NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] The New McCarthyism of Google-Baiting Spreads Its Stain
The New McCarthyism of Google-Baiting Spreads Its Stain
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000750.html
Greetings. It's a truism that history tends to repeat itself.
Sometimes this occurs in unexpected ways, and the rise of what I'd
call anti-Google "New McCarthyism" is an object example of this
particularly disappointing state of affairs.
GOP Senator Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin, reached
the zenith of his career around a half century ago by turning
"red-baiting" -- the use of public accusations of communist
membership, communist influence, or even casual contact with
"communist causes," into a practically religious zeal of character
assassinations.
While many of the individuals that McCarthy accused of communist ties
of some sort -- however tenuous, historical, or innocent in nature --
indeed had such contacts, McCarthy, through his use of virulent
exaggeration and demagoguery, purposely attempted to advance his
agenda by fostering the fear of a vast and deeply dangerous communist
conspiracy that in fact did not exist.
McCarthy's career began to rapidly implode in 1954, with the
relatively new mass medium technology of television playing a vital
role in his downfall. A brilliant and brave commentary by CBS' Edward
R. Murrow in March set the stage, and a later televised congressional
hearing exchange between McCarthy and Army legal counsel Joseph Nye
Welch -- where Welch accused McCarthy of having lost all sense of
decency -- helped to push McCarthy out of the spotlight and into
well-deserved oblivion.
I found myself thinking of McCarthy's rampages -- and fall from
grace -- while considering the dramatic recent escalation of reckless
anti-Google rhetoric being spewed by some parties across a variety of
venues.
The use of Big Lie techniques and "astroturf" funding sources in the
battle against Net Neutrality are now all too traditional, so not
particularly surprising.
But we seem today to have entered a "perfect storm" zone of
exaggeration and hate being used as an anti-Google tactic by
uncompromising pro-Net Neutrality factions -- and some elements of the
"privacy intelligentsia" -- who have now deployed what could be termed
"Google-baiting" techniques in some respects significantly like the
red-baiting of decades ago.
As someone who has been involved in privacy-related causes for many
years, and who is personally a strong believer in Net Neutrality (and
the founder of the Net Neutrality Squad ( http://www.nnsquad.org ),
it's particularly "fascinating" to find myself the target of attacks
by "pro-privacy" and "pro-neutrality" forces who are apparently
unhappy about my unwillingness to "toe the party line" in respect to
their uncompromising "Google is the designated enemy" agendas.
The managing director of Free Press spent considerable verbiage in a
recent essay ( http://bit.ly/aXiZzA [Huffington] ) declaring me a
member of the "new enemy" of Net Neutrality. He condemned my attempts
to find common ground in Net Neutrality debates, while ridiculing my
opinion that the recent Google/Verizon Legislative Framework Proposal,
despite some significant shortcomings, had the very positive effect of
moving a long-stalled policy area forward and was to be congratulated
as a serious, noteworthy effort ( http://bit.ly/bzRyXn [Lauren's Blog] ).
I've addressed this attack in some detail previously, so I won't
dwell on it here ( http://bit.ly/a0gP7B [NNSquad] ).
I'm certainly not the only target of such attacks. Consumer Watchdog,
which has been attempting to create a self-serving mountain over
Google's accidental and harmless collection of Wi-Fi payload data
( http://bit.ly/google-wifi [Lauren's Blog] ), and is continuously
pushing for an impractical and potentially privacy-invasive
government-enforced "do-not-track" list, paid this week to display an
obnoxious, misleading, and disgusting animation in New York City's
Times Square, which seemed to portray Google's CEO Eric Schmidt as a
child molester. Satire is one thing, but character assassination of
the Senator McCarthy variety -- or any other kind -- is something else
entirely. Consumer Watchdog could have spent that money far more
usefully and honestly simply by providing meals for some of NYC's
homeless.
It is indeed sad to see persons and organizations with presumably
laudable motives now resorting to the same sorts of toxic political
tactics that have previously so inflamed mindless passions, and so
decimated rational discourse across the world -- throughout the
centuries in fact.
Not only do these tactics -- by hardening positions and rejecting
reasonable compromises -- stall forward positive motion on a range of
important topics relating to the Internet, but they also serve to
betray our basic humanity in the flame of unrestrained political
opportunism.
Perhaps these factions should be more pitied than censored. But
riding as they are with some of the ghostly sensibilities of Senator
Joe McCarthy and the specter of McCarthyism, they should certainly be
very much ashamed of themselves.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com)
http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance):
http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz