Huge article on the Netroots
..in The New Republic, which has often been a target of netroots ire. I have a lot of issues with the article, though I appreciate that it takes the netroots seriously as a powerful political movement.
Where I take issue the most is that this article asserts that the left is attempting a wholesale emulation of the conservative movement that began with Goldwater in the 1960's. Although the netroots wishes to achieve the same political success that the conservative movement has achieved (in some areas), I think it strives to do so via very different methods. My understanding is that the conservative movement is built in a top-down, hierarchical fashion, while the netroots is trying to use technology to facilitate a more bottom-up organizational structure.
As an example of this organizational structure is the website DailyKos, one of the most well-trafficked political websites in the lefty blogosphere. A vast majority of the content is not created by Markos Moulitsas, the site's proprietor, but by diarists who sign up and post on whatever topics they wish (I've even done so myself a few times). (The most prominent sites on the right-wing side do not have this bottom-up organizational structure) Yes, the netroots do tend to rally around certain topics and battles, often because a small group of prominent liberal bloggers champions those causes. But oftentimes issues bubble up from below.
I'm sure someone from the netroots will publish a more detailed critique of this article sometime soon.
UPDATE: Matt Stoller doesn't like the article:
Where I take issue the most is that this article asserts that the left is attempting a wholesale emulation of the conservative movement that began with Goldwater in the 1960's. Although the netroots wishes to achieve the same political success that the conservative movement has achieved (in some areas), I think it strives to do so via very different methods. My understanding is that the conservative movement is built in a top-down, hierarchical fashion, while the netroots is trying to use technology to facilitate a more bottom-up organizational structure.
As an example of this organizational structure is the website DailyKos, one of the most well-trafficked political websites in the lefty blogosphere. A vast majority of the content is not created by Markos Moulitsas, the site's proprietor, but by diarists who sign up and post on whatever topics they wish (I've even done so myself a few times). (The most prominent sites on the right-wing side do not have this bottom-up organizational structure) Yes, the netroots do tend to rally around certain topics and battles, often because a small group of prominent liberal bloggers champions those causes. But oftentimes issues bubble up from below.
I'm sure someone from the netroots will publish a more detailed critique of this article sometime soon.
UPDATE: Matt Stoller doesn't like the article:
Let me clarify a bit, since some of you think that the piece is good. It's not. It's dishonorable and quite silly. Chait called the netroots prone to dishonesty and propagandizing. What he thinks is propagandizing is actually talking about stuff we think is important and want to see happen. If Chait wants to call us dishonest he ought to, oh, point to some systemically dishonest pattern in our work. Which he doesn't do. And that's not ok.
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