Netroots Elitism

Blogging at his richly-deserved new Salon home, Glenn Greenwald accuses the progressive "netroots" of giving Democrats a pass on ending the war:

the Democratic-controlled Congress is clearly not going to attempt to exercise its power to compel the end of this war -- at least not any time soon. And, with some exceptions, there seems to be very few objections over that failure, very little clamoring that they do more. Why is that? What accounts for the seeming willingness -- even among more vocal war opponents and bloggers -- to give Democrats a pass on actually ending the war (as opposed to enacting symbolic, inconsequential resolutions)?

WTF???

Here at Democrats.com, we blog constantly about ending the war by cutting off funding or whatever it takes - including impeachment. I personally organized the first protest against the war outside the U.N. on 9/12/02, and we supported every pre-war and post-war protest ever since. Our latest petition to "end war funding" has over 23,000 signatures, each of which went directly to the signer's Representative and Senators. We repeatedly urged our 300,000 email subscribers to join United For Peace and Justice's March on Washington on January 27 (which few prominent bloggers promoted, and Chris Bowers even declared obsolete), led workshops there on how to lobby Congress to end the war, and several of us personally lobbied Members. Since that March, we have encouraged our readers to participate in the Occupation Project to hold sit-ins at Congressional offices until they end the war.

And we're not alone - we work closely with Progressive Democrats of America, AfterDowningStreet.org, United for Peace and Justice, WorldCantWait.org, CodePink, hundreds of smaller groups including veterans' groups, and of course Cindy Sheehan, whose efforts we have promoted since she took the Veterans for Peace bus to Crawford in August 2005.

To quote Oliver North's attorney during the Iran-Contra hearings: What are we, potted palms?

Why is Glenn Greenwald completely unaware of our tireless activities here at Democrats.com, and those of our allies? Because Greenwald, like many other bloggers and blog reporters, thinks the progressive "netroots" begins and ends with the elite "A-list" blogs: DailyKos, Eschaton, MyDD, FiredogLake, CrooksAndLiars, and the other high-traffic blogs which focus primarily on elections, Congress, and the media - but largely ignore grassroots activism on the issues that progressives care about, most notably Iraq and impeachment. (In fairness to Greenwald, he does cite two "A-list" bloggers who want to cut funding - McJoan and Big Tent Democrat - but these exceptions prove my rule that his "netroots" universe begins and ends with the "A-list" blogs.)

So why do the "A-list" bloggers (with few exceptions) ignore the activist wing of the progressive netroots? Here are various reasons which I believe account for most of the "A-list" bloggers. I'm not singling out Greenwald here, and not all of these apply to him or any other individual blogger. But my conclusions are based on several years of reading the "A-list" blogs each day and watching them repeatedly ignore the activist netroots, which is a source of daily frustration personally.

1. Blog myopia. Some bloggers believe the "netroots" begin and end with the blogs. In fact, progressive activists have been organizing on the internet since long before blogs became popular (c. 2003) and even long before the World Wide Web became popular (c. 1995). The first tools were bulletin boards like AOL, Compuserve, The Well, DemocraticUnderground.com and SmirkingChimp.com. Another early tool was email listservs - Moveon.org began in 1998 and now has 3.2 million subscribers; Working Assets migrated from snail mail to email around that time; Democrats.com began in 2000 and now has 300,000 subscribers; others with big activist lists are TrueMajority.org, DemocracyForAmerica.com, JohnKerry.com, TedKennedy.com, JohnEdwards.com, Kucinich.us, and many others (Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriot Fund, AFL-CIO's Working America, SEIU's Purple Ocean, NOW, NARAL, ACLU, Common Cause, etc. etc.) Why don't the "A-list" bloggers subscribe to these lists? Why don't they ever discuss the actions being organized by these groups? Why don't they ever interview the netroots organizers of these groups?

2. Internet myopia. Some bloggers believe the only important policy issue is the Internet itself. Here's MyDD's Matt Stoller right after the November election:

we have no legislative agenda except for net neutrality

Naturally I blasted Stoller, citing our own reader poll which put restoration of Habeas Corpus at the top of a very long list of progressive legislative priorities. I also challenged MyDD and the other blogs to run their own read polls on issue priorities, but none accepted my challenge.

3. Election myopia. Some bloggers believe politics begins and ends with elections. In recent weeks, Chris Bowers has written extensively about only wanting to support a Presidential candidate who is committed to building a progressive movement, as Howard Dean did in 2004. But what is the issue agenda of that movement? Bowers doesn't say - he just focuses on the mechanics:

The fifty-state strategy and challenging every district, the small donor explosion and the massive revival of volunteer, progressive political activism, the rise of new, independent, progressive media and challenging the corporate noise machine, standing up to Republicans and drawing a clear contrast, the silent revolution and taking ownership over the Democratic Party

The progressive movement that already exists - and I spend my time helping organize - has very specific issue goals, starting with getting out of Iraq, preventing another war in Iran, and impeaching Bush and Cheney. It would be nice if a Presidential campaign could help build this movement, but we learned in 2004 that the campaigns of both Kucinich (my first choice) and Dean (my second choice) were huge mobilizations focused on winning primaries, with "movement-building" a secondary priority.

(Kucinich's campaign gave rise to Progressive Democrats of America, while Dean's campaign fathered DemocracyForAmerica.com, and both do important movement work. But neither Kucinich nor Dean is down in the trenches with those of us who are organizing the millions of Americans who want to get out of Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney.)

The progressive movement that I'm part of could certainly use the help of elected officials and party leaders, and we take whatever help we can get from Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maurice Hinchey, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and a handful of others who respect us enough to work with us.

But we could also use the help of the "A-list" blogs who ignore us. With combined blog readership in the millions, we don't need to rely on politicians or the Democratic Party to build our movement - we can build it ourselves in real time every single day.

4. Academic/professional distance: Some bloggers have academic or professional (e.g. legal) backgrounds which trained them to keep an intellectual "distance" from the issues they were working on. While I respect that training, I believe it is intellectually dishonest for bloggers to urge others to follow their advice - often on penalty of harsh condemnation - without ever "testing" the sagacity of their advice through real-world activism of their own. (Props here to Matt Stoller for outstanding lobbying on Net Neutrality and Chris Bowers for becoming a Democratic Precinct Leader.)

5. High-school cliquishness: The "A-list" bloggers are a pretty tight group and think of each other as their primary peer group, rather than the progressive activists whose readership pays their bills. They also spend most of their time reading each other's posts, so their collective biases go largely unchallenged.

6. Youth: Bloggers under 50 are too young to have experienced the protests and counterculture of the 1960's, when artificial dividing lines of class (including education) were intentionally erased and everyone believed they were equal. This is obviously not the fault of the younger bloggers, but it's an important insight and life experience they are missing.

7. Political Insiderism: Why does Kos rail against impeachment? Not because Bush doesn't deserve it, and not because a majority of Americans don't want it - but because he spends too much time with top Democrats (and their aides) who don't want to go mano-a-mano with Karl Rove because he will stop at nothing to destroy his political enemies (just ask Valerie Plame). Kos should know the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him, even if it costs you some skin and blood. I cite Kos here because his emphatic opposition to impeachment seems to have scared most "A-list" bloggers away from supporting impeachment.

8. Dirty F***ing Hippie Syndrome: Some bloggers look down on activists who lack the more exclusive elements above and express their political convictions by posting on message boards, marching in the streets, and/or going to public events, rather than sharing in the fame and glory of "A-list" blogging.

Taken together, these reasons add up to one simple word: elitism.

It is, of course, appalling that those who want to build a "progressive" movement would themselves suffer from (and engage in) elitism.

Whatever the reasons are, the "A-list" bloggers really need to engage in a bit of self-examination and come to terms with the distance they have created (and become comfortable with) between themselves and the activists they believe they lead.

This distance between blogging and activism is hurting the movement at precisely the moment where we need to gain enough coherence and effectiveness to get the Democratic Party (which we elected) to end the Iraq War, prevent the Iran War, and ultimately impeach Bush and Cheney for their innumerable - and intolerable - High Crimes.