More panic about those batshit insane bloggers from a journalist at The New Republic:
“Moron”; “Wanker” (a favorite blogofascist insult, maybe because of the similarity between the most strident blogging and masturbating); and “Asshole” have been the three most common polemical gambits. I said that the blogosphere had the quality of fascism, which my dictionary defines as “any tendency toward or actual exercise of severe autocratic or dictatorial control.” I am overwhelmed by the intolerance and rage in the blogosphere. This truly is the stuff of thuggery and fascism.
Fascism? Autocracy? In a media format where anybody can say anything about anybody in any language anywhere in the world? How can the democratization of media become fascist?
This is our new trend here in the States. Simply attach the suffix ‘-fascism’ and you can immediately stamp out all argument. Islamofascism, Christofascism and now Blogofascism. Soon we’ll even have Podofascism. Or even Homofascism (can you imagine the boots?).
What I think remains fascinating is that as more and more people become creators and respondents of mass media – not just ‘consumers,’ that the two-way communications channel of journalism is causing all sorts of crazyness.
There’s lots of other dynamics at work here but I just think it is a bit much to characterize the blogosphere as an angry mob.
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