[News] Iran, Social Media and the Rise of Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/bratich06222009.html

June 22, 2009


Iran, Social Media and the Rise of Genetically Modified Grassroots 
Organizations

The Fog Machine

By JACK Z. BRATICH

Occasionally, an event gushes through media channels, spectacularly 
belying the notion that news outlets have major ideological 
differences.  The current surge is a Green Wave, emanating from 
Iran.  But there is more going on here than a uniform support for the 
anti-Ahmadinejad forces. We are witnessing something older, what 
media scholars have called the "technological sublime".  In this 
quasi-mystical sentiment, each media development brings with it a 
promise for a new age, even revolutionary. The twittering enthusiasm 
over the role of social media in the election protests has invoked 
this archaic link.

Let me say upfront that

1) I'm not interested in supporting Ahmadinejad's regime nor the 
theocracy that would be preserved whether he or Mousavi were elected. 
These internecine battles within a religious state, resulting in a 
palace coup at best, are not my concern.

2) I don't disagree that there are democratic aspirations circulating 
on the streets and in the air from Iran. Any mass mobilization of 
opposition will contain these and a variety of other impulses, 
including patient Shah-era vestiges and neoliberal/traditionalist 
hybrids. The point is to not mythically dissolve these differences 
into a wave.

3) Most importantly, I do believe that networks, technical and 
social, have a role to play in composing and organizing oppositions. 
I fully support a number of domestic cyberactivist projects, so 
there's no use Luddifying me. Rather, the point is to understand the 
contexts and alliances that shape an event. Every network has a 
number of layers: it's time to unpeel one that involves some 
not-so-new patterns.

We can start with a telling anecdote. State Department advisor Jared 
Cohen earlier this week emailed the co-founder of Twitter, requesting 
that they postpone a scheduled maintenance downtime. The reason?  It 
was a critical moment for the demonstrators, and service needed to go 
uninterrupted. Twitter complied. The fact that a US government 
official is able have such pull, while not surprising, tends to get 
lost in a green wave of reports about social media belonging to 
"people power".  Who gets to place these calls and get results?

Cohen's access should be even less surprising, given his role in 
State Department efforts to harness the power of social media. To 
wit, his role as press contact for the Alliance of Youth Movements. 
Launched in late 2008 with a Summit in NYC, the AYM gathered together 
an ensemble of media corporations, Obama consultants, social network 
entrepreneurs, and youth organizations, under the auspices of the 
State Department. Representatives came from Media Old (MTV, NBC, CNN) 
and New (Google and especially Facebook). The AYM produced a Field 
Manual and a series of How-to videos (How to Create a Grassroots 
Movement Using Social-Networking Sites, How to Smart Mob, How to 
Circumvent an Internet Proxy). The goal was to have youth leaders 
from around the world learn, share & discuss how to build powerful 
grassroots movements.

A few months ago, I wrote about this Alliance, calling it a 
"Genetically Modified Grassroots Organization" (GMGO). Neither wholly 
emerging from below (grassroots) nor purely invented by external 
forces (the Astroturfing done by public relations groups), these 
emergent groups are seeded (and their genetic code altered) to 
control the direction of the movement.

Through the How-to videos we are incessantly reminded about the code 
of this genetically modified activism:  Make sure you avoid violent 
extremism. Respect property. Use leaders. Speak forcefully without 
being incendiary. Avoid obscenities and violent imagery. Use as your 
model Cold War Latin American anti-Communism (anti-Castro, -Chavez, -FARC).

And these are purely exports: Apparently the election of Obama means 
not only that social networks are electorally effective, but that 
they no longer need to be used for organizing within the U.S. Now 
it's just time to sit back and click your social media support for 
sanctioned "democracy" movements elsewhere.

And in case we had doubts about whether these protests were 
democratic, thankfully they've been given an official color. Green is 
the shade of this season's infowar-paint.  We don't know if Gene 
Sharp, the Albert Einstein Institute, or the National Endowment for 
Democracy (the folks who influenced other branded youth movements and 
color-coded oppositions such as Serbia's Otpor and the post-Communist 
Oranges of Ukraine) were directly involved in Iran. But Sharp's 
fingerprints (even if only via printed matter) are all over it. In 
any event, US ambitions of destabilizing Iran have been well 
publicized, reported by Seymour Hersh among others.

What would clear proof look like in an infosphere that is cloudy 
(perhaps deliberately so)? There is no direct evidence that the 
Iranian election was stolen either, but that hasn't prevented U.S. 
journalists from operating as though it were so ("faith-based 
reporting" as Dave Lindorff calls it). Wild speculations, repeated 
through media channels, come easily out of what media scholar Jayson 
Harsin names diffuse "rumor bombs." What are the "facts on the 
ground" when social media produce a bottom-up mist?  In these latest 
infowar escapades, we need to revise our concepts: not the fog, but 
the fog-machine of war.

One thing is clear: cyberwar has once again taken front stage. Here 
traditional ambitions meet new technical developments. And there's 
even an "old media" angle here. In November 2008 French authorities 
jailed readers and a suspected author of The Coming Insurrection for 
"associating with a terrorist enterprise".  The Tarnac 9, as they've 
come to be known, were accused of being inspired by the 
manifesto/manual, pseudonymously penned by The Invisible Committee.

The book's recent translation into English (and last week's smart mob 
prank-reading at a New York City Barnes and Noble) might be a portent 
of media-galvanized domestic action. Will Jared Cohen's efforts to 
"counter-radicalize" foreign populations find a domestic twist? How 
do we distinguish among cyber-assisted youth movements? While Gene 
Sharp's books are secreted into populations via well-funded sources 
and considered inspiration for people power, other books are deemed 
terrorist tracts worthy of criminalization. For some youth movements, 
we change our Facebook profile pics; for others, Facebook 'em, Danno!

Immediately, the hackles are raised: "These tracts espouse violence 
while the Sharpies are nonviolent!" But let's not let delude 
ourselves into thinking the State Department has suddenly been 
stricken by pacifism fever. Cyberwar is part of information war 
connected to broader warfare (in which State violence is not very far 
behind). In the big picture, networked "people power" should be 
nonviolent because violence belongs exclusively to the State. 
Nonviolence from below, violence from above. Remember that Otpor 
destabilized from the streets, but NATO bombs rained from the sky. 
Will this Green wave wash over Obama's public reticence, resulting in 
an American thumbs-up to Israel's recurring announcements about 
launching strikes?  Which alliance-cloud is on the horizon: one that 
saturates the soil for the spread of anti-repressive measures 
everywhere or one that unleashes a torrential downpour of condensed violence?

Jack Bratich is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies 
at Rutgers University. He is also a zine librarian at ABC No Rio in 
New York City.  This summer he will be co-teaching a course on Affect 
and Politics at Bluestockings Bookstore through their Popular 
Education program. He can be reached at 
<mailto:jbratich at gmail.com>jbratich at gmail.com

Related Links/Further Reading

GMGOs: Direct(ed) Action and social movement 
networks<http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2009/02/03/gmgos-directed-action-and-social-movement-networks>http<http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2009/02/03/gmgos-directed-action-and-social-movement-networks>://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/

The Youth Movements How-To 
Hub<http://youthmovements.howcast.com/>http://youthmovements.howcast.com/

The Rumor Bomb:
http://flowtv.org/?p=2259

Liberating Lipsticks and Lattes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/




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