Internet Community to Debate, Agitate and Fund-Raise in 2009

Next year this time, this weird and ugly election will be behind us. One thing is certain: a lot of people will be very unhappy with the outcome, regardless of who actually wins. There is a growing disillusionment with mainstream media and the choices offered by the Republican and Democratic parties.

The Internet is the medium for uncensored political expression, and blogs are the arena of often-vicious political confrontations that remain non-violent, and for the most part, anonymous. Here is where the New Populism, be it of the left or right, will raise funds, agitate, debate, and condemn the status quo.

With the Ron Paul phenomenon, the organizing and fund-raising potential has been demonstrated to mainstream and fringe alike. Although all political views are represented online, the New Populism has a special place on the internet. The forums provided online are open to all. Movements that are marginalized and shunned by the mainstream media find expression online.

Internet people are quite often individualistic, opinionated and outspoken. The nature of the medium itself made the record-setting fundraising that defined the Ron Paul phenomenon possible. The New Populism in all its variants will find its venue here on the net. Whether of a left-wing, right wing, libertarian, liberal, conservative, religious or secular nature, thought fueled by the dreams and discontents of ordinary men and women define the New Populism.

The internet will still be wild and wide open. Rough, anarchic, often tactless, crude and foul mouthed rhetoric will flow freely, as it should in a free market of ideas. The only real free market of ideas is right here online. Whatever ideological directions the New Populism takes, it will find its venue and its funding right her online. The internet attracts rebels of all stripes. It is indeed a last refuge of free expression.

Unknown authors and political theorists will publish online before their work appears anywhere else, if it ever does. The New Populism belongs; as the internet remains open to the opinions of ordinary people without regard to their class, race, economic status and educational background. There is virtually no ideology, conspiracy theory, or political movement that cannot be found online.

With the exception of the rich, the powerful, and the very famous, the real world places little value upon the opinions, discontents and aspirations of the individual. The internet is only the virtual real world, but the individual counts here online more than anywhere else in these times.

There are millions of disaffected and disenfranchised voices waiting to be heard. We are here among the poor, the working and middle classes. We find each other, and for better or for worse, the heroes that we choose and the candidates we support find us here on the Internet. We are the New Populism.