TNR vs Kos continued

Snip...

Unfortunately, he has followed that up with http://www.tnr.com/blog/culture?pid=22271">an even ill'er thought out post, putting his foot in it up to his hip socket. His attempt to enlarge the frame of his argument and isolate the fascist gene that makes the Kossacks and their ilk so dangerous to democracy and discourse is an embarrassing display of smarmy sophistry the likes of which I haven’t seen since Jonah Goldberg last tried to form a serious, non-Captain Kirk thought. Siegel begins by recounting some of the vile insults and suggestions he received after his first post. It’s no fun being at the receiving end of one of these pile-ons. I’ve been the subject of threads on some of the rightwing sites where no aspect of my well-crafted persona went unvilified; it’s true that there are a lot of gnomes lying in the weeds out there spreading fumes. But there’s quite a difference between mouthy malcontents and fascist fodder, a distinction lost on Siegel, who absurdly writes, “Two other traits of fascism are its hatred of the processes of politics, and the knockabout origins of its adherents. Communism was hatched by elites. Fascism was born along the drifting paths of rootless men, often ex-soldiers who had fought in the First World War and been demobilized. They turned European politics into a madhouse of deracinated ambition.”

Now whatever one might say about Daily Kos, MyDD, Atrios, etc., it is absurd to float the charge that they express or harbor "a hatred of the processes of politics." They help raise money for candidates, track polls, sponsor or promote meet-ups, highlight primary fights that might otherwise go unnoticed. They are completely plugged into the process, their championing of Ned Lamont no different than NRO’s cheerleading for Pat Toomey in his challenger run against Arlen Specter. It’s not as if they’re urging blog readers to disrupt campaign stops as a prelude to a beer-hall putsch. In order to make his case that the blogs are breeding a rootless army of deracinated brutes, he delves into Kos’s childhood in El Salvador, making him sound like an aimless drifter looking for a Charlie Manson cult to command and drawing the bizarre conclusion based on a conversation that took place when Kos was nine years old that Kos “loves government” but “hates politics,” which Siegel finds “chilling.” You’ll have to read the full graf for yourself, and guard your head against Siegel’s flailing arms as he tries to make something out of nothing, seeming to criticize Kos for not retroactively supporting the Salvadoran guerrillas that the New Republic didn’t support at the time. I say “seeming,” because Siegel so cavalierly practices psychobiography on the basis of little biography and no psychology that it’s hard to tell what his point is, beyond making a fingerpainting mess. A mess that he blames on the man he’s trying to portray.

“But, then, Zuniga--let's cut the puerile nicknames of ‘DailyKos,’ ‘Atrios,’ ‘Instapundit’ et al., which are one part fantasy of nom de guerres, one part babytalk, and a third thuggish anonymity--believes so deafeningly and inflexibly that it's hard to tell what he believes at all, especially if you try to make out his conviction over the noisy bleating of his followers.”

While Siegel may enjoy repeating his own name like a mantra (“Lee Siegel Lee Siegel Lee Siegel…”), others are less fetishistic about their identities, and there’s no reason to cast sniffy aspersions on pseudonyms and alter egos. They cause so little harm. For decades the distinguished TRB column in The New Republic was anonymous (the longest tenure in the post held by Richard L Strout of the Christian Science Monitor), and if memory serves one of Siegel’s predecessors on the TV beat (Reed Whittemore?) deployed a pseudonym. If I’m wrong about that, I’ll admit my error and make a correction rather than whip up an additional supply of hot air and flying dust. In any event, it’s absurd to posit the publicity-whory Glenn Reynolds and Eschaton’s debonair Duncan Black (whose name is on his blog—some anonymity!) as murky figures of menace. As someone who occasionally contributes to The New Republic, I find this pissing match between the landed gentry and the mongrel hordes most distressing. There’s no reason why all of us can’t get along and join forces to defeat George Allen’s toupee, or at least acknowledge one another’s strengths/weaknesses/annoying habits without dragging the specter of Weimar across the carpet yet again. Perhaps in my dual role as high-priced call boy and nonprofit blogger, I should intercede and delegate myself as peacemaker between the two camps, performing shuttle diplomacy until reconciliation is achieved. Be sort of a goodwill ambassador. Because when you think of goodwill, you can’t help but think of me.

more...

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/06/hard_fascism_so.php

A lot of folks here probably don't really remember this -- since the site has grown nearly exponentially in the past year or so -- but I was one of the dKos front-page contributing editors from January 2004 until December 2004.

snip

It was a fascinating time to write on the front page, due in part to the growth of the site during that time, but mostly because of the 2004 election. And while the latter part of that election -- the Bush-Kerry showdown -- demonstrated how this community to work together toward a common goal, the 2004 primary season served as an example of just how fractured we can be.

Markos supported Howard Dean by early Fall 2003, as did a plurality, if not majority, of Kossacks. But there were vocal Clark and Edwards minority caucuses, a handful of Gephardt and Kucinich supporters, and a surprisingly large number of ABD ("Anyone But Dean," for those who've forgotten) folks. (Not more than one or two Kerry partisans, FWIW.) And man, things got heated early and often. This fraudster/anti-fraudster stuff? Shit, it doesn't have a patch on a good ol' Dean/anti-Dean argument for sheer, untrammeled vitriol. Those were contentious times.