MCLC: internet dissidents

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: internet dissidents
***********************************************

New book by Emily Parker, former journalist at the Wall Street Journal and
the New York Times, about Internet dissidents in China, Cuba and Russia.
The following review of the book was written by Mario Vargas Llosa, winner
of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Paul

===============================================

Source: The New Republic (1/4/2014):
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116095/internet-dissidents-cuba-china-ru
ssia-profiled-new-book

Anti-Authoritarianism in the Age of the Internet
By Mario Vargas Llosa

Although I am not an enthusiastic user of the Internet, I recognize that
its emergence has notably expanded free expression around the world and
inflicted an almost-mortal blow to the censorship regimes that
authoritarian governments rely upon to control information and thwart
opponents. Emily Parker, a former journalist at the Wall Street Journal
and New York Times, has convinced me of this in her upcoming book that
reviews what the Internet and social media revolutions have meant for
China, Cuba and Russia.

Parker’s book, Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet
Underground, is a rigorously researched and reported account that reads
like a thriller. Parker, who speaks Mandarin and Spanish, knows and has
interviewed the majority of influential bloggers in the countries she
covers. She gracefully navigates the catacombs these bloggers tend to
inhabit, from which they connect with the outside world and from which
they are giving their compatriots—formerly paralyzed by apathy, fear and
pessimism—a renewed hope in progress and democratic change. It’s been a
while since I have read a book that is so entertaining, not to mention one
so encouraging for the culture of liberty.

This isn’t to say that Parker excessively romanticizes all the
protagonists of her book, presenting them as tireless, disinterested
idealists ready to go to jail and give their lives in their struggle
against oppression. None of that. Alongside admirable fighters guided by
conviction and principle, Parker features plenty of opportunists,
adventurists and provocateurs whose loyalties are ambiguous, if they are
not outright government spies. But all of them, by doing what they do and
regardless of their intentions, have released the brakes and loosened the
controls that allowed dictatorships to manipulate information. The gray
monotony of these societies is shaken by the possibility of official
truths being questioned, corrected and replaced by genuine truths. Silence
is being filled by dissident voices and a renovating, hopeful and youthful
air mobilizing segments of society that had appeared petrified by their
previous conformity.

If Parker’s testimony is accurate, and I believe it is, China is the
country, of the three here profiled, where the digital revolution has
produced the biggest changes and seemingly unstoppable momentum. Cuba, for
its part, is the one where the changes have been the least significant and
most vulnerable to reversal. Russia seems to be flailing in a sea of
uncertainty in which anything can happen: a violent lurch towards more
liberty or a retreat, no less jarring or traumatic, towards traditional
authoritarianism.

Among Parker’s heartening takeaways is the fact that the Internet
revolution isn’t just a powerful force to combat dictatorships, but also
gives voice to ordinary citizens in open societies, where the right to
criticism ceases to be the exclusive prerogative of certain institutions
and outlets, but rather extends across all of society, and can now
scrutinize traditional media as well. A certain informational anarchy
flows from all this, along with a framework in which free expression is
constantly refined, debated and ultimately perfected.

There is true genius to be found online, on our social networks, and this
talent tends to be as extravagant and idiosyncratic as it is with great
artists—brimming with mania, style and ambition. One of the merits of
Parker’s work is to have captured these characters not just glued to their
keyboards, shooting off their notes across the ether to their myriad
friends and followers, but also in their intimate reality, in the cafes or
pubs where they seek refuge, in their families, in the political rallies
they support or in the hiding places they seek out when persecuted. That
fills this book with color and life, preventing politics, culture, social
and economic problems from appearing as abstract realities, but rather as
humanized aspects of our individual experience.

Some of the personalities in Parker’s book stick to memory with the same
vivacity and dynamism of a Joseph Conrad or Andre Malraux character.
Michael Anti (Zhao Jing) and He Caitou from China; Laritza Diversent,
Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sanchez from Cuba and the Russian Alexey
Navalny all appear on these pages in such notably dramatic fashion that
they seem to have been conjured up from fiction, instead of dreary
reality. Navalny’s story is particularly well known, given the odyssey
which landed him in jail and then sprang him from it to run for mayor of
Moscow in an election that gave him three times more votes than polls had
predicted (and probably more than were officially awarded him).

It’s a miracle that Alexey Navalny is still alive in a country where
journalists highly critical of the regime of the new tsar, Vladimir Putin,
tend to die poisoned or, like a brave Anna Politkovskaya, at the hands of
thugs.Navalny’s resilience is especially admirable since he started his
blogging career denouncing the criminal activities and corruption of great
enterprises (public or private) and exhorting followers to take legal
action to defend their rights and hold vested interests accountable.  Not
only is he alive; after having labeled the ruling party, United Russia,
the “party of crooks and thieves,” Navalny has become a real political
force in Russia—convening opposition rallies that have brought together
tens of thousands of people. He is also a charismatic multilingual
international figure who stands out in Parker’s book for his charm and
elegance, but also because it is so difficult to ascertain the boundaries
between his ambitions, convictions and principles. There is no doubt he is
exceptionally courageous and intelligent. But is he also a democrat
genuinely guided by a passion for liberty, or an ambitious populist taking
risks to slake his thirst for power and riches?

Reading this book it is hard not to feel a great deal of sadness at the
backwardness totalitarianism has imposed on China, Russia and Cuba. Any
social progress communism may have brought these societies is dwarfed by
the civic, cultural and political retardation it caused, and the remaining
obstacles standing in the way of these countries taking full advantage of
their resources and reaching a modernity that encompasses democratic
ideals, the rule of law and liberty. It’s clear that the old communist
model is dead and buried, but it is taking these societies plenty of time
and sacrifice to shake off its ghost. Parker’s book demonstrates the
invaluable service the Internet, the great communications revolution of
our time, is playing in this struggle.

Translated by Andrés Martinez. This article originally ran in Spanish in
El País. 

<http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/10/17/opinion/1382024998_491857.html>