The conceit of our Internet age
What the Internet and these petitions, which I am regularly asked to sign, illustrate is the impotence of easy amateur opinion. I pray that the people who send and sign them realise that they have not so far made a difference to the world we live in.
Aform of Chinese whispers stalks the Internet. So far this one is confined to Facebook. Not being on Facebook myself and fast anticipating the possibility of enlisting on face- lift, I report this second- hand. There are photographs of thousands of orthodox Jews in the streets of New York demonstrating against the present and devastating bombardment of Gaza by the state of Israel.
The photograph seems to demonstrate that even those most dedicated to Judaism are not for the slaughter of Palestinians. The relaying on Facebook is exclusively by people who wish to condemn the unequal conflict between Hamas and Israel.
But the photograph is a lie. The demonstration by orthodox Jews did indeed take place, but not now and not in protest against the present war. These American Jews, the core of them belonging to a Jewish fundamentalist sect called Neturei Karta, were demonstrating back in March against the conscription of religious Jews into the Israeli Army.
These ultra- orthodox or ultra-fundamental Jews believe that the Tora says that there shall be no entry to a promised land which shall be named Israel till God sends his messiah to bring about the next dispensation, the next yug. Obviously, they don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah and denounced and crucified him as a heretic and an imposter. This means that Neturei Karta, of whom there are a few thousand in Israel don’t believe in the state or nation of Israel as it exists today. I presume that they are against making war in the name of such a non- existent state but am sure they don’t support the Palestinians whom they no doubt call Philistines.
The people who have perpetrated the photographic falsehood on Facebook don’t want to face the fact that their particular passed- on post is a lie. It has gone contagious or viral, or whatever being widely- spread is called, and those who are spreading it believe that they are influencing or making a difference to world events.
This conceit of our Internet age is a dangerous delusion. There is no doubt that the expansion of various media and their ability to influence opinion has expanded the accessibility of knowing. I am not concerned here with the access to encyclopaedic information which the Internet provides, but with the transition and growth in my lifetime of the transmission of information that affects pubic, political opinion.
The war in Vietnam in the ’ 60s and ’ 70s was the first instance of the new medium of photographs printed in newspapers or transmitted worldwide on TV shocking and transforming public opinion. Who ( of my non- current generation) can forget the photograph of the girl whose body burns from napalm running down a village street in Vietnam? Who can forget the American soldiers goading on the Vietnamese collaborator as he holds a pistol to the head of a captured Viet Cong suspect with his hands tied behind his back and subsequently shoots his brains out causing him to drop precipitately — dead?
Media pundits contend that these images brought the reality of the Vietnam War to the world and finally influenced the American surrender to the Viet Cong. Maybe! But there is no objective way of measuring the impact of such photographic exposure of atrocity on public opinion or on state policy.
It’s widely believed samizdat publication assisted the demise of the Stalinist Soviet Union through the clandestine circulation of resistive literature. Was it really that or was it that Soviet workers didn’t provide enough wheat to satisfy long queues for bread?
There is also speculation that the Internet has given the population of China whose media only feed them state propaganda a window on the real world. Does it really change the relation between the Chinese population and the governing elite who are handin- glove with China’s burgeoning capitalists with captive and restricted labour forces to command? “Watch this space” is probably the judicious attitude.
The only reluctant admission I make to the power of the media is the intrusion by Star TV into Indian media space. India was very late in the world to introduce national TV and as it was introduced through a Doordarshan monopoly it was a combination of worthy educational bread with worthy socially- instructive circuses, both acting as a burqa for the body of government propaganda that the babu- ruled channel transmitted.
It was the intrusion of satellite TV that gave voice to the Opposition and challenged the monopoly of boring speeches by even more boring Congress ministers. In a technological instant an opposition or challenging, questioning voice came onto the screen. Doordarshan was forced to retreat from its Stalinist stance as decisively as the East German Stasi faced the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. ( God forgive me, I seem to have come out in favour of Rupert Murdoch’s channel! — fd. That’s the least of your sins — Ed.)
What the Internet and Facebook have done is given some unthinking people the ludicrous assurance that signing a petition to save some marine animal will call forth Neptune’s powers. Unfortunately, Neptune is not on Facebook and I can assure other bloggers that Vladimir Putin is not widely influenced by petitions which ask for him to stop arming dissident Russian minorities in Ukraine.
What the Internet and these petitions, which I am regularly asked to sign, illustrate is the impotence of easy amateur opinion. When I get these petitions, I pray that the people who send and sign them realise that they have not so far made a difference to the world we live in. I feel I should recommend to all of them a reading of capital — not the latest imposter’s, but the earlier one by Karl Marx.