Re: <nettime> How the tea party is rewriting the rule book for political organizing

[carl guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com>]

(Re-posted, rewritten. Thanks, Felix)

True that. But the Tea Party Movement is as old-school as the John  
Birch Society and calling it "open source" is like calling a lynching  
crowdsourced murder.

Mark Meckler builds e-mail lists for marketers and (mostly  
Republican) political candidates. It's arguably a wired business, but  
his throwing around buzzwords like "commons" is like the legendary  
spammers Canter & Siegel justifying themselves because "information  
wants to be free."  But it will help right-libertarian geeks feel  
better about supporting the birthers, born-again virgins and  
Creationists the TPM offers up for national office with depressing  
regularity.

I doubt Meckler's reach for hip cred will spread to other Tea party  
groups and certainly not further up the Tea party chain of command-- 
and there is one. You think guys dressed in Colonial garb paid for  
all those TV attacks ads? This new model party is as authoritarian as  
the GOP with which it shows the most affinity, despite protests to  
the contrary. (And when the money men, such as the billionaire Koch  
brothers, hear the word "commons," they reach for their roll of barb  
wire.) What looks like rank and file initiative is just eagerness to  
follow marching orders that align closely with their own inclinations  
and abilities, at least at ground level. The awesome power of the  
internet is superfluous, and other Tea Party groups are as effective  
in the project of political vandalism without the benefit of "open  
source" organization.

Carl


On 18-sep-2010, at 16:57, Felix Stalder wrote:

>
> Hi Michael,
>
> thanks for forwarding this snippet. It illustrates how important it
> is to keep in mind that 'open source' or 'the commons' are nothing
> inherently progressive, but that such networks can be run on sharing
> not love but hate, extending fear, rather than trust.






#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org