The Scapegoat

Not so long ago, liberal opinion was smitten with Silicon Valley’s “disruptive” agenda. Pundits, journalists, and officials all proclaimed the democratizing power of digital platforms, which they saw (­dubiously) as the force behind the Arab Spring. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton placed “internet freedom” at the center of foreign policy, and President Barack Obama issued ­Silicon Valley–­esque bromides about “smart government” in the State of the Union. In the same period, left-leaning reporters and academics praised the merry-prankster antics of ­Anonymous—a loose ­organization of self-identified trolls united mainly by opposition to all restrictions on free expression ­online.

In the wake of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump, the liberal media and political class changed their views. Suddenly, the risk was no longer that foreign dictators would crack down on “internet freedom”; it was that the excessive freedom offered by the internet would lead Western nations to embrace dangerous extremist ideologies. Anonymous message boards such as 4Chan, previously celebrated as spaces of amorphous rebellion, were now viewed as toxic breeding grounds for the reactionary ideas of the alt-right. Many of those who had praised the power of tech platforms for challenging dictators barely five years earlier seemed to conclude the dictators might have been onto something, and they now demanded crackdowns and censorship.

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