Robert Sharp

My post earlier today, regarding when to take up an argument, and when to let it go, was really just a preamble to a response to Neil Clark’s article on Comment is Free (via Sunny at LC).

Anyone who deviated from the official party line - as laid down by a self-appointed uber elite of British bloggers - faced a cyberspace lynch mob, more in keeping with Nazi Germany than a country which is supposed to pride itself on its support for free speech.

For the self-appointed uber elite of British political bloggers, the fact that someone, not of their number, and who did defy their three line-whip on the Iraqi interpreters issue - was nominated - and then won, in a free public vote, the title of “Best UK Blog” in the most prestigious prize in blogging, is too much to bear.

In the case of the Iraqi interpreters campaign, “self-appointed” we may be. The very nature of single-issue pressure groups is that they consist of people who stand up for a cause they believe in, filling a void that is not being filled by other organisations or political parties. We have certainly never claimed a democratic mandate, or to speak for anyone other than ourselves. The campaign gains its authority, and support, entirely from the strong arguments we have made in favour of the Iraqi interpreters.

Neil’s post on Friday matters, and is deserving of a response and a criticism, because he misunderstands, or perhaps misrepresents, the nature of the debate. The outcry that followed his “Iraqi Quislings” issue was not some orchestrated, strategic smear. It was not the fact that he had crossed or questioned the party line that raised hackles. Rather, it was the reactionary and ill-considered manner of his objections which provoked a response. Bloggers from the campaign were right to vigorously defend their stance, and should not be criticised for doing so. It is a shame that Neil now chooses to ignore the substantive points in the arguments, and instead retreat to ad hominems that so readily invoke Nazi Germany. It is odd that someone who has just won a best blogger online poll, should immediately resort to such a discredited line of attack. As Sunny says: bizarre.

Update

Unity, another self-appointed uber-liberal uber-blogger, takes a fisk to Neil’s article. Given my comments above and earlier today, I suppose I should say that I do wonder at the efficacy of ‘fisking’. I fear it will simply provoke more of the wrong sort of debate.

Again, I ask: At what point should the arguments-about-the-arguments be abandoned? To resort to ridicule and satire is slightly frustrating, I feel, because at that point the attempt to convince your correspondent blogger (and their own dedicated readers) will fail.

Periodically, a print journalist will write an article decrying blogging and bloggers. They will have probably had an unpleasant experience on Comment is Free and formed the conclusion that the online world is full of vindictive old men. Most of the time, we bloggers put this down to the journalist misunderstanding the medium, or simply having wafer thin skin.

What irks and surprises these writers is, I think, the tenacity of bloggers. Like an old dog, they simply will not let go of that bone. In print, we might see a couple of rounds of testy letter-writing, spread out over a week, or maybe even months in the case of periodicals. Online all this happens immediately, and because of the near-infinite amount of space available to publish comments, the volume of argument rises exponentially. Not only do we have several replies, and several more replies-to-a-replies, but we have replies-to-replies-to-replies as well. “And another thing…”

One of the most frustrating experiences in the world is when someone says to me “let it go.” Admittedly, this usually happens in a pub after a few pints, and I cannot remember what the original point of contention was. Sometimes, however, I am fully aware of what the debate is about. I’m not actually drunk, but my passion for the point at hand might give a different impression. My refusal to let the point lie is because my interlocutor simply has not understood the nature of the debate, or what’s at stake. “Let’s all agree to disagree” says someone. “No,” I reply, “this isn’t a matter of opinion.” When the debate becomes about how important the dabate is, then to abandon the discussion is to admit defeat.

I see this happening online a lot. Recently, Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads has been trying to rebutt allegations and smears that have come his way. The only problem is, his argument lies within some relatvely obscure timestamps and IP logs, which can never have the rhetorical force of an intellectual argument about civil liberties. His posts are therefore thousands of words long, and it is easy to label him obsessive and belligerent.

In Tim’s case, he has the stamina to keep on rebutting-the-rebuttals-of-the-rebuttals. The problem arises when the smears and falsehoods cannot be challenged effectively. This might occur for financial reasons, such as when Craig Murray’s website was taken offline (his hosting company did not have the resources to repel a legal challenge from Alisher Usmanov). It might occur due to the sheer volume of smears, as is the current situation with Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

Or it might occur due to ennui - the slander slips by because the slanderee is to busy or tired to respond. This happened to me recently, when a friend of mine declared that I was arguing “for the sake of it,” when in fact I was sure there was something more tangible at stake. Again, the discussion moved off the substansive points, and onto the nature of the debate itself. Eventually, we had to just “let it go”. Although it was an argument about graphic design, rather than politics, I think the pattern of the exchange, and the unsatisfactory resolution, still fit the unhealthy template of many blog debates.

Justin makes the case for why the arguments should continue, and bloggers should never let go of the bone:

I have a feeling that a lot of bloggers trying to stick it to a future Tory government and their online cheerleaders in a few years time are going to wish they’d paid more attention to what’s going on right now. Sooner or later they’re going to target someone you care about. Real world reputations are at stake and are being damaged. It’s time to get in the ring and go toe to toe.

The NO2ID campaign is calling in the PledgeBank pledges:

The Identity Cards Act 2006 is now law, and - despite growing opposition, significant delays and rising costs - the new Prime Minister shows no sign of calling a halt to the National Identity Scheme. In 2008, the government intends to pilot fingerprinting and to issue the first ‘biometric residence visas’ to non-EU foreign nationals as a precursor to registering British Citizens.

The legal powers to do these all these things will shortly begin to be applied. Now is the time to call in the legal defence fund part of the pledge.

So, that’s £10 from everyone, please. It should add up to about £110,000 in the campaign coffers.

This campaign could be, I think, a landmark for online political campaigning in the UK. We had some success with the letter-writing campaign for “We Can’t Turn Them Away“, but I think the financial clout that a six figure sum could deliver the NO2ID campaign would be a first for online campaigning in Britain. (Not worldwide, of course. The Howard Dean campaign raised loads of cash in 2003, and Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul just raised $4,000,000 in one day).

The worry is that the PledgeBank will not deliver the expected return. Its likely that not all pledgers will cough-up the cash. Whatever percentage fails to do so will be noted by future campaigners. If that is only 1% or so, then that will have a minimal effect. But if the number of dud pledgers turns out to be too high, then future campaigners may begin to make unwelcome economic calculations. If you only expect, say, 50% of pledgers to make good on their promise, then you will actually ask for more money from the outset (in the case of the NO2ID campaign, you would ask for £20 from each of them, instead of just a tenner). In turn, this will reduce the number of people who pledge money in the first place.

In simple business terms, this supply-demand calculation might not be an issue, since one accumulates the same amount of money by the end. But in political terms, it is very much a concern, since the actual number of supporters is as important as the money they raise. So its particularly important the the NO2ID PledgeBank yeilds a high percentage of promised donations. If it does not, then the whole fund-raising model could be undermined.

Can any of the economists in our midst offer a more sophisticated analysis? Indeed, can anyone comment on how successful previous PledgeBank fundraising drives have been?

Overheard:

We apologise.
For the delay of the.
Oh-Eight.
Oh-Nine.
Service to.
London Waterloo.
Due to.
A fatality on the line at.
West Byfleet.

Automatic rail announcements have “fatality on the line” pre-programmed into their system.

While the We Can’t Turn Them Away campaign gathers pace, here’s some news of another campaign - this time regarding freedom of speech. I am very “late to the party” on this one, but as Justin says

This isn’t a race, this about sharing views and showing solidarity.

So, who is Alisher Usmanov? Is he, perhaps, a detained blogger in Egypt? Or an activist in Burma? Nope - he is an Uzbek billionaire who owns part of Arsenal Football Club. When Usmanov sought to increase his stake in the club to 21%, Craig Murray (a former ambassador to Uzbekistan) posted some articles about Usmanov on his website www.craigmurray.co.uk. The businessman threatened to sue Murray if he did not retract his articles. Since Murray believed his allegations to be true, he refused and invited the legal action.

Usmanov responded by threatening legal action against not only Craig Murray, but other blogs which had republished Murray’s articles. Crucially, they also threatened legal action against the web hosting company, FastHosts. The result was that several blogs were temporarily taken offline, and some remain unreachable. Tim Ireland, relentless blog stalwart and one of the victims of the hostile action, has the full timeline.

Tim also cites the ‘cross-spectrum’ outrage at the action of Usmanov and his solicitors, Schillings. Defending freedom of speech tends to unite bloggers like nothing else. As expected, there are plenty of succint quotes out there. Mr Eugenidies says it in his own style:

I don’t give a shit about this character, or Arsenal FC (no offence to any Gooners out there); nor do I share all or even most of Tim Ireland or Craig Murray’s politics. But that’s far from the point. If you can be silenced for calling a businessman a crook, then you can be silenced for calling a politician a crook, too. Then it’s everyone’s problem.

That bloggers should be crusading for free-speech is to be expected. In fact, I would say it is the normal state of things. That a blogger and his web host are being sued is not a unique occurrence. Given that blogging still has a reputation as a fringe pursuit for obsessives and activists, I imagine that news of the legal action is something that the population at large would find unremarkable.

For me, the ‘hook’ is Usmanov’s involvement with Arsenal. I am a fair-weather fan myself, although my family are much more dedicated supporters. They particularly dislike the methods of Roman Abramovich, such as the tapping up of Ashley Cole. The meddling of Vladimir Romanov at Hearts is well documented. Let us hope that the prospect of yet another post-Soviet Croesus ripping the heart out of yet another Premiership Football Club inspires a viable campaign against this podgy, anti-democratic thug.

New developments:

In the latest twist in the case of four-year old Madeline’s disappearance, the McGann’s have appointed a new investigation team to lead the search for their daughter.
“We had doubts from the start about the effectiveness of the Portugese police force” said Gerry McGann, 39, “so we employed a firm of private detectives to work on the case.”
However, Gerry and his wife Kate had become increasingly frustrated with the private eye’s lack of progress.
“Leads were not being followed up fully and quickly, so we have appointed a new team to lead the case.”
On Tuesday, the McGanns announced that the British public had been called in to act as lead detective on the case. “No-one has more knowledge about the complex DNA issues, or the procedural necessities of running a large search and rescue operation” said Kate McGann. “We feel that with the British public in charge, ably assisted by the British news media, we are one step closer to bringing Madeline home.

In all seriousness, I wonder if a form of open source detective work is possible. No, not each member of the public scouring a designated portion of the Algarve looking for Madeline… But given the many cases of missing persons, and the huge amount of ground to cover in any search, on the surface it looks like a classic opportunity for a more collective endeavour. In the age of digital communications - and importantly, digital photography - I wonder if a constructive and co-ordinated effort is possible, and what form it would take?

Elsewhere, in the hunt for missing aviator Steve Fosset, an open source search and rescue team have been (virtually) deployed. Internet users are scouring pictures from Google Earth to determine where Fosset’s aeroplane may have crashed.

This week, there has been a short online discussion about blogging on the (virtual pages) of The Guardian. Michael Billington asserted the need for professional, paper based reviewers, but I think some of his comments betray a patronising tone. He is simply wrong when he claims that

The critic, unlike the blogger, also has a duty to set any play or performance in its historical context.

… since blogs have the same responsibility if they want to be considered relevant (or simply, ‘good’). Billington is taken to task for this misunderstanding in the comments, and also for a misplaced nostalgia when he says:

The blog seems to me have supplanted the kind of prolonged argument about the arts that once took place in the correspondence columns of newspapers. Example: years ago, when I rashly suggested that Shaw was the best dramatist after Shakespeare, a considered, if heated, debate went on for weeks in the paper itself. Now such a suggestion would be a 48-hour wonder on the blog.

But that’s the point, says Ian Shuttleworth in the comments:

Blogs in this respect are filling a gap that has for some time and increasingly been left by editorial neglect in print publications.

Meanwhile, Lyn Gardner is a good deal more positive about the medium of blogging. It was her contribution which drew me to the debate, because last year I remember she used The Guardian’s theatre blog to publish a dissenting review of Katie Mitchell’s Waves, which had been panned by… none other than Michael Billington. Sadly, an online argument about Mitchell’s (admittedly divisve) work never materialised. This was a shame, since this sort of debate, between critics who care, is a feature which Billington himself misses. Blogs can complement theatre criticism, not challenge and marginalise it in the way that TV and film reviews have done.

Other writers also lament the absence of such robust industry. I am reminded of Michael Coveney’s essay in Prospect (November 2005). Here is a telling paragraph:

But the truth is that newspapers increasingly devote largely uncritical coverage to the latest product of the publicity machine … Previews and interviews now take precedence over critical responsibility. But the idea that they do so in order to meet a public demand is, I believe, false. Anyone under the age of 30 who wants to read about pop music, new film and reality television knows where to go. That place is not the broadsheets, but magazines and the internet. So the liberal, professional intelligentsia who read the broadsheets are confronted with coverage they don’t want and comment on “high culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.

The Guardian’s consideration of blogging is welcome, but ultimately, I cannot help but think that these critics are arriving late onto the scene, when they should have been in the vanguard. When Natasha Tripney writes

Bloggers are not constricted by word count or deadlines, and have free reign to write about what they want, when they want

or when Michael Billington types

critics are much more accountable for their opinions… the blog also gives a voice to the hitherto voiceless

we are reading insightless cliché - Many of us have been identifying these features for yonks! To paraphrase Michael Coveney, bloggers are being presented by comment on “blog culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.

Andrew Anthony, having a healthy online debate with Sunny Hundal:

Your post reminds me of Conor Foley’s first posting, insofar as they both seem primarily interested in proving their nuanced credentials

One feature of online discourse is that very little is taken for granted. A blogger (especially one on a highly trafficked site like Comment is Free) has to cater for all persuasions.

In practice, this means you have to add more information than is strictly necessary to advance your message. Either that, or risk getting lost in the minutae of a debate that distracts from the new and interesting point you were trying to make. I don’t think Sunny was trying to prove anything by citing his ‘credentials’. He was merely citing certain previous examples of his writing, in order to head off fairly the obvious counter-arguments.

By contrast, I think print newspaper columnists and authors have a general idea of who their audience might be, and write accordingly. If you can be sure that your readers all share certain values, and accept certain arguments, then you feel confident about jumping into the debate several conceptual steps down the line. This confidence is shattered when you enter a world where responses are immediate and unfiltered by a Letters Editor. Authors are left with the impression that the readers are impolite, uncouth and agressive.

I actually think a great deal of ‘fisking’ is redundant for the same reason. Since the blogger does not share the same world-view as the columnist the target, a line by line rebuttal never seems as effective as a stand-alone composition.

There is a well known phenomena of bloggers suffering ennui with the medium, eighteen months or so after they begin. I am just emerging from just such an affliction now (although since I post at a relatively low frequency I doubt either of my readers would have noticed). I think much of this frustration is a result of never getting to the nub of the argument, never quite managing to debate the subtle point one wishes to make. Instead, the discussion is dominated by the clarification and vocalising of preconceptions and core values.

This worry passes, of course, since the core values are either reinforced or abandoned by the scrutiny. Blogging is a process of clarification as much as anything else.

Online writing has many advantages. It is immediate, and allows space for dissenting opinion where other media fail. It also provides a space to write without compromise. I think most bloggers (and blog commenters) would describe themselves as ‘uncompromising’, but often the rants are gratuitous, and serve no higher purpose other than a catharsis for the writer.

At other times, the shocking imagery is entirely appropriate, as in a post on Friday from Justin at Chicken Yoghurt, on the subject of teen killers and Rhys Jones:

If the author has any sense, he’ll be working on ‘101 Uses For A Dead Kid’ and make a fortune. The first use, I’d humbly suggest, is wedging a dead kid under the leg of a political party to stop it from wobbling, much as you would with a beer mat and a pub table. If that doesn’t work, take the corpse and beat your political opponent with it.
…
For years editors have found that if they suspend a dead child over the news desk, the resulting smell will attract hordes of readers seeking an emotional outpouring by proxy.

It is a sound point, but I doubt it would find its way into a newspaper. The satire is well placed, but it would be deemed too risky, and liable to being misunderstood. Journalists know this quite well, and self-censor as a result. Madeline Bunting also makes an important point in The Guardian today, but her article has a boilerplate feel to it, and lacks the impact of the Chicken Yoghurt piece.

Justin’s post prompted me to add a comment, which I may as well post here too.

It is notable that when an Islamic terrorist atrocity occurs, or a black child is murdered, the chat is all about how their culture is obviously flawed. Members of that ‘community’ must weed out the perpetrators and provide better role models.

Yet when an atrocity occurs within a predominantly white ‘community’, and the liberal left begin blaming the wider culture, the condemnations of wishy-washy self-hating political correctness are not far behind.

As part of the “We can’t turn them away” campaign, Dan Hardie has asked bloggers to post any responses they receive from MPs. Alistair Darling has replied to my letter… but only to say he will be investigating further, and will write again soon. When he does, I shall obviously post his response here.

The drive is an excellent example of Open Source Campaigning. ‘Open Source’ is a phrase taken from computer programming, where a group of programmers can all work on a project together. Tasks are itemised, and any programmer can take on an assignment from the list, complete it, and upload his code to the central source. Eventually a new version of the programme is available for release - usually for free.

The Iraqi asylum campaign fits the defintion for Open Source Campaigning for several reasons. It has a very specific policy objective, which lends itself very well to letter writing campaigns. The “list of tasks” does not even need to be written: Thanks to online tools such as WriteToThem.com and TheyWorkForYou.com we already have an available list of the MPs that need to be contacted. Individual bloggers and concerned citizens know exactly what is required of them, and the “ask” for each individual is actually very small - they just need to write a letter to their MP, and post the response. Those bloggers leading the campaign can take on the baton from there, calling to account any MPs who have given an ambiguous response, and lauding those MPs who have pledged their support to the campaign.

Meanwhile, Journalist Jay Rosen has been exploring the concept of Open Source Journalism. His recent article Blowback: The Journalism That Bloggers Actually Do has that meta-quality that I love. He has written a response to a curmugeonly article from Michael Skube in the LA Times, complaining that bloggers only give “opinion” and never do any fact finding. In response, Rosen lists many examples where bloggers have been fact-finders. Crucially (and here is the lovely ‘meta’ part) most of those examples were sent in by bloggers themselves.

Of course, most campaigns rely on some kind of public interaction to make them effective. I suppose what distinguishes an ‘appeal’ (such as the search for Madeline McGann, or a murder enquiry) is that not everyone can help with an ‘appeal’ as they can with an Open Source campaign. In the case of journalism, not everyone can provide researchers with an interesting story or case study for an article. But they can do a little piece of fact-finding research for an Open Source Article. All that is required is for the participants to care enough about the final outcome.

The next task for the “We Can’t Turn Them Away” campaign will be a honing excercise. Of all the MPs in the House of Commons, it is especially important to get comments and messages of support from those who have army regiments based in their constituency. The hive-mind needs to itemise every regiment who has worked in Basra (and therefore benefited from the local Iraqi workforce in some way), and then identify the relevant MP. For starters, it happens that none-other than Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague is the MP for the huge Catterick Garrison. Armed Forces Bill Committee Member and Home Affairs Committee Member Bob Russell is the MP for Colchester, another big army town. Have they been approached yet?