, might be persuaded:
Your tacitly-supported revolution coming too close for comfort, Evgeny?
It's not just the earlier blog post that needs clarification; if you're sitting on Twitter and eagerly posting the new Anonops Twitter account addresses as fast as they are made when the previous ones are banned, you need to think whether the line between academic study and activism (never well established with you) is in fact being blurred. I think your strategic retweets are part of the intellectual propaganda substrate that anonops can rely on.
There aren't any conditions when the DDOS can be construed as legitimate protest. Any movement that uses violence, even for some "good end" like removing fascism or communism, will itself become like what it seeks to replace. Isn't the critique you "progressives" have about the United States and its hypocrisy about its liberal values? Why can't you extend that sharp analysis to your friends at WikiLeaks and 4chan?
Context can't forgive the DDOS, which removes the right of other people to free speech and free association in the name of a supposed cause for freedom of some other values. The lunch counter protesters paid for their lunch in their quest to an end of discrimination; the 4chan takes lunch away from other people for no higher cause, merely their own screw-you hedonism.
As I've noted, Ethan takes the low road here, refusing, as I've seen him refuse before, to condemn justification of violence in the leftwing blogosphere (like Palestinian apologia), preferring to fudge and deliberate about whether it has some validity for the sake of his own "progressive" politics. He's willing to condemn the DDS on Deanna Zandt's blog (where my comment by these "free Internet" promoters languishes "in moderation") only because he fears it may inspire a worse backlash from the "security state". Is that the only reason for morality the left can ever find?!
You don't mention that problem, however, and prefer to focus on a passing point of Ethan's, that "independent publishers" who randomly suffer DDOS attacks "don't have the same resources" as Mastercard to cope with them, so they are "injust" on as an economic rights problem -- it's as if indeed Ethan thinks he can appeal to some third-world "progressive conscience" in these people to "think about the children".
And here's pretty good proof of my constant critique of you and your confreres, that you work at this topic primarily to set yourself up in power in some kind of Wired State:
"That an entity like Anonymous has a good moral reason to act on something does not mean that they should necessarily act on it. In the end, it all boils down to good judgment – and this is where wise Internet intellectuals should step in and theorize about potential fall-outs, crackdowns and what not,so that any of us can make the right (for us) call on whether to join the DDoS effort. "
You can't see your way clear to condemning the DOS as an abolition of freedom and not a tactic to gain freedom? Why? And you and those other "wise Internet intellectuals" (sigh) are going to "set the tone" for all of us dummies?
Recent Comments