1996-2026: A review of how online politics works through cycles of centralized control and decentralized disruption, and where we are now
Sun Tzu — He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.
I wrote a few months back about how the suspensions of Republicans on Twitter have forced them to innovate and create their own insular social networks. They’ve done that and now have a massive online organizing effort headed into a midterm. One that can change opinion and elections, one that is partisan and decentralized, one that is insulated and provides them with organizational messaging. Democrats, meanwhile, have become complacent and rely upon centralized control of the narrative by big tech media to uphold their power.
Democrats ignore where their opponents are and are exposed in the open. Just this info alone is enough to predict the election outcome.
Sun Tzu — By discovering the enemy's dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the enemy's must be divided. We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few. And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.
Do you want to see an example of this happening right now? This midterm. Here’s an example:
Anon Telegram — Just an fyi Fam. I will be heading back to Twitter to do as much damage as I possibly can. I encourage you too. We use TG, Truth Social, etc as command centers for our patriot family. We then go to war on Twitter to save as many souls as possible.
Bannon does this off of Gettr. The Republican online army is built to organize and then go out to divide and conquer. The playing field is so lopsided.
The Historical Perspective
There are two overlapping trends of online political organizing that translate into winning elections. One is through disruptive technology, and the other is through the absorption of that power into centralized control. By the time the latter is at its peak, the former is about to take away its power and then gain control. We’ve seen this play out. From ‘96 to ‘07 and from ‘08 to ‘20. And now, ‘21 to ??
For example, back in 2006, it was Democrats who were in the position that Republicans are now. When Bush won in ‘00 and Republicans captured the midterm in ‘02, it was a moment of realization for progressives. Though progressives had momentum, they (we at the time) had no infrastructure and limited reach with the blogosphere. Online fundraising, greatly enhanced by McCain-Feingold, changed the equation. Howard Dean came up, and ActBlue came up. I was right in the middle of both of those launches, and it was glorious to see it work, resulting in a blue wave for the ‘06 election.
Ah, the glory days. But the internet was radically changing in ways that I did not like at all, and I exited the scene.
I told anyone back then (when I was on the side of the Dems) that relying upon centralized social networks would be the downfall of Democrats. Obama won through it, Trump exploited it, and Biden relied on it through partisan censorship. So the Republicans went out and built their social networks. I thought this would ultimately spell doom for Democrats, and here we are. It only took about 18 months. A decentralized power in politics is unstoppable until it is equalized. It cannot be suppressed or neutralized. It’s the line of flight that is not under control, the disrupter that wins by upset.
In the cycles of the internet, I see three clear groups of years where the trend has played out:
‘96 to ‘07: Lucianne, FreeRepublic, and later Drudge were disrupters from the late 90s until Bush came into office. Bush mastered centralized tech in a way that had never been done before to win in ‘02. Republicans controlled the narrative media. It was the blogosphere, netroots, and small online donations that disrupted their domination— this is all CTG stuff. There’s little doubt that the period between ‘96 and ‘07 was an innovative time of change in our politics, decentralizing how political elections work.
‘08 to ‘20: Facebook and Twitter centralized everything online. Not in a bad way at first. In one congressional race (‘10), I went to Colorado to work for Jared Polis and had his team organize on Boulder’s campus to connect with Facebook users. We ran an internet strategy in the primary that helped shoot Polis right through the middle of two establishment candidates (who had all the traditional primary support) to pull off an upset with new, mostly young voters. With both parties centralized, it’s not a problem, but this has all changed in the past few years, with Democrats becoming not only relient upon open social networks, but in the corner of having to try and capture and regulate their speech!
‘21 to ‘26: Centralization has peaked and is in the rearview mirror. I will post a ‘22 midterm election prediction, and I know it will shock many. And I suspect this conservative/populist movement is just beginning. It will become a trifecta of Republican power in ‘24 if all the Democrats have are Twitter, insular podcasts & zoom calls, and legacy media websites with closed interaction. They’ve ceded huge swaths of the field and mistook the Big Tech turf for their own.
Democrats are going into the wilderness.
They are also going to try and find someplace different, new, to organize. They are so behind. Please look at tribel.com to see how far it is behind gettr.com or telegram or gab, or parler.com, where Republicans organize. Few, if any, Democrats are trolling the Republican sites or trying to reach anyone there. Few Democrats are even on Telegram. It is very powerful and disruptive, like nothing else right now online.
Then there is TruthSocial:
Once it’s reactivated, I’d tell Trump to use his Twitter account as a link farm to TS.
Democrats have a colossal message and issue problem, too; it’s interconnected to being too centralized and, therefore, deaf to the political wind that comes from regular people. They have insulated themselves from any criticism. They take themselves so seriously that the rest of us laugh. Unless they wanna be in the minority for the rest of the decade, that’s gotta change.
I expect a civil war within the Democratic party is brewing and about to explode, but it will only expose a rift among the elite and not a bottom-up solution. Democrats have tried to censor others into making Twitter a partisan site; that was their only path forward, and they didn’t even build it. That illusion is over now with Musk.1 They have to build their own. Good luck.
“Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice. It will amplify it among the right, and that is why it’s morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”