The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [77]
The Chinese experience has inspired other governments, both authoritarian and democratic, to create their own cyber-brigades of loyal Internet commentators. In 2009 the Nigerian government sought to enlist more than seven hundred Nigerians abroad and at home and create a so-called Anti-Bloggers Fund intended to raise a new generation of pro-government bloggers to engage in online battles with antigovernment opponents. Their compensation was cybercafé vouchers and blogging allowances. In late 2009, editorials in official Cuban newspapers began calling for pro-government Cuban journalists to “man the cyber-trenches” and defend the revolution online by setting up their own blogs, leaving critical comments on antigovernment blogs, and reprinting the best pro-government blog posts in the official media. Before they decided to pursue China’s “elude the cat” tactic and co-opt their critics, the South Korean authorities accused officials in the North Korean government of using fake identities to precipitate a war (the North Koreans were allegedly spreading rumors that the sinking of the warship was not caused by a North Korean torpedo, as the South Korean government was claiming, and that the evidence presented so far had been fabricated). In May 2010 the ruling party of Azerbaijan, concerned with the fact that antigovernment activists had been aggressively using Facebook and YouTube to disseminate oppositional materials, hosted a meeting with pro-government youth groups in which it was decided that the nascent Azeri Spinternet movement would be given a dedicated office, from which the staff could engage in online battles with opponents of the regime.
Before he jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, Hugo Chavez announced the formation of Communicational Guerrilla, a network of seventy-five students between ages thirteen and seventeen. Dressed in khaki jackets and wearing red bandanas tied around their necks, they were supposedly trained to “fight against imperialist messages,” either on social networks online, on walls, in pamphlets, or “through direct intervention.”
Egypt is not far behind. Noticing that Facebook had been used to publicize antigovernment protests in 2008, Egyptian authoritarians decided to embrace the site as well—it was too popular to be banned. As Gamal Mubarak, the son of Hosni Mubarak and his likely successor, began giving online interviews, more than fifty Facebook groups, all of them supposedly of the grassroots variety, sprang up online to nominate him for the presidency.
For all the anti-Internet sentiment exhibited by the Iranian authorities following the 2009 protests, they seem to have grasped the message that they need to become active players in cyberspace. In 2010 Iran’s hard-liners launched their own social networking site, Valayatmadaran (the name is a reference to “followers of the velayat,” or Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). It offers the standard package expected of such a site: Its members (by mid-2010 around 3,000) can become friends, post pictures (cartoons ridiculing the Green Movement seem to be particularly popular), videos, and links to interesting articles. The only twist is that the site’s members seem to be united by little else than the highly ambitious goal of fighting “evil,” although there is also space to discuss more prosaic issues like “the rule of the supreme jurist” and “women and family.”
In a sense, the appearance of such a site is just the next step in the country’s long-running strategy of co-opting new media. Iran has been training a new generation of religious bloggers since 2006, when the Bureau for the Development of Religious Web Logs was set up at Qom, the center of religious scholarship in the country. Most of the bureau’s activities target women. The clerics may have grudgingly accepted the fact that blogging women are here to stay, but they are still trying to shape the topics of their conversations. In 2006 Iran proudly hosted Quranic