[Cross-posted at ProgressiveHistorians. Please note that my opinions are mine only, and reflect neither on my site nor on any of the people mentioned in this article.]
In the history of every sociopolitical movement, there comes a seminal moment when the leaders of the movement must decide whether to stay true to their principles or to give in to the easy prerogatives of success.
Typically such a moment takes the shape of a struggle between two great movement leaders, one of whom becomes ostracized as a result. In Athens, where the term "ostracism" was invented to determine who would lead the city-state in war against the invading Persians, Aristides the Just lost to Themistocles and had to leave the city while Themistocles successfully directed the battle. In medieval England, the supporters of aristocratic rule symbolically (and literally) defeated the tyrant King John at Runnymede and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. In the American Revolution, the confrontation between farmer-turned-rebel Daniel Shays and the post-revolutionary federal system represented by Samuel Adams resulted in the increased nationalism of the Constitution. In Soviet Russia, Stalin's exile (and eventual assassination) of Leon Trotsky represented the critical break with the ideals of the Revolution -- a dynamic that was repeated in China later in the century with Mao's imprisonment of Liu Shaoqi.
The impact of these confrontations cannot be underestimated. The defeats of John and Aristides ushered in new eras of prosperity and reform in their respective countries, while the elimination of Trotsky and Liu signaled the end of fealty to the ideals of the revolutions they represented. The defeat and exile of Shays presaged the victory of his demand for a more nationalized system of American governance.
So when we who observe the political blogosphere with an eye to history notice the same sort of confrontation brewing between two of the movement's leading lights, we ought to stand up and say something, because the moment is likely very, very important. In fact, such a moment has already arrived and passed, its significance overlooked in the rush of political news. Allow me to take my eye off the electoral ball for a moment and analyze the impact Armando/Big Tent Democrat's recent banning has on he state of the political blogosphere.
But before we get to Armando, let's look at someone who made exactly the same argument I'm about to make -- over two years ago. In an eerily prescient op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Billmon, one of the original front-pagers at Daily Kos, argued that Big Blogging had sold out to the corporate media:
Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.
In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers — those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy — is gaining larger audiences and greater influence. But the passion and energy that made blogging such a potent alternative to the corporate-owned media are in danger of being lost, or driven back to the outer fringes of the Internet. ...
To be sure, there are still plenty of bloggers out there putting the 1st Amendment through its paces, their only compensation the satisfaction of speaking the truth to power. But it’s going to become more difficult for those voices to reach a broad audience. If the mainstream media are true to past form, they will treat the A-list blogs — commercialized, domesticated — as if they are the entire blogosphere, while studiously ignoring the more eccentric, subversive currents swirling deeper down. Not the most glorious ending for a would-be revolution, but also not a surprising one. Bloggers aren’t the first, and won’t be the last, rebellious critics to try to storm the castle, only to be invited to come inside and make themselves at home.
At the time, Markos' response to the post seemed sufficient:
I don't think Daily Kos represents the ideal of blogging. I think bloggers with 100 daily visitors are the essence of the blogosphere -- and those guys, collectively, reach a lot more than Daily Kos does. While 100 daily visitors may seem shrimpy, it's pretty darn impressive to build an audience that size. When I hit that milestone, I remember thinking, "Damn, I couldn't even fit that many people in my house!" Now it's seen as a sign of failure, and that's just bullshit.
I'm willing to bet that there are far more blogs getting 100 visitors a day today than there were 2 years ago when I hit that milestone. To me, that's what's important, not that some people have commercialized their blogs.
But wasn't it telling even at the time that Markos only highlighted the response pieces of Kevin Drum, Chris Bowers, and Digby, commercialized bloggers all (and voices who agreed with him all)?
Since that time, the situation Billmon described in his article has gotten worse. Where once there were few in the blogosphere who attacked the legitimacy of Daily Kos, now there are many. Some are merely jealous of Markos' success; but there are others who see a growing problem with the movement he has led for the past five years. Powerful voices have been banned from the site in recent months, people like Armando and Pyrrho, and others have been warned for "infractions" which usually amount to disrespecting the site or its proprietor. If this is not "selling out" a movement, I'm not sure what is.
Markos’ banning of Armando last month was, in my view, the critical break with the "Let a Hundred Bloggers Bloom" model of blogging that had predominated since the beginning of the movement. It was the historical equivalent of Stalin’s exiling of Trotsky from Russia. Marisacat and her circle have routinely viewed Armando as sitting at the epicenter of the nefarious corruption of the Big Boyz of Blogging, his abusive behavior to other posters held up as evidence of a double standard of behavior for those who were "in" with the BBB and those who were "out." Such analyses miss some essential differences between Armando and the other members of the BBB. While Armando was in fact abusive to other posters when he considered their arguments intellectually dishonest, he was also a powerful and influential voice for equality. To Armando, the only thing that mattered was whether he thought your argument was valid; he didn’t care whether you were Meteor Blades or some newbie who just signed up yesterday, you were dealt with based only on your ideas. This stance resulted in Armando’s often finding himself in the uncomfortable position of supporting someone he barely knew over his friends in the BBB – friends who, like DHinMI and Plutonium Page, later turned on him and called for his ouster.
Armando was also unique among the BBB in his willingness to befriend a wide variety of unique characters, people who he defended for their incisive minds when others wanted them ignored or banned. Maryscott O’Connor, Pyrrho, BooMan, Galiel, Miss Devore – all at one time or another found solace in Armando’s comment threads. This celebration of oddballs and counter-blog-culture individuals was something absolutely unique to Armando among the BBB; with his fall from grace, no such creative minds have gotten anywhere near the inner circle of the BBB. The result is a shocking Stepfordization of the elite left blogosphere, with few dissenting or creative opinions expressed on any but the smaller blogs.
Various people have argued that Markos crashed the gate and then locked it up again. I’m not convinced that’s true – it’s still possible for individuals who blog hard and politick harder to achieve a marked influence in electoral politics. The problem is that this situation in itself is antithetical to what the Internet politics movement was supposed to be in the first place. Blogging wasn’t intended as a way for political ladder-climbers like Markos, Matt Stoller, and the rest to claw their way into the DC elite; it was supposed to be a way for every American to have a greater voice in their national governance. Howard Dean spoke for every American when he vowed to "take our party back, and then take our country back;" today, those few who entered the political elite have come to resemble it so much that they are as far from the public they hope to represent as the DLC once was.
Viewed in this fashion, the goal should not have been to crash the gate at all; it should have been to move the center of political power from inside the gate to outside it. The problem wasn’t who was in the DC elite, but that there was a DC elite at all – the whole people, from the mechanic down the street to the executive in his swanky office, should have a real say in their governance beyond just their vote. That goal has emphatically not been achieved through the political blogosphere, and I now believe it never will be. The BBB have no interest in eschewing meritocracy in order to preserve true equality in the blogosphere for all Americans who choose to participate. For them, as for the Orwellian porkers in Animal Farm, some are truly more equal than others.
All political movements are at risk of foundering when their leaders are invited into the elite circle, or when they lose track of the bigger issues (the disenfranchisement of Middle America) in favor of the more superficial ones (Iraq, impeachment). This one, however, never had a chance. Built of a spontaneous thirst for individualized political ownership, Internet blogging has become, finally and inexorably, just another flavor of corporatized media. The only difference is that those in power now are still new enough to have some memory of where they came from, and are therefore more responsive to the rest of us than were the dried-up people they replaced. That’s a good thing, but it’s far from the sweeping political revolution many of us envisioned during the Dean campaign. In the end, all that’s left of that vision are Armando's electronic record and Billmon’s Cassandra-like lament.
*Please note that my comparison of Markos with Stalin is a historical comparison of their roles in their respective political movements vis-à-vis Armando and Trotsky, not a comparison of their actions or political philosophies. I’m not accusing Markos of totalitarian governa nce or of murdering twenty-two million people, so please don’t go there.