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Does Astroturf Ever Die?
How do we rid Washington of astroturf? It's a blight that's spread over the Capitol like kudzu, smothering genuine public debate under a tangle of misinformation.
Sporting names like "Tea Party Patriots," "Energy Citizens" and "Americans for Broadband," astroturf groups have pocketed millions from industry to prop up the status quo and denounce an overhaul of health care, curbs to carbon emissions and Net Neutrality protections.
These fake grassroots groups have scored some amazing successes. Working together with lobbyists and a pack of sputtering media pundits, they've bullied Washington's timid leadership -- on both the left and the right - into inaction, or worse, outright opposition to the changes that a majority of Americans, in poll after poll, say they want.
Salon journalists Gabriel Winant and Tim Bell chronicle the way ideas forged in the crucible of Fox News and astroturf become GOP gospel. Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson traces the money that connects astroturf lies to corporate checking accounts.
But what happens when the corporate spigot gets turned off? Does astroturf still wield its power to frighten politicians and sway the media, or does it simply wither up and blow away?
The Rise and Fall of 'HandsOff'
The story of one noted astroturf group is instructive. In 2006, the world was first introduced to "Hands Off the Internet," a well-oiled group led by former Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry and funded by AT&T and other Internet service providers.
HandsOff pulled out all of the standard astroturf tricks to stifle popular enthusiasm for Net Neutrality - the principle that keeps Internet users, not ISPs, in control of the Net. HandsOff purchased millions of dollars' worth of ads in trade journals and the Washington Post to spin Net Neutrality as a government crackdown on the free-flowing Web.
McCurry worked his media connections to appear before cameras as an "independent expert" carrying on the legacy of the Clinton administration. He and his HandsOff Co-chair Christopher Wolf wrote Op-Eds for prominent publications like the New York Times without disclosing who was punching their meal tickets. They went before the cameras of mainstream cable stations. Soon, politicians were regurgitating HandsOff talking points (fed directly to the astroturf group by AT&T) without blinking.
HandsOff figured it was easy enough to extend these deceptive practices into cyberspace. The group built a Web site with a grassroots feel, blanketed all the leading blogs with ads, and dispatched McCurry to prominent online sites to trade on his reputation as a loyal Democrat.
What the Netroots Hates Most
The only problem with this strategy: HandsOff forgot about the netroots and their loathing of fakes - a loathing that would come into full force as readers at Huffington Post, MyDD, DailyKos and FireDogLake reacted to McCurry's phony overtures.
McCurry first submitted a commentary to Huffington Post (he's since removed it but his follow-up post is here), in which he called Net Neutrality "a solution in search of a problem."
Readers weren't fooled. A cursory peak behind the curtain of HandsOff.org revealed a sponsor list of telecommunications companies and industry front groups. McCurry's post soon received hundreds of angry comments accusing him of "selling out" his progressive beliefs to corporate interests.
Matt Stoller, then writing for the popular progressive blog MyDD, led the charge. Stoller is a bloggers' blogger, who has worked tirelessly to organize the netroots and alert them to new issues, messages and ideas. Author Malcolm Gladwell of The Tipping Point might classify him as a connector - like Paul Revere on his midnight ride. Stoller sounded the alarm and people listened.
In a post on MyDD titled "Mike McCurry: Mouthpiece for Deception," Stoller accused McCurry of operating in bad faith: "McCurry is deceiving the public, and it's making my blood boil," Stoller wrote. "Working as a lobbyist for telecommunications companies is fine... What's NOT fine is that he's misrepresenting the fight."
Other prominent bloggers like Atrios, David Sirota and Arianna Huffington piled on. Soon, McCurry's byline stopped appearing on Huffington Post altogether, and he was so frequently called out in public appearances for shilling that he retreated into the safe enclave of phone- and cable-company sponsored events.
Make Phoniness a Liability
Within a year, the companies that funded HandsOff realized that it was more of a liability than an asset. Lobbying payments to McCurry and Wolf dried up - from more than a half million dollars in 2006 to nothing in 2008, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.
By then, both McCurry and Wolf were long gone. McCurry had scampered off to shill for another AT&T front group; Wolf continues to lobby for corporate interests as a highly paid D.C. lawyer. Both have scrubbed HandsOff from their online resumes.
And while some functionary still posts a rare update to the group's darkly illegible blog, the rest of the site has fallen into disrepair, serving more as a tombstone for astroturf gone awry than as a legitimate voice in the debate.
This epithet for HandsOff is itself a testament to the power of an open Internet. The group's efforts to mislead the public would have gone unnoticed were it not for an active netroots, ready to call out fraud in the mainstream media and speak up in support of Net Neutrality.
But is that enough? While this astroturf group is dead, the companies behind it have simply moved their chips to other front operations.
Like the plastic product itself, astroturf never really dies. As long as corporate special interests see value in bankrolling phony front groups, they will. And as long as mainstream media air astroturf spokespeople without revealing their sponsors, the business of fakery will remain a feature of Washington's political landscape.
The good news is that more people are becoming aware of the problem and taking to the Internet to kill astroturf before it strangles our democracy.
16 Comments so far
Show AllOf course astroturf doesn't die, it was never alive to begin with. Like the corporations that fund it, it's an immortal synthetic entity.
Think of the rise of the astroturf as the Zombie Apocalypse of American politics. And, just like other zombies, the only way to put it permanently to rest is to destroy the (in this case, corporate) head.
Astroturf killer--the referendum.
NOTICE . . .
Christian-right and Islamic-Fundi are also astroturf --
-- the GOP gave start up funds for the Christian Coalition.
Scaife and Mellon and other wealthy Republicans also financed
Dobson's organization and Bauer's organization.
CIA has been funding right-wing Congressional members and
right-wing candidates for decades. CIA took right-wing
money from any source, including the KKK. Sen. Strom
Thurmond and Rep. Gerald Ford were two members mentioned.
MEANWHILE, though many know that US/CIA created the Taliban-
Al Qaeda and financed them up to 9/11 . . .
Many don't know that we also created the Islamic JIHAD
Fundamentalist movement. (Link and info below)
Below that, the info on our creating Taliban/Al Qaeda and
using it to "bait the Russians into Afghanistan in hopes of
giving them a Vietnam type experience" . . . !!!
QUOTE --
The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.
They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.
Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?
Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"
Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.
Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.
Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.
"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)
According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."
So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."
How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?
Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.
But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.
http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.htm UNQUOTE
AND ...
QUOTE --
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs <"From the Shadows">, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Q: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Q: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_interview_shor...
UNQUOTE
As Cheney was found of saying . .. "we create the reality."
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Most astroturf comes from outsiders. An innovative way to prevent astroturf from being tossed willy-nilly onto any Commondreams forum is to give the regulars a vote.
I've put up hundreds of comments in the past. I would probably be one voter.
If a regular poster posts, just put it up at first. If a newbie posts, allow the newbie to see it and allow the regulars to see it, but not the other newbies for a little while. If the regulars see it and at least don't freak out, then it's a legitimate post and any newbie can see it too. However, if the regulars vote the comment off as spam or astroturf, it's history. The astroturfer gets little for her/his effort. Furthermore the astroturfer gets a rep as a spammer, which means she/he is drifting towards the line of not being a regular anymore.
We don't want to stifle dissent and questioning, just hired cults and a few flamers.
I don't think that's really necessary, I've only seen maybe two long-term flamers on here. The rest go away pretty quickly.
But one reason for the fact that they "go away quickly" is that CD editors do ban posters. Might be better if we could set up a system to enable regular users to determine who gets let in.
Not sure of what i think of it yet, never thought about it before, but i'm intrigued by the idea of setting up a "filter" that allows regular users to determine who new gets invited in.
Isn't another oft-used phrase for this astroturf business, "manufactured consent"?
I suspect that these corporate shills who set up these fake grassroots organizations are gonna face "blowback" in a really big way, because more and more USAns are becoming totally alienated.
Partial alienation is probably good for fascism because people remain confused and are thus malleable. What happens, though, when NOTHING is "real"?
Since listening to Michael Pollan in several interviews and reading his early book about plants that have seduced humans into cultivating them, I've been studying our "food" more closely, with special emphasis on "high fructose corn syrup," and, from another direction, herbicides and pesticides. There is almost zero uncontaminated food out there. It is almost impossible to avoid being contaminated by poison to the point where the childhood admonition to "eat your vegetables" is a death warrant (and if you think I'm sounding like that crazy guy in "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb," you're right!)
Our entire environment is now compromised. Every talking head has a hidden agenda. Every member of Congress (with few exceptions) is on someone else's secret payroll. "Write your Congressperson" is a total waste of time and energy.
When Cheney was quoted as saying "We create the reality..." (thanks for the reminder on that one, "conscience") in that now-famous NYTimes Magazine piece just before the Nov. 2004 election, he was right only to a point. Going that route, pretty soon there is NO "reality."
"Manufactured consent" equals consensus. But what happens when there no longer exists a Reality around which to build a consensus? The so-called "health care debate" presents one such debacle. Everything about this debate is manufactured fiction. It is an exercise in Nihilism. (Why? Because the only REAL solution, Single Payer, was taken off the table from the outset, leaving the American people listening to nearly pure cacaphony. Virtually the entire Congress, and the President, in this case, are guilty of subversion.)
No society can continue to function this way. If the daily experience of human beings tells them that NOTHING IS REAL, they will each attempt to create their own Reality. It is a homeostatic necessity for both mind and body. And there goes the Consensus!
Poof. Obviously somebody wants things this way. Ask yourself who benefits from social chaos, disequilibrium, and dis-ease?
Sure as hell, I don't.
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Hi Ole Man River --
QUOTE ...
When Cheney was quoted as saying "We create the reality..." (thanks for the reminder on that one, "conscience") in that now-famous NYTimes Magazine piece just before the Nov. 2004 election, he was right only to a point. Going that route, pretty soon there is NO "reality." UNQUOTE
While I'm sure you're absolutely right that what eventually happens is that there is
no believable reality, I think "1984" suggests that we can be forced to live it when our press has been hijacked and when political violence has long before set the stage -- and where so much of this creates and occurs behind their wars.
The Revolution of the 1960's was anti-everything Patriarchal -- from all authority to wars, from patriarchal religion, hatred, discrimination, violent conspiracies, our medicine and making childbirth a disease, to fresh food free from chemicals and pesticides.
The GOP response was to raise Fundamentalist religion. For more than 30 years we
have been forced to try to deal with that right wing "reality" - their framework.
Ask anyone if there is a right-wing religious movement in America.
Even those who may respond that we have a "Christian-Talian" will be confirming
their belief in it as something real.
Ask anyone if on 9/11 two aluminum planes flew into two steel towers and were absorbed as if into a soft stick of butter?
Whose reality is that? Had they told us that the Russians had done 9/11, we'd still
be rolling on the floor laughing .... wouldn't we?
And, how about the reality that our corporate-press is liberal -- liberally biased?
Is that out of play yet?
I agree with you on what should be happening, but it requires a free press to throw
the pebbles necessary at the right wing myths. Only a few pebbles will do it --
myths are like a mirror - they shatter easily when truth hits them.
And for those pebbles, I'd recommend Rachel Maddow/Keith Olbermann/Jon Stewart!
Conscience - Smilie
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
See senator Franken's votes on his FIRST action in the house!!
This is perfect stuff for the RAPE-Ublican party! What are they serving at the bar?
It is a wonderful life...
Besides MoveOn.org, how many George Soros - funded organizations can you name in 2 minutes? Are these any less astroturf because they are funded by a man who made his fortune trading junk bonds on Wall Street? (Was I supposed to let that slip?)
Both sides are guilty of this sort of trickery.
(btw, I can name at least 6 without consulting any notes.)
Voici le temps des assassins.
Wow bardamu---
Somehow you just cut off the whole line here. Is my translation, "give voice to the assassins" somehow wrong?
This issue of what is from the heart and soul versus what is manufactured is sort of serious don't you think?
It takes "advertising" to a whole new level, eh?
If you disagree here, strap on your explosive body belt! Meet you in the subway...I'll be wearing a wire. I hope I can talk you out of it. How's your family? Can I be of help?
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Translates as "Time for murder", and is the title of a classic French noir film from the 1950s.
Not precisely sure what bardamu intends with the reference...
Thanks webwalk for the translation.
I love old B/W noir films but never heard of that one.
Just looked it up in my old Leonard Maltin's 1996 Movie & Video Guide and it's not listed at all. Who starred? Presumably not Bette Davis...
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You can Google it... that's how i got the first answer that i posted...
Voici le temps des assassins... (1956)
Directed by Julien Duvivier. With Jean Gabin, Danièle Delorme, Robert Arnoux.
Looks like a new version is about to be released... again from France...
Voici le temps des assassins (2010)
Directed by Tonie Marshall. With Gérard Depardieu.
Thanks webwalk, again.
In my youth, in the early Sixties when I was working in Manhattan there were a few movie theaters that regularly showed foreign films and I attended them as much as I could afford. French, Japanese as they attempted to come out of their existential defeat (The Seven Samurai, Sand Trap), Scandinavian (The Seventh Seal, Virgin Spring, etc.). Of course the U.S also had its film noir, esp. some of the detective stuff.
My favorite remains Casablanca. I suspect that it influenced one of our greatest American journalists, Edward R. Murrow. Whenever I hear that contretemps between the Germans and the French singing their anthems in the cafe, tears come easily. Round up the usual suspects! Claude Reins. Second would be The African Queen, a duplication effort on the propaganda front. Too much stereotyping, and colorized on Cable. Pure WWII.
Something changed during WWII. Pre-war we had Detective Nick's banter with his socially conscious high flying wife and their constant drinking and smoking, and that little dog. Post-war, we had a strange period of consciousness-raising films followed by 007. The History of the decline of American film-making has yet to be written. In my own life, my elders were still living pre-war and trying to adjust to post-war. I am not sure that colorization of our life via computer and TV is a good thing. There is something to be said for black and white. I'm still working with an old 50mm Nikkormat but black/white film is nearly impossible to buy. You gotta go to the computer, bring it into PhotoShop...convert it, and see what you shot without killing.
Good to learn that Leonard Malten has limits. I had been referencing his book as though it were a dictionary. Thanks. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable reference.
As Alzheimer's sets in, I need to read the names. Sort of like Johnny Cash's daughter Rose Ann (sp?) and her The List. North Country Fair by Bob Dylan...I tried to sing that song maybe a hundred times and never got it down. I met Bob Dylan at Gerde's Folk City after watching him at the Gaslight Cafe and other venues. I hate Bob Dylan. I love Bob Dylan. The bastard is a genius. He stole my fire. So did WWII.
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