Summation of the Revolutionary Blogosphere in 2006 & Thoughts for 2007

This is a graphical model of the structure of the blogosphere, taken as a whole, as of July 2005.

My last few posts, interrupted by the recent outrages of the Sean Bell case, were a bit of self-reflection on the status of All Out for the Fight. As in, All Out has made a great deal of progress in its 4-month existence, and now has the material resources to go further.

While editing and operating All Out has been (and continue to be) a fulfilling endeavor as an activist and revolutionary, there is the need to fight the temptation to turn one's own online solo-project into the be-all to end-all of revolutionary activity. Even online activity, once understood as the domain of anti-social individualists, is now a form of social practice. As such, taking part in, summing up and understanding this social practice as social practice is one of those places that correct ideas come from.

So as the year closes, here is a summation of the revolutionary current on the web.

The Millieu: The Winter of Discontent and the Changing Same

In assessments of the United States in 2006, a consensus of thought has been that two trends emerged -- one social, and one political:

1. Social: Web 2.0, "the social web" became a force to be reconned with. This was the year that greater availability and price cuts in hardware -- broadband, wireless, multimedia-enabled and otherwise -- into the hands of a broad swath of people in the U.S.; meanwhile, an influx of speculative capital funded the online software that vastly multiplied applications for this hardware, and gave it a social function -- i.e., YouTube, MySpace, various blogging technologies, etc.
2. Political: The popular patience with Republican one-party government that was both overreaching and negligent finally broke. Republicans were punished almost absolutely within the so-called "blue states" that voted for Gore in 2000, losing Representatives, Senators, and governors' seats. More mixed results came in states that voted for Bush in 2000, though the Democrats came out ahead nationally.

The two trends converged this year in one highly symbolic moment, that may be summed up in one word: macaca. With a single word of racist invective aimed at a South Asian staffer, George Allen -- a man who prior to the 2006 fiasco was discussed as a serious Presidential contender in 2008 -- became the butt of one long internet meme and a has-been.

As always, however, the more things change, the more they stay the same. However much the liberal blogosphere became a factor in the election, they remained liberals: indecisive and vascillating elements that presented no vision beyond a call to "restrain" the Bush administration through calls for "bipartisanship" -- that is to say, a better managed killing machine in Iraq, better "negotiation" of women's rights, and the prostitution of the working class as simply elements that need to be bought off through a minimum wage increase.

And however much blogging and the web was envisioned as a liberating project (to the point that "YOU" are now the man of the year), truth be told, the year saw the further consolidation of the web into the clutches of multinational capital with acquisition after acquisition and the new wealth generated mostly going toward funding the same old venture capital firms for reinvestment in profit-driven ventures.

Send in the Radical Bloggers!

In an environment where the tepid liberals of MoveOn/Daily Kos are actually red-baited, and filthy-rich former pornographers are condemned for unleashing "Digital Maoism" several bloggers (some of them actual digital Maoists!) worked to fill the gap in 2006.

In terms of their place on the internet, radical blogs have mostly been scrappy contenders: self-financed, having little or no ad revenue, often using free or low-cost hosting. As such, they have become true successors of the underground press and zines of ysteryear; if the new wave of blog-based media corporations such as Gawker Media, Pajamas Media, and GothamistLLC represent the new incarnation of the Hearst and Murdoch presses, then radical blogs occupy the space of the Underground Press Syndicate or Factsheet Five-affiliates.

Ideologically, the radical blogosphere tends to go in three distinct directions: Marxist-Leninist/Maoist, Trotskyist, and anarchist. If comment sections are any indication, then there is something of an ideological echo chamber effect going on, with a few crossovers by persons of competing ideological leanings going on. Unity does occur from time to time, most often in blogs oriented around people of color and/or women, but also when big stories of concern to the left break out (i.e., the assassination of Brad Will).

What could be said about all radical blogs is that, like many radical projects, they begin with a great push and then mellow out. Post counts for the months following a new radical blog's launch go down, as blogging begins to compete with work, education, and organizing demands that have a "real world" reward.

Pessimistic as this assessment seems, I am actually quite optimistic on the prospects of radical blogging taking off. Blogging is enabling a host of persons of radical politics, who have the drive to publish to get a leg up and get an audience. I'd say a fair number of radical bloggers have their head together in terms of a vision of a better world, and are sharing that vision with a substantial audience; all that is lacking is time and a bit of knowledge -- and these gaps are addressable.

Rectifying and Deepening Our Work

I have had a running conversation with Burningman (of Red Flags) and others this year, about what is needed to take blogs of revolutionary politics -- what I call the "NetRevs", what Leftspot has called the "M-L Blogosphere", and others have various names for -- to a higher level.

Kicking around some ideas, we've both agreed that what there is a lack of a revolutionary equivalent to what the liberal "netroots" have in the form of DailyKos. We do not have a broad based central hub that serves as a point-of-departure to the multitude of revolutionary blogs on the web. To use a potentially New York chauvinist metaphor: we've got a lot of subway stops on the net, with no equivalent to a Grand Central Station.

This is due to a number of factors. In the realm of ideology, we revolutionary bloggers are still somewhat bound to the bourgeois individualist roots of the net. Few radical blogs are group efforts; most are moved by a single individual who has all editorial control, in concert with whoever the active readership.

Materially, there are problems with the technology itself. While it is possible to do a group blog, there is an atomization process inherent in blogging technology: choosing one blogging platform means neglecting another, one photo management site over another, one RSS reader over another means bloggers each have their own idiosyncratic method for blogging. And so on.

Ideas for Projects in 2007

There are a number of ideas that I'm variously developing, discussing with others, or have been kicking about, to push revolutionary blogs toward that next step. In no particular order:

• Skillshare: I've written here and to others some various how-to's and advice on how to get blogs "out there" more. Some sort of guide to blogging for radicals would probably be useful in getting greater numbers of bloggers to the sphere.
• Networking: Networks of blogs, where members display badges, link to one another, and pool resources and information have accomplished wonders for the liberal and conservative political forces, as well as for NGO's and single-issue groups. Isn't it time that radicals of like-tendency began to do the same?
• Hub Building: As I mentioned earlier, we have yet to have a sort of Grand Central Station for reaching to all (or most) blogs, beyond obligatory brief blogrolls that, while useful, tend to be an afterthought for most blogs. Just as history teaches that, in organization, broad fronts are assembled around hard cores, it is my belief that the radical blogosphere will need its own hard core. The shape and contours of that are up for debate, but I am presently exploring options.

With contradictions intensifying in Iraq, a number of former dictators ready to flop, and the presidential election season awaiting, who knows what tomorrow's stories will be? Frankly, no one. But it will be organized and vigilant media that will ensure that the radical and liberating thought spreads. The year 2006 on the web proved that a single spark (or macaca) may start a prairie fire. Perhaps in 2007, it is time for radicals to hunker down and see what is possible when we roll up our sleeves and start sowing seeds into the renewed plains.

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