In praise of the Jewish blogosphere
Richard Silverstein, from Tikun Olam, has a great piece in today’s Haaretz about the Jewish blogosphere and its role in presenting dissenting views in the Jewish community.
In the age before blogs, Jewish leaders were like political bosses. They ruled their roosts, and anyone who questioned them was easily frozen out of communal discourse. Their politics were conservative and generally supportive of the Israeli right. For its part, the Jewish media was a corporate entity that largely expressed the views of such leaders. The few dissenting individuals and organizations made barely a ripple in the communal pond.
Blogs have changed that.
Read the full article here.
I love how Silverstein credit blogs almost solely in terms of Anglo-blogs standing up to the right-wing on Israel. And his crediting blogs as the main resistance to the Lebanon invasion is downright absurd. A lot of the mainstream media came out against that. Too bad they usually didn’t against the Iraq War as early…
Anyway, his piece was self-important, smug, self-congratulatory, and portrayed those who disagree with him as generally racist Kahanist types, completely oppressive thug assholes.
Have you read the comments thread in some of his archives? Quite a few of his commentors are generally racist Kahanist types, completely oppressive thug assholes.
I think what he leaves out of his piece is that the far right has also found a megaphone through their own blogs, so between communal mouthpieces and them, the left is speaking truth to power for sure, but in a very noisy auditorium.
DK: You didn’t read what I wrote very carefully. I credited blogs & Haaretz who stood against the war, not to mention international opinion which became sour pretty fast & had an impact.
On a more thorough read of the article, Silvertein addresses the right wing blog growth more than I thought. But still, I think the point isn’t made that left-wing perspectives are still in the minority between institutional publications and the independent rags of the right wing.