>I don’t think anyone saw coming that we’d have to actually be explaining to American children why racism and fascism are bad in the 21st century.
For me, this is the most damning sentence in the whole piece.
Before Eternal September, there were exactly as many racists and fascists in America, it's just that the mainstream media had done a fairly good job of hiding them. If you lived in San Francisco or New York, you'd have to make a real effort to see the level of racism that was still prevalent in many parts of the US. The sort of people who built the internet didn't know what they'd unleash, because they had been born and raised in a bubble.
The internet hasn't fundamentally changed human nature, it has just exposed what already existed. The average person is pretty awful and half of them are worse than that. Timothy McVeigh wasn't radicalised by the internet - he was radicalised by photocopied zines, small-press books and conversations at gun shows. The internet may have accelerated that process, but it has also brought it to light. It has shown liberals that they have been utterly complacent, that for decades they contemptuously ignored most of America, that they lived in a fantasy of their own making.
A mea culpa from the pioneers of the internet is missing the point entirely. The problem isn't that we built a communications platform and learned that a lot of people held abhorrent views, it's that for decades we ignored the rot at the heart of American democracy.
For me, this is the most damning sentence in the whole piece.
Before Eternal September, there were exactly as many racists and fascists in America, it's just that the mainstream media had done a fairly good job of hiding them. If you lived in San Francisco or New York, you'd have to make a real effort to see the level of racism that was still prevalent in many parts of the US. The sort of people who built the internet didn't know what they'd unleash, because they had been born and raised in a bubble.
The internet hasn't fundamentally changed human nature, it has just exposed what already existed. The average person is pretty awful and half of them are worse than that. Timothy McVeigh wasn't radicalised by the internet - he was radicalised by photocopied zines, small-press books and conversations at gun shows. The internet may have accelerated that process, but it has also brought it to light. It has shown liberals that they have been utterly complacent, that for decades they contemptuously ignored most of America, that they lived in a fantasy of their own making.
A mea culpa from the pioneers of the internet is missing the point entirely. The problem isn't that we built a communications platform and learned that a lot of people held abhorrent views, it's that for decades we ignored the rot at the heart of American democracy.