Welcome to my second book review of the semester where I attempt to justify how a book review can relate to The Stute Editorial. Deal with it!
Earlier in the semester, I wrote a review on Alan Rusbridger’s Breaking News which I read this past summer. Quickly after Rusbridger, I also read Andrew Marantz’s Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, which I referenced in a previous editorial about the power of headlines.
Marantz’s book is the result of several years spent interacting first-hand with the alt-right, which is often thought of as a movement or ideology that consists of far-right and white nationalist views, overwhelming support for Donald Trump, and a love of conspiracy theories.
Throughout the book we follow Marantz as he observes, interviews, and attends events with some of the most well-known alt-right personalities on social media; names like Richard Spencer and Mike Cernovich are just a few.
It’s a captivating case study on what seems like a completely different world, and at times the ideas Marantz uncovers can be emotionally difficult to read but undeniably insightful. I had no idea these people even existed and yet they have audiences in the thousands, confirming an unpleasant fact that the alt-right is not made up of just a few. Marantz himself says that “discovering these alt-right sites felt like stumbling onto a countercultural intellectual vanguard,” or falling into a section of the Internet that at one time may have felt unacceptable. “What was unacceptable can become acceptable. Acceptability is just a norm, and norms can change for the better or for the worse,” he writes.
He argues that without social media, the alt-right may not even exist. “On social media, from behind an anonymous avatar, you could share more or less whatever you wanted – a Holocaust joke, an absurdist meme, a thought-provoking life. You could post something because you believed it, or because you didn’t believe it and you wanted to see who would.” Inevitably, “shitposting” becomes a thing, which Marantz describes as “posting whatever shit happened to pop into your head.”
While the Internet is full of shitposts, it’s also full of news, and this line between ordinary social media posts and news announcements gets blurrier every day. Take Facebook for example. “Facebook is not only one of the world’s biggest video platforms; it’s also a gaming company, a dating service, a classified section, a photo vault, a newsstand, and a virtual-reality film studio. Content is content, all commingling in a single stream.”
Keeping on the topic of Facebook, Marantz reveals that Mark Zuckerberg once said his platform is “a technology company, not a media company. We build tools. We do not produce content.” That’s all true, but the Facebook app has an entire page devoted to sharing news and commenting on it. Just because Facebook is not involved in the actual writing of that news, does that mean it holds no responsibility? That’s an idea to explore another time.
I think you would particularly love this book If you enjoy fiction more than nonfiction (it almost reads like a novel!) and are interested in what I’ve discussed – Marantz’s writing of the alt-right is structured in a way that the reader is included in the events, the discussions, and the interviews. While the majority of the book is mere rhetoric of what he saw rather than interpretation (and in that way it feels very journalistic), peppered throughout are little gems of great insight. Two things I wish there were more of were anecdotes and external research, which when Marantz does include them, they’re successful.
I found this book rich enough that I’ve got to write more about it, so later in the semester, I’ll be back for part two.
The Stute Editorial is an Opinion column written by the current Editor in Chief of The Stute to address and explain editorial decision making, discuss news and media issues, and develop a sense of trust and transparency between readers and members of The Stute.
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