Guerilla Blogging

For all of you who might be interested, check out this fascinating study on the progressive blogosphere written by Chris Bowers of MYDD and Matt Stoller of Blogging of the President.

They highlight the fact that local political blogging seems to be one area in which the conservatives are outpacing the progressives — which Bowers further expounded upon just the other day when he learned that an allegedly nonpartisan local Pennsylvania newsblog was actually a GOP front.

The local angle and the GOP front angle are connected. I’m not just being paranoid. There is evidence in plain sight that they have done this — the Thune bloggers are a perfect example — and that they are actively training people to do it:

From May 1999 through August 2003, Krempasky worked for Blackwell as the graduate development director of the Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Virginia–based school for conservative leaders founded by Blackwell in 1979. The institute is the organization that had provided “Gannon” with his sole media credential before he became a White House correspondent. It also now operates “Internet Activist Schools” designed to teach conservatives how to engage in “guerilla Internet activism.”

Indeed, Krempasky could be found teaching this Internet activism course one recent February weekend to about 30 young conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. “He advocated that people write from their experience — and not necessarily as conservatives,” a Democratic consultant who attended the seminar incognito told me. For example, Krempasky told “a conservative firefighter” that he should write about firefighting because that would be of interest to readers. Using that angle, he could build an audience. And if push ever came to shove, he could respond to an online dogfight from the unassailable position of being a firefighter — and not as just another conservative ideologue. Krempasky then offered to help all the attendees set up their own blogs. “We’re definitely in serious trouble,” said the Democratic attendee.

I know that Krempasky is a big hero among some in the lefty blogosphere because of his bipartisan work with the FCC. I’m sure he is a great guy. He even linked positively to me once.

But he was trained by one of the master ratfuckers of all time — Morton Blackwell. “Guerilla internet activism” is high-tech ratfucking. I’m just saying.

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