At first glance, it would seem that the antisemites and Israel-derangers have cobbled together a victory. In a gradual battle of attrition over the past few years at Daily Kos, they have managed - through Markos' and Blades' ineffective and biased moderating, and their own unceasing use of zombies and sock puppets - to mainstream Israel derangement, and further the tolerance of antisemitic dog whistles there. More importantly they have driven off a very large number of Jewish (and other) posters who have either quietly or not so quietly stopped coming by, thus making that site even more aligned with their ideology, and less likely to push back.
But it has been a Pyrrhic victory.
Because as that site has changed to become more dominated by them - and even moreso by the other derangers like the Paulbots and the legions of people who think that Obama is absolutely identical to Bush and that the US is absolutely identical to North Korea - it has necessarily become less mainstream, and less relevant.
Think about the number of politicians and public figures who used to post at Daily Kos - back in the 2004 to 2009 era. Congressmen, Senators, and even ex-Presidents. And the way that back then Markos was on MSNBC, Bill Maher, and Colbert. And even the way that Daily Kos served as a boogey man for right wingers like Bill-O and Beck. All of that has changed. The politicians have noticeably dried up, Markos is out of the media eye, and the right wingers have even stopped noticing. That site is just not the central part of American liberal and/or Democratic politics that it was several years ago. Some of that might be related to the lack of a competitive Democratic Presidential primary this year, but I think most of it is not.
So the antisemites and the Israel-derangers, in their victory, have gone from being a minority at a mainstream and politically relevant site to the power brokers at a more fringe and less politically relevant site.
The antisemites and Israel-derangers have succeeded in obtaining a Daily Kos that is more like Mondoweiss in atmosphere and rhetoric, but in the process Daily Kos has also become more like Mondoweiss in relevance. So in a sense they now have themselves two Mondoweisses instead of one. And what was the original Mondoweiss getting them, as far as advancing their agenda in American politics and discourse? Nothing. They probably could have more actual effect on American politics and discourse if they continued to be a vocal minority at a mainstream and politically relevant site. That's why they've won the battle but in doing so may have lost the war.
Get a life, dude. Don't you have anything more productive to occupy yourself with than this silly blog drama?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: I direct the same question to you.
ReplyDeleteDailyKos has never been has influential as it thought it was. The Democratic Party establishment always held it at arms' length. Look at weaselkos's masterpiece, "Crashing the Gate." As soon as he got it published, he scooted up to the table and acted like he was an old-timer. He went from "crashing the gate" to "locking the door behind him." The problem with him is, he just never had the connections to keep up the game. He's living out in Berkeley diddling away on his computer. Meanwhile, the real players are in Manhattan and Washington, meeting for two-martini lunches and making air-kisses at cocktail parties. That's where the connections are made and maintained, and weaselkos has never been willing (or invited) to do that.
ReplyDeleteHis most influential platform has now been handed over to extremists, racists, anti-semites, ignorant dumbfucks, and their inbred offspring (like our colon-polyp anonymous), which only serves to further marginalize weaselkos's crapass blog. He asked for it, he got it. Remind me to drop some spare change in his cup next time I pass by him outside the Rexall pharmacy.
Many political sites eventually reach a crossroads, particularly when their party is in government. They face the choice of continuing to agitate from the outside and never being happy or working within the system to effect change. I believe in the latter approach. Daily Kos, as a whole, has chosen to take the former approach. That is what is causing it to march down the path of irrelevancy. One can criticize the performance of the Democratic Party and President Obama, and, make no mistake, there are significant shortcomings, but that is not, as you point out, what happens at DKos.
ReplyDeleteI guess, on a meta note, we should try and stop discussing DKos and instead focus on our home here and the one we will create shortly. All of us, right now, are refugees from Daily Kos, and that will impact us going forward, but now we are on to creating something new and better. That is where our focus should be.
@Ryan: I don't want to discuss DKos excessively, but as far as Jewish American and Progressive issues go, it is a significant development that DKos has gone down the path it has.
ReplyDelete@Paul: spot on.
It is a significant development, and a damn shame, as DKos once held such potential. I know that the Jewish refugees from DKos are not the first (we have been preceded by African American posters -- to say nothing of how male-dominated DKos is these days, a real problem for something purporting to be a Democratic blog) and I know we will not be the last. However, now that we're gone we should focus on building our own things, rather than tearing down others. As the GOP is so fond of saying, let the market work, as if it continues down that path it will fail in the marketplace of ideas and that will cause it to fail in the market. I've seen other places get bogged down in DKos meta. I just don't want us to do so.
ReplyDeleteI have been saying this for awhile. I think that the site will become more marginalized and they will repudiate themselves ever more over time.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit like the Palestinian action to ban any meetings that might further normalization that I diaried here:
http://oldschooltwentysix.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-will-try-to-thwart-any-palestinian.html
In reality, it's just a few people with loud voices, that make it seem like they are the many. That does not mean there has been fair treatment, however. but I think people can get too obsessed over Daily Kos.
So long as they can share the hate among themselves, they can do less harm elsewhere.
If you really want to fight back, supply sympathetic bloggers and journalists with info and perhaps they will run with the story to a wider audience.
If you are a Democrat, Daily Kos is not a boon to election, so far as I am concerned, but may grow to be toxic.
Hey folks, let's get off the DKos kick, and write our own stuff here. I think we all have some good things to say. I agree with Reuven 1000% when he says that.
ReplyDeleteI changed the heading of the site to Culture Politics and life in Zionist culture. Let's explore that from our perspective.
Thanks,
vb1
I also agree with Paul 100%.
ReplyDeleteThere's validity to agitating from the outside, but weaselkos's crapass website has gone way beyond that. They aren't agitating from the outside, they are agitating from a million light years beyond the outside. They are irrelevant. And any mainstream Democrats and Americans that stumble into that site by accident will be repulsed by the vitriol and bigotry that is spewed there daily.
ReplyDelete@oldschool: That was a fascinating article. I especially noticed this:
ReplyDeleteA vote was expected for a joint parliament to offer itself as a "third government" for the two peoples
Since this is what those protestors disrupted, it looks like extremists are even turning their back on the One State outcome. Even that is not extreme enough for the activists now.
And count on the Mondoweenies to jump on that bandwagon....
ReplyDeleteEven my uncle stopped getting bent about the Big Orange - and if he's not bent about it then it's not threatening to them anymore.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm really looking forward to what this place can become instead.
@fizziks -- I think we know why they don't like this. It would mean something that isn't Palestine, and that's what they want. They want the destruction of Israel and its replacement with one state, an Arab state. This project would result in a state that was not that. We cannot underestimate how much antisemitism drives these people.
ReplyDelete@Mortifyd -- Welcome! We look forward to having you here.
@Mortifyd: Welcome! Let's hope your uncle baramoeter is accurate.
ReplyDelete@Reuven: I'm still surprised that they are so quickly turning their back on the One State. It is certainly the BDS party line, after all. I wonder if even the One State is just a front to appeal to Western Liberals.
Hey speaking of useful idiots... I resolved to stop clicking over to DKos so I didn't read that link about T^2 not being successful in marketing his book. What was the upshot of that? Publishers turned him down and that was it?
ReplyDeleteI can't stand that whole, "Look at me! I'm a good shtetl Jew! Please like me! Pretty, pretty please!" shtick that he has going on. Has he learned nothing from history?
ReplyDeleteApparently not... no biggie though. Honestly, he and JVP are increasingly irrelevant to the discussion. The Arabs/Palestinians don't want him around (look at the Angry Arab blog) any more than possible, he just has to do his duty as a "Good Jew" and honestly who on our side wants someone who does nothing but villanizes other Jews and Israel.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that, many of his concerns are (at least in my opinion) valid. I mean the bus incident does bother me (heck it even bothers PM Netanyahu), His support for the tent protests was good and though he takes more of "One State" view than I am comfortable with, I don't generally argue with his substance.
What gets me about him is his complete blindness to abuses by the other side (which do factor into Israeli responses), his use of misleading or hyperbolic titles just to get readership and his lack of standing up to anti-Semites and other droolers that show up.
The fact that he is a self aggrandizing twit is just annoying more than anything else. But really, in the end "meh......"
Well, he succeeded marvelously in one area. He turned me from someone who was going to buy his book last year, into someone who wouldn't even take a leak on it if it were on fire at the bus stop across the street today. So, yeah...
ReplyDeleteIt goes both ways I guess, doesn't it?
Maybe the publisher wouldn't take it because he kept changing the title!
ReplyDeletebudum tiss...
And one has to find it interesting that if he was so intent upon publishing his book and the self-aggrandizing that he turned down the offer from 60 Minutes. Something just seems kind of off there. He had no problems with publicity, he continues to do so in friendly areas where people will tap him on the head and tell him, "You're such a good shtetl Jew," but when faced with a more neutral audience he turns down the opportunity. Maybe it's that he's afraid to step away from the echo chamber. Maybe it's something else.
ReplyDeleteIt was certainly going to be one of those hologram things, like remember from back in the 80's? When you tilt the cover one way the title would read one thing, and when you tilt it the other way it read another. That gimmick went out with pet rocks, Ted DiBiase, Bananarama and legwarmers, though...
ReplyDelete;)
What? 60 minutes? Can someone fill me in on what happened?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOk nevermind - I looked it up myself. I guess I missed that one.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe a word of what he is saying. I'm sure that he realized that "I want to embrace the guy who tried to blow up my wife" would not go over with middle America the same way it goes over in the echo chamber. So he would face the dilemma of alienating the echo chamber or alienating book buyers. And there are no title changes allowed during a TV interview. Plus he's probably exaggerating how far he got with 60 Minutes, maybe made it as far as some college intern calling him back.
Heh, I think you nailed it fizziks. I once very briefly came into contact with a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger while volunteering for a congressional campaign in North Jersey about a decade ago. I never would have thought to consider the encounter as "One of America's Largest Newspapers Desperately Wants to Talk to Me!" though.
ReplyDeleteAlong with the other stuff too, of course...
See, coming from an academic background I tend to see self-publishing as just being horrifically vain and frankly, something that nobody that has a serious work to publish does. If you have a decent work, you can find someone to publish it. If you're paying to self-publish.... you're putting out propaganda or lousy science or something that's just not very good because everybody else sees it for what it is. Is this academic snobbery? Maybe, but I'm ok with that. The fact that he can't find a publisher speaks volumes.... the fact that he thinks that a massive twitter following should get him a publisher does as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't even really know what "self-publishing" means. Does that mean that the person pays the costs associated with printing books themselves? What does that mean in the era when many people just download e-books? In theory, there should be very little 'publishing' cost there. Why doesn't everyone 'self-publish' in the era of the Kindle? Is it a matter of marketing and exposure? It must be, right?
ReplyDeleteIn physics, we have the arXiv, where people post their papers when submitting them to journals, but some outsiders and crackpots put up their papers there without submitting them to journals or any other form of peer review. I guess the later activity would be the equivalent of 'self-publishing' in my field.
Also when I looked at that stuff I saw T^2 got 54 votes from people saying they'd buy his self-published book at $3 a pop. If all of those 54 people come through, that'll net him a cool $150, enough to take his family out to Olive Garden twice. lol. Unlimited salad and breadsticks, baby!
Self publishing is where you pay a company to print and market your book. It's.... generally frowned on for the reason you've described. Publishers are supposed to be able to weed out the nutballs and people who just aren't very good. Good publishers anyway.... the ones who aren't get notorious on their own. Self-publishing generally means that you weren't good enough for a publisher to decide to pay you for your work.
ReplyDeleteAh, I didn't realize that you pay them to do the marketing too. Must be pretty expensive.
ReplyDelete