The Great Digg Conspiracy
A while ago, I read an interesting article by Professor Jonathon Weiler on the Huffington Post that attempted to psychoanalyze the more rabid elements within the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement and its penchant for groupthink. The article contains some insight into American political dynamics, but I suspected hyperbolic elements of a prejudiced nature. The notion that political dexterity is hard wired and associated with specific personality types is highly controversial in the field of the political science and I've yet to see any definitive, empirical evidence to substantiate such theories.
But I'm beginning to think maybe there is a certain degree of validity to these notions, although my observations are admittedly based on anecdotal evidence. Consider for a moment this blog post from AlterNet, which details a nefarious plot to censor "liberal" content into oblivion on the uniquely democratic social site Digg. The entire premise of Digg operates under the same principles as our electrical system, namely one person, one vote. This is perfectly peachy so long as people abide by the site's rules. Not surprisingly, a relatively small group of people have been abusing some of the site's features to promote their political agenda. The kicker lies in the fact that the culprits happen to be members of the far right.
Now this is not to say that there's no monkey business going on across the aisle, so to speak; it's positively ludicrous to assume otherwise. Still, this incident illustrates many of Weiler's key points and ultimately bolsters his hypothesis about so-called "accuracy motivation" in authoritarian personalities. Initially, I was taken aback by the authoritarian label, but now I find it quite fitting. I mean, how else do you describe a group of people hell bent on manipulating a site like Digg for the sole purpose of controlling its essentially user generated content? The hypocrisy of claiming to combat left wing thought control by embarking on a shameful crusade of suppression seems so absurd as to be laughable, but its broader implications are profoundly disturbing. What kind of person would be depraved enough to do something like this in his or her spare time?
The most unsettling aspect of this story is the relentlessness of the guilty parties. I just can't see anyone being driven to these behavioral extremes by harmless boredom or butt hurtness. These people went as far as to remove totally apolitical content that they somehow construed into an affront to their rigid ideologies. The Digg incident hits home with me because I witnessed a similar incident on a forum I frequent. A group of conservative users decided to gang up on one of the site's few liberals in an attempt to have that individual permanently banned. Their target's only crime was harboring political beliefs that they didn't approve of and having the audacity to express them in a topical forum.
I see these and comparable cases of social censorship as contemporary witch trials, but I have yet to see them perpetrated on a large scale by leftist adherents. Until I see some concrete examples, I'm going to have to reluctantly accept the crux of Weiler's argument. Naturally I support the concept of political pluralism and I try to demonstrate my commitment to intellectual diversity as more than an abstract ideal. Consequently, I'm confident that I'll be able to find something definitive to counter Weiler's premise. Maybe I should lurk around Digg for a while…..
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