Liberal Fascism Stalinism
By Roger beat me to it, but I see that Lee Siegel’s book — which figures to have the intellectual merits of Jonah Goldberg’s but with much less revenue for the publisher — is finally out!
The vindictiveness and disproportionate influence of the blogosphere is a particularly sore subject. Who is it that “rewrote history, made anonymous accusations, hired and elevated hacks and phonies, ruined reputations at will, and airbrushed suddenly unwanted associates out of documents and photographs”? Mr. Siegel’s immediate answer is Stalin. But he alleges that the new power players of the blogosphere have appropriated similar powers.
The thing is, my guess is that he really thinks that making fun of people’s silly arguments on the intarweb is like the Gulag (or Auschwitz), especially if he’s the justified target of derision.
Maslin’s review, meanwhile, is another manifestation of a fairly positive review describing an unreadable book whose arguments are apparently either trite or transparently ridiculous. Maslin does have seem to have some awareness of the amount of projection involved, although she soft-pedals it. Obviously, if you personally use the web to do things like accuse people of being pedophiles with no evidence and use a sockpuppet to reveal yourself as a big fan of yourself you have a strong interest in attributing your actions to some homogeneous “internet culture,” but this really isn’t much of an argument.