Posted 7:03 PM by Floyd

Ana Marie Cox said a week ago that left-wingers should take back the night:

I'm no friend or fan of Michael Kelly's, either, but calling him a "Nazi" just gives the folks at Instapundit (as a opposed to the "folks at Indymedia") a chance to prove to themselves that they're right about the left. The comments thusfar (20 in the last 30 minutes or so) tend toward "Little Green Footballs" knee-jerk jackhammering (an incomprehensible favorite: "I only hope that San Francisco is conquered by the satanic Saracens. Then you can enjoy as the the real Nazi-Arabian beasts teach you how to practice human sacrafice, bloodlust and how to worship Satan/Allah.").

This is not debate. This is not, to paraphrase protesters, "what democracy looks like." This is just dumb.

I can only hope that this board is swamped by more than just ugly comments from justifiably enraged right-wingers -- who no doubt will be calling the talk radio shows tomorrow to brandish this as an example of the left's "anti-Americanism." I hope more people like me -- Nader-voting, national-health-care-supporting, card-carrying ACLU feminists -- weigh in with our justifiable outrage. You aren't the left, Indymedia, we are.

This is admirable, but also quixotic. I have not spent a lot of time at Indymedia (thank God) but I have perused some very long threads -- for example, the thread from which I harvested so many wonderful nuggets of Holocaust denial in the previous posting. And I have never, not once, seen criticism of Indymedia's excesses from a left-winger. That is, I see comments by people opposed to Indymedia -- though the threads I have read are hardly "swamped" by them -- but I have never seen a comment that shows sympathy for Indymedia's goals and politics but opposition to their modus operandi.