Posted on 11/29/2002 2:28:45 AM PST by Blood of Patriots and Tyrants
Chronicles magazine's December 2002 issue features a piece by Sean Scallon in its Cultural Revolutions section discussing the evolution of Free Republic, billed as "the largest conservative-oriented website in the world." Scallon heralds the closure of cyberspace as a frontier of freedom, citing as his evidence the degeneration of Free Republic into a discussion forum beset by heavy-handed moderators who compulsively censor out any posted material deemed detrimental to the GOP Establishment's reign in conservative circles. Scallon notes that as Free Republic grew in popularity, size, and cost, "it was only natural for...site administrators to want to look good for prospective donors." The question naturally arises: why would conservatives regularly donate to a website with a Stalinesque reputation for sanitizing their members' commentary?...
Many readers of Scallon's piece will be surprised to learn that the operation of the Free Republic website requires an estimated $240,000 in donations annually from readers. The Freepers donate that kind of money because they really are convinced and excited (read: deluded) that they are "piece of the action." They really believe that their online (and off-line) advocacy and organizing efforts are effecting political change. They like the idea that they are "part of the system" and on the side of a winning majority now that the GOP has re-taken the Senate and Bush sits in the Oval Office. To swipe a phrase from Jesse Jackson, it "keeps hope alive." And hope is the archetypal political opiate, rendering populations docile and leaving them unwilling to decisively act to change their circumstances. The Freepers feel as though they're connected and influential, but they don't seem to realize that this is largely an illusion. The GOP's hierarchy already has its marching orders, independent of the input of the GOP grassroots. The GOP's top brass merely pretends that it cares about the "regular folk" at Free Republic. The GOP is always glad to take their money and their votes, though, and is equally happy to use Free Republic as a distribution node for official party "talking points."
Some alert Freepers, however, sense that the GOP they work so hard to support is not very responsive to the conservative agenda. Many Freepers are concerned about the immigration problem in this country, for example, yet the consensus of the average posters is that they have to "wait" and not push the GOP so hard on this issue because they feel constrained by what they call "practical politics." They worry that they will be cast as "too extreme" on certain issues, so they are content to water down their positions so that they can maintain a veneer of relevance and influence—influence that they never had to begin with in the places that matter.
Free Republic's existence is a symbol of the continuing captivity and betrayal of the conservative base of the GOP. The widespread appeasement and accommodation of the GOP's hierarchy by these "conservatives" guarantees there never will be any decisive pro-conservative change within the party, since the party is permanently assured that its conservative base, ever fearful of the bogeyman of a Gore-style presidency, will never abandon it. In a sense, the "mainstream" conservatives are as captive an electorate as the Blacks in the Democratic Party. Just as the Blacks are under-served and taken for granted by the Democrats, so too are the conservatives jilted by the Republicans. True conservatives are kept in the basement, and are not allowed to speak at GOP national conventions anymore. Yet, these sycophantic conservatives shuffle around the plantation of "Massa GOP" hoping a bone will occasionally be thrown their way, looking as broken and pathetic as Pavlov's famed dogs. Cries of "tax cuts" take the place of the ringing of bells for these piddling dogs. The Freepers believe they live in an era of conservative victory, but fail to grasp that the price of that victory was the gradual transmutation of conservatism itself into a variant of the same liberalism that movement had long been fighting. The day enough Freeper types realize this terrible situation, and stage a revolt against their masters, is the day conservatism has a chance again in America.
This tactic of "mainstream conservatism" supposedly "overcoming" its liberal enemy by adopting the ideological attributes of liberalism is not confined merely to internal matters of political strategy. The same attitude, essentially defeatist, emerges in the context of more important issues, including the future demographic composition of the nation itself. For example, one Freeper exclaimed that he had no problem with fifty percent of the population of the United States becoming Latino, if only the Latinos immigrated legally to the United States. In essence, that particular Freeper believes America should handle the current "immivasion" from Mexico by turning the United States into Mexico.
Sadly, that poster is not alone in his willingness to allow the GOP to import a new electorate for itself and new cheap laborers for its corporate constituency—hitting two Mexicans with one taco, so to speak. On the other hand, Free Republic's rabidly pro-Zionist administrators would not take kindly to a poster suggesting that they had no problem with Palestinians becoming fifty percent of the Israeli population (with citizen-status). Indeed, judging from one member's post, Freepers who plan to counter-demonstrate at future anti-war protests intend to wave Israeli flags rather than American. And I'd thought the Freepers were arguing that war against Iraq was in the name of America's interests. Such are the quirks of Free Republic, and the priorities of the "mainstream" conservatism it represents are radically askew.
Scallon is right. Free Republic is a large institution, and as with most organs of the Establishment, it is also ideologically bankrupt. In a sense, there is an element of fraud at work as well, since Free Republic's methodology and approach cannot possibly deliver what it promises: conservative political change. The frontier of freedom in cyberspace isn't yet totally closed, though—Scallon could have listed additional alternative forum websites where paleoconservatives and Constitutionalists can gather and discuss the issues, such as Ether Zone (obviously) and Original Dissent. The Freepers are oblivious to the fact that they are the tail, not the dog. Their Reaganite mantra of sunny optimism they always point toward, and always out of context, functions as an effective tool of political control.
"Published originally at http://www.EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
Propaganda is always boring.
You're right about that. I asked when I called my Senators' & Representative's offices. The answer: "A telephone call or regular letter has a better chance of getting action. We get so many emails...."
Even non-conservatives can benefit from this joint effort of Freepers (and probably do).
Coulter provides them in her criticism of leftist reportage. So do many other non-leftists.
General smears don't cut it anymore. We want hard facts.
We all know very well that John McCain would have trounced Gore handilyWe don't all know this very well. As a matter of fact, I disagree with that assertion quite stridently. McCain would have lost fairly handily.
See post #36.
I agree, but it's a very small drop in a very large ocean. One might liken it to the sound a tiny baby mouse makes when it takes a teeny tinkle into a bail of cotton.
That they are. Friends, the elements that have dominated the Democratic Party are sensing that their formula of anger for redistribution is loosing steam.
Corruption, higher taxes and bigger government has run into a road block that all the socialist Dan Rather's, Barbara Sreisand's and Daschle Gore's finally can't get around.
It sure is cool to see FreeRepublic on their hit list.
It's even cooler to see the strategy they are employing, since they seem to be throwing more gas on the big government fire.
Not but I believe there are people who would rather pull for the terrorists than the Jews. And those people would believe anything as long as it hurts the Jews.
I am old enough to remember a time when there were only 3 networks, radio was for music, 3 hard news magazines, and several light news magazines. All of which leaned to the left.
Even if I wanted to keep current with the world and local news it was filtered through a leftest lens. More importantly, at the time I was not aware of what was NOT being reported.
My views, and the views of the general public were being shaped by these gatekeepers of the news. We only knew what we were told, and unless we were close to the source, assumed it was true.
I doubt anyone on this site today will assume anything that is posted is the absolute truth. This, and this alone, would justify the existence of FreeRepublic.
If you were to draw a line across a page, and label one side EXTREME LEFT and the other side EXTREME RIGHT, and exactly in the middle label CENTER, and then ask every poster on this site to mark on the line where they think they are, you would get marks all across that line with the most somewhere around the center.
One bit of wisdom I have gained in my old age is that elections are won in the center, not on either extreme.
The policticians on both extremes take care to hide their true beliefs (the Democrats have an easier job, since the major media refer to all but the far left as moderate, while most Republicans are always extreme right, but you all know that).
Our goal should not be to sway policticians to move to the right, but to move the general population to the right, and the polictians will follow.
And that to me is what sites like this are doing, one reader at a time...keep up the good work Jim R.
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