A recent Washington Post article1 documented the anonymous email smear campaign against Sen. Barack Obama which has followed him for quite some time, containing the ought-to-be-innocuous claim that he is a closet Muslim. The report describes how Danielle Allen traced the origins of the emails to a number of discussions on an online forum, and interviewed some of the contributers, all of whom flatly denied having anything to do with the email, of course. While this could easily turn into a ’so what if he is a Muslim’ post, I have covered my opinions on that sort of thing before so we’ll move swiftly on. One of the key paragraphs talks about how the Obama campaign has been struggling to get to grips with this new type of propaganda:

Obama’s campaign, for better or worse, is writing the manual on combating this new asymmetrical guerrilla warfare. Obama has not shied away from the rumors — he mentions them frequently. “Before I begin,” he told a pro-Israel group this month, “I want to say that I know some provocative e-mails have been circulating throughout Jewish communities across the country. . . . They’re filled with tall tales and dire warnings about a certain candidate for president. And all I want to say is — let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty frightening.”

What’s interesting to me is the way that the internet giveth, and the internet taketh away. The most significant success of the Obama campaign has been Obama’s ability to raise funds from the ground up – from internet users and Silicon Valley millionaires. Viral funding has met viral propaganda coming the other way, and those two forces may prove to be among the most significant in deciding the outcome of the election.

Obamamania and Obamaphobia are two sides of the exact same coin. The two modern faces of political discussion. It’ll be interesting to see how they manifest themselves in British politics

UPDATE: Apparently the accepted ‘Daily Show’ vernacular is ‘Baracknophobia’ and ‘Baracknophilia’. I do apologise for any misunderstandings caused.

  1. with a tip of the hat to Tom Watson MP [↩]