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The Self-Beclowning of Free Press

I thought only the Human Rights Commission people were dumb enough to make their lifestyle issue out to be the biggest thing since Selma. But now, Free Press is doing the same thing with Net Neutrality. And I know it says it’s the “blogger” section, but this blogger is Free Press Outreach Coordinator Jordan Berg, not some troublemaker off the virtual street. But he seriously wrote last week:

As we commemorate Dr. King’s legacy – which was created and pushed by youth to inspire future generations to work toward equality – we must remember their message: It is not enough to work for change; we need the means to inspire that change. A generation ago, young people across the country organized to give us a day dedicated to that message. Today our fight for justice and racial equality is also about control of the Internet: Will it belong to us or to the corporations?

It marks Berg and Free Press as unserious even to make the mere juxtaposition of Net Neutrality with the fight against the former Confederacy’s Jim Crow adminstered by 80 years of one-party Democrat rule (which for today’s generations too young to remember, was comparable with South Africa’s Apartheid administered by 50 years of one-party National Party rule). And yet, sadly, right wing groups such as the Gun Owners of America and the Christian Coalition, as well as libertarians like Glenn Reynolds, continue to allow their names to be associated with Save the Internet, a front group of Free Press’s. I hope readers who know or are affliated with Save the Internet coalition members will speak up.

Just as the Jim Crow invocations only hurt the campaign against Proposition 8 in California, I expect minority groups to step up their opposition to the Free Press-Google Net Neutrality as such silly comparisons get out.

This isn’t the only communications embarrassment Free Press is dealing with, even. Apparently the neo-Marxists in that organization don’t like it when they get called out as such. Neo-Marxist is an appropriate term I think because Free Press is Marxist for the American service economy. Traditional Marxism was designed for an industrial economy, so those socialists wanted to control factories. Neo-Marxists just want the media, including the Internet, under their power.

Josh Silver and Craig Aaron of Free press flipped out in response, though. First off the attempt the usual Weimar tactic of the ad hominem, implying that the critic is a dishonest shill who only opposes Free Press for pay, and would otherwise agree. Then they have the audacity to make the extended argument that AT&T setting network policy is just like systematic oppression of people in Red China. Even if that comparison itself weren’t as insulting to the victims of PRC tyranny, does anyone else find it odd that Free Press claims that big government is the only way to save us from enduring something like the huge government in China?

Free Press is just so outside of the mainstream that they’re incapable of making metaphors that don’t make normal people want to laugh in their faces. So let’s laugh in their faces in true Alinsky style, shall we? And make sure to defeat Net Neutrality so we have plenty to laugh about.

COMMENTS

  • tecash

    While What I believe may be wrong, and please let me know if it is so, I am not sure how you can associate those who support a free and equal internet with marxism.

    It is a given fact that there will always be those with a lot of those who do not have a lot. And while this is a part of life and should not be messed with, when it comes to the internet, allowing companies to restrict sites, charge huge fees for being an A list internet site, just goes against every priniciple I feel this country is about. To be quite honest, this site would be one of the first to be slowed down or blocked as it goes against the values of most providers such as ATT, yahoo, etc and since this site could not afford a huge monthly fee to remain listed and accessed at full speed, it would go down.

    The danger of allowing companies to choose who and what is accessible creates a very dangerous climate as it will allow for groups like moveon.org to remain accesible due to the fact they fit the liberal mold of so many of the internet providers while groups like redstate.com and teapartypatriots.com would end up being blocked, barely accesable, or put on such a slow load speed, they would cease to be a voice in the internet community. This is why so many ultra conservative, conservative, and liberaterian groups have come behind those who are fighting to save the freedom of the net.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Having a free market is dangerous, but having the FCC dictate to all is not?

  • Praying

    because it is a product of the free market! Do you really think that the government could have brought this about on their own? Do you really think that the government can manage it better than individual private corporations? Remember, this is the same government that brought you social security and medicare (and brought them to the edge of insolvency), the DMV, and a host of other wasteful, inefficient programs designed by social engineers. Look at the current debate about healthcare – there are a lot of similarities. The answer to the health care “crisis” (if one even exists) is to get the government the heck out of the middle of it, reducing regulations that prevent insurance companies from selling policies across state lines, and allowing free market principles of supply and demand, and competition, to drive down prices and increase efficiency. I had no idea what a good job our state run schools were doing in indoctrinating the poor ignorant masses in this country until I started listening to people like yourself who demonize private corporations and sing praises to more government control! Just because this issue has been given an Orwellian “doublespeak” name like “net neutrality” doesn’t mean it’s a good thing!

  • http://www.heartland.org/ jlakely

    I’m still waiting for these people who support net neutrality to give me some real examples of corporations abusing the public, rather than these hypothetical examples. And they’ve got to do better than a couple of anecdotal stories, like Comcast’s quickly self-corrected bitTorrent throttling (which was hardly a high Internet crime).

    How about, for starters, we see some proof of free market failure before we hand control of the Internet to a bunch of faceless, know-nothing, power-hungry bureaucrats, huh?

  • aesthete

    If you don’t see that as at least a socially democratic proposal, you might be mixing up your ideologies; please start with classical liberalism and negative rights.

  • tecash

    Many of you may beassuming what we want out of this or how we view the government. Most of us, myself included, want a more limited government, not a bigger one. We also recognize the absolute failure of the government to run almost anything. That being said,

    We also understand that in some way, everything in life is governed. You must have laws and enforcement or the abusive in our society will abuse us all. As the internet stands now, anyone can start a page, put it on the web, and be seen by anyone just as easily as the big sites. If your site is taken down you have instruments of appeal or you can just move to another providor. If this changes, we as conservatives and small website owners will pay the price.

    Lets look at the three big internet providors, Yahoo, AT&T, Comcast. All three support, and have supported agendas contrary to the conservative movement, but up until this point have had no way to block sites that share the conservative values. If they are given free run, they will put these pages on very slow speed, charge a huge and inaffordable monthly fee, or just block it. Now who sees this site, very few if any.

    No one is saying the government should own the net and run it into the ground, but what we are saying is that corps can have it, but they must be governed and have laws they must abide by in order to keep the net flowing with free trade and different views. We do not want to allow corps to be able to set their own rules as those rules can be changed to suit an agenda or be altered at any time when it suits them. If they are not governed, only the right will loose and all of us will be stuck viewing pelosi pages and moveon.org as these are the only types of sites that fit the beliefs of the major providors of internet service.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Yahoo is a big Internet provider?

    What are you talking about?

    It’s like you’re a reverse moby pretending to be a terribly bad supporter of Net Neutrality in order to embarrass the cause further.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    If the government has anything to do with it that will mean one thing, and one thing only, CENSORSHIP. You can bet that someway or the other, whether it is anti-porn, or anti-terror, or political correctness, or campaign reform, there will be some sort of excuse to trample some people’s free speech rights

    Leave them the hell out of it!