Ten years ago PBS did a feature that quoted a Russian radio personality calling Samizdat the “precursor to the Internet.” Sadly this is no longer accurate. Even a decade ago Internet platforms were mechanical wonders brimming with anarchic energy whose ability to transport ideas to millions virally and across borders made episodes like the Arab Spring possible. Governments rightly trembled before the destabilizing potential of tools like Twitter, whose founders as recently as 2012 defiantly insisted they would remain “neutral” on content control, seeing themselves as the “free speech wing of the free speech party.”
As writers like former CIA analyst Martin Gurri began noticing long before the election of Donald Trump, the Internet gave ordinary people access to information in ways that before had never been allowed. The inevitable result was that populations all over the world began to see more clearly the warts of leaders and governments that had previously been covered up, thanks to tight control over the flow of information. It also made communication and organization of dissident movements much easier. We started to see this with Occupy and the Tea Party in the United States, and the aforementioned Arab Spring, but the election of Donald Trump was the Rubicon-crossing event for information overlords.
I had the privilege (misfortune?) of seeing how presidential campaign journalism worked before the Internet took over. Politicians needed the mainstream press to reach high office. Sitting among the traveling press on campaigns of people like John Kerry and Barack Obama, I heard how campaign reporters talked, how they thought of their jobs. They were fiercely protective of their gatekeeping role, which gave them enormous power. If reporters didn’t think a candidate was good enough for them — if he was too “kooky” like Ron Paul, too “elfin” like Dennis Kucinich, or too “lazy” as just a handful of influential reporters decided about Fred Thompson — the “Boys on the Bus” would snort and trade cutting remarks in riffing sessions before and after events. Campaigns would be elevated or die in these moments. I thought it was crazy, and said so in print, which made me a pariah, and I never thought it would end.