The Stupidest Thing Written ........ On December 19, 2008

It might be a the stupidest thing ever written on other days, but the internet is a vast place, so the the suggestion that increasing broadband internet access will lead to fascism may not be the stupidest thing ever written, but it is the stupidest thing that I've read in a long time.

It appears that Andrew Keen (who else, seriously, just wiki him) is alarmed at the fact that part of Barack Obama's stimulus package will be directed toward expanding broadband access across the United States, and it might be, "Inadvertently laying the foundations for a return to fascism, the political catastrophe of the 1930’s."

You see, the according to Mr. Keen:

The 1930s fascists were expert at using all the most technologically sophisticated communications technologies—the cinema, radio, newspapers, advertising—to spew their destructive, hate-filled message. What they excelled at was removing the the traditional middlemen like religion, media, and politics, and using these modern technologies of mass communications to speak with reassuring familiarity to the disorientated masses.

There are a couple of problems here:

• They did not control these media until after they came to power.
• The middlemen dominated the cinema, radio, newspapers, and advertising, then, as they do now, it was that they supported the fascists, because they thought that they might prevent the Bolsheviks from coming to power.

If you read the rest, I'm sure that you can find more.