Liberal Bloggers split over Gaza

6 posts / 0 new

Thu, 2009-01-15 01:57

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I don't know if anyone else has been following this, but there has been a big dust-up in the Liberal blogosphere over the last week. The conflict had two sources:

1) Ignatieff's uncritical support of the Israeli Gaza operation.

2) Heavy-handed censorship of articles criticizing Israel on the Liblogs.ca Liberal blog aggregator.

A new Liberal blog aggregator called [url=http://liberalsonline.feedcluster.com/]Liberals Online[/url] was just started today by [url=http://whatdoiknowgrit.blogspot.com/]James Curran[/url]. Curran was actually a member of the [url=http://whatdoiknowgrit.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-resignation-from-liberal-... Friends of Israel[/url], an organization started after Ignatieff's 2006 Qana "war crimes" comment (i.e. he is not a raging leftist).

Curran has been joined by some other disgruntled Liberal bloggers. These people are severely pissed off, and seem to be blogging incessantly about Israel and Ignatieff. Looks like there is some push-back at the grassroots level in the Liberal Party over this issue. I wonder how far it will go.

Thu, 2009-01-15 08:39

James Curran James Curran's picture

:-)

Sun, 2009-01-18 16:01

ceti

You should clarify Liberal blogosphere from Liberal Party of Canada blogosphere. Especially in the US, the Liberal blogosphere refers to almost every left of centre blog out there.

In the US, there is also a split between prominent blogs such as Huffington Post that have given themselves entirely to their funders to spew Israeli propaganda into the Liberal blogosphere, and the more grassroots blogs that have approached the issue from a more personalized perspective. As a blog for Democratic Party activists, DailyKos has actively tried to discourage diaries about Israel/Palestinians as too contentious.

Sun, 2009-01-18 16:22

pogge

ceti wrote:
In the US, there is also a split between prominent blogs such as Huffington Post that have given themselves entirely to their funders to spew Israeli propaganda into the Liberal blogosphere, and the more grassroots blogs that have approached the issue from a more personalized perspective. As a blog for Democratic Party activists, DailyKos has actively tried to discourage diaries about Israel/Palestinians as too contentious.

I think some of you misunderstand what [i]The Huffington Post[/i] is. It may use the blog format for a lot of its content and refer to some of its regular contributors as bloggers but I don't think it's quite correct to refer to the whole operation as "a blog" and you should definitely not expect it to represent any particular opinion. It was always intended to be an online newspaper -- and refers to itself as an "Internet Newspaper" -- and as such I'm not surprised to see it present a wider range of opinions than even a group blog might. It was also always intended to be a money making operation which would be another reason for trying to attract a fairly wide readership. As for the specific issue of the Israeli assault on Gaza, I've seen a range of opinions presented there. None of them are quite like mine but there [i]is[/i] a range.

As far as the proper designation is concerned, I could make similar comments about [i]Daily Kos[/i]. It certainly started out as a blog but it outgrew that category a long time ago -- about the time it switched to scoop which is far more software than any blog requires. I'm just not sure what to call it except a "community site."

Sun, 2009-01-18 17:39

Fidel

crickets chirping

Mon, 2009-01-19 22:43

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Fidel wrote:

crickets chirping

Actually, I think a grassroots movement in the Liberal Party against Israeli atrocities can only be good for humanity.

But that's just me.