historical analogue: reaction of 15th-17th c power to social consequences of printing press

[zazen]

A specific, odious decision was handed down today by five human beings on the SCOTUS.

But they are part of a larger resistance on the part of the centers of 21st century power to the unprecedented emerging capacities for citizens to self-organize and communicate on a global scale.

The emergence of the Internet and its potential to undermine central power structures has often been compared to the 15th century printing press and its long-term political, social, and economic consequences, which were inconceivable at the time. One obviously threatened contemporary power structure are the mainstream media, who are having to adapt or die. One witnesses daily their pathetic attempts to remain relevant with their various "viewer input" segments, where they invite users of Twitter, Facebook, or whatever new tool is available, to communicate comments that the MSM continues to vet and then contextualize as minor input within the context of the anchor's overall authoritative "analysis", a context they desperately want to assert and maintain.

And leaving aside its much broader transformational implications, the Internet, electorally speaking, has proved an increasingly powerful organizing, communicating, and fundraising tool, especially since 2004. In the historic election of 2008, American voters at least believed they were electing a highly progressive candidate for President and supported him through millions of small contributions and aggressive, web-assisted voter mobilization efforts.

Thus, for the monied elite; the oil and natural resource profiteers who desperately want to shift public attention away from peak energy and climate change; the narcissists in the mainstream media; the right-wing establishment that feels control slipping away . . for these 21st century equivalents of the Pope, monarchy and nobility . . . citizen activism on the Internet presents a deep, profound structural threat.

So they try to snuff out "dissent" case by case. Instead of burning heretical writers at the stake, they seek to control the means of producing discourse. . . in true Foucauldian fashion, they limit debate by producing false binaries through a bombardment of "speech" that lulls the public into believing they're making authentic choices. And they produce enough seductive discourse, and provide just enough freedom, that individuals internalize these messages and police themselves. It's much more effective than chasing down obstinate gazetteers and lopping their ears off in the public square.

The SCOTUS decision today was part of a broader, maybe only partially self-conscious counterreaction to the exercise of obstinate, non-colonialized, uncontrollable thought and speech by more and more individuals, into whose hands have been provided 'printing presses' with access to a planetary audience. Our 21st century corporate nobility are reacting not by suppressing our speech directly but by using the threat of implied force (the police power of the government, for after all, if we walk into their corporations and scream our speech at them and destroy their advertising departments, we will be incarcerated) to invade our lives with more and more of their speech, as they attempt to maintain their faltering monopoly.

I draw inspiration from those brave souls from disparate walks of life and backgrounds who risked and sacrificed life and limb to express then-revolutionary ideas like the right to speak to one's own God without an intermediating human power. They fought for centuries to enlist new communication technologies for the interests of the dispossessed. To them, like to us, it must have felt like one isolated battle after another, with no discernable pattern or larger vision, other than the particular political or religious heresy of the day they were professing. But they were part of a sea change in human history. We'll fight some bloody battles too, but I have faith we'll win this war.