'Ultimate Fighting' for geeks

Having been on the net for over ten years I witnessed the glorious anarchy of the early(ish) days. I know some people cringe at the raw emotion and crude and unformed opinion and emotion that was vomited into the public domain in those days but I thought it was all quite liberating, enlightening and energising. It was a bit like 'Ultimate Fighting' for geeks. It wasn't pretty but it is was "honest" dirty fighting for space for individual ideas and voice. I felt that despite the spitting, eye gouging and scratching the truth would usually out. The vanquished would ultimately implode into a cloud of spittle and vitriol. I believe it was a cathartic expurgation from the dark recesses of the universal mind. A necessary prerequisite of civilised and open dialogue.

Predictably, but somewhat belatedly, we have been seeing the Establishment backlash against such
wanton free thought. Whether it be the Conroy model - cloaked and couched in terms of faux moral
outrage, or, the the Rupert model grounded in capitalist and commercial imperatives, the slow strangulation of unconstrained expression and free speech is upon us.

The Conroy model is Neo-Left, that is to say it poses as political correctness but in reality it is a slightly spun and gilded version of Far Right and is intended to control the terms of reference for public debate and imagination.

From my perspective, there is no "Left" left in Western politics. Even the G/greens are rooted in, and inclined toward, conservatism in the political sense. They may even be the last of the real conservatives as everyone else seems to be a capitalism inspired radical extremist. Not that I care about "Left" politics really, I think the Churchill(?) quote that "If you’re not a liberal when you’re in your twenties you haven’t got a heart; if you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 40 you haven’t got a brain." has some merit but that's not my point here.

I vacated the Indymedia space after the implosion of Melbourne Indymedia. I had watched uneasily as (dis)organisational inertia allowed a psy-op posing as headcases easily brought it all undone. I naively thought that I could seamlessly move onto the bare and broad canvas of mainstream media. It worked for a while. Subverting the dominant paradigm was a piece of cake. As Fairfax were proactive in the gatekeeping role and strictly controlled participation, News Ltd was the logical main target given its relatively open format and 'nose-ring' demographic.

As the GFC ground on the war of attrition between the main players, Fairfax and News Ltd, regarding the relationship of immediacy and accessibility with credibility hit the wall of financial constraint. When the main media outlets called a truce News Ltd realised that they could regain control of information.

It was something of a "Eureka!" moment for them I believe. News Ltd now had a mechanism and justification to filter out "undesirable" content. No longer did they publish all and virtually any comments, ASAP, they could pick and choose when and if they published comments. Suddenly the tenor of comments reverted to News Ltd (printed) type.

On-line, a diversity of opinions soon disappeared and we were confronted with the generic shrill, breathless, hysterical, inarticulate and ignorant hyperbole we are familiar with from News Ltd's printed pages. The fix was in.

Most will have noted that reader's comments on Rupert's general news items are restricted to mundane, mind numbing issues that excite cerebrally challenged types while reader commentary on critical political issues is ad-hoc, greatly restricted or eliminated altogether.

The glaring exception to this bias is editorial resources allocated to politically neutral bloggers like Andrew Bolt who gives balanced and fair opinions on issues such as climate change. It is entirely understandable that News Ltd would allocate scarce resources to policing the wingnuts who frequent Blot's impartial lair.

Do you ever get the feeling that Rupert is dangling tantalising tidbits designed to inflame your passions? Inflammatory articles that fire you up but then the readership's commentary and responses are inordinately slow to be published. Are you being manipulated and pounded with a calculating tenderiser? Gee, who would be cynical enough to suggest that you're being softened up for a cent per page view so that Rupert can buy his next hard hitting Fox journalist like Sarah Palin or his next Fox editorial assault on the US senate to fund an attack on Iraq...or Afghanistan... or Iran...or freedom to criticise Rupert on the net?

Of course Ruperts tells us that commercial imperatives are driving changes to News Ltd's web presence and he's correct. Commercial imperatives are driving on-line content as much as they are driving Fox News editorial opinion. Let's face it, News Ltd is a commercial entity with a commercial agenda. The only people who don't get that are the gullible dolts who eagerly consume its propaganda. We enjoyed a brief window with free reign to subvert their disinformation stream. Now it's all but gone.

So here I am. I consider myself politically engaged but "out there". My vision is beyond anything this one dimensional political construct can encompass or even assuage. I think it's time Indymedia once again stepped out of the shadows and put the blow torch to the belly of the beast. We've been out into the big bad world and now the bastards are pushing back.

I know the challenges for Indymedia, both internally and externally, are huge. In Web 1.0 a lot of us enthusiastically charged in and slaughtered everything that moved. Good spirit but not necessarily all that smart. In Web 2.0 we will need to demonstrate our acquired wisdom and wits. As the avenues of discourse ebb and flow, open and close, Indymedia has another opportunity to apply strategic leverage on the valves of critical information flow. And just as important as the primary information is the opinion. I cannot fully assess the "fact" until I have feedback from different perspectives.

Like Vikings we pillaged this electronic frontier in the first sortie and disrupted their means of mind control. Now the counter attack has come. Make no mistake, every action we mount to emancipate ourselves from the dishonest narrative and immoral actions of vested interests will be violently and/or deviously resisted.

We don't need to be Berserker or Kamikaze warriors. Tell your true story calmly and as accurately as you can here. It will bring disease to the minds and hearts of these megalomaniacs. With the resources they have at hand, it's a minor miracle that we still even have such opportunity. Use it wisely.