Marc Mulholland was right – there is something about weblogs that is attracting left-wing renegades.
Here is the latest addition to the ranks which is worthy of a visit for three reasons:
1. It has a fantastic name Building the Socialist Republic of Heaven.
2. It says it is written perspective of some disappointed revolutionaries stranded on a sandbank somewhere in the North Sea.
3. They are members of the growing Marxists Against Stop the War tendency:
For us politics means trying to maintain our commitment to Marxism, and our faith in the potential of the working class, while dissociating ourselves from the anti-war left, who have betrayed the cause for the sake of kneejerk anti-Americanism and loving up to dictators, and orienting ourselves to the working class, so often defeated, so often written off, but still the only hope for any worthwhile and lasting change towards a more enlightened, more equal, more livable society. If all that sounds archaic, obscure or just plain mad, then this blog may not be for you.
Its a very new blog but certainly one to keep an eye on. Welcome aboard comrades!
As to the question why blogs attract left-wing dissidents and in contrast why the much more numerous activists of the Stop the War Coalition are barely present online, I am currently writing a longer item on this topic.
But, in brief, I think it is simply comes down to this – weblogs are an alternative media and so are particularly attractive for those who feel their views are not well represented in the mainstream.
It is noticable that right-wing blogging tends to be dominated by libertarians, who don’t get much of a hearing in the mainstream conservative press.
Stop the War already have The Guardian, The Independent and The New Statesman on message and their leading figures, Pilger, Tariq Ali, Chomsky etc are cluttering up the bookshops. When you are so mainstream, when you are such a part of the liberal-left media establishment why both with the alternative media?