Via Atrios and RMPN I found a beta version of FollowTheNetwork.Org. Apparently the brainchild of David Horowitz, it purports to be “a guide to the political left” and takes the form of a big database of people, funders, media, government and so on. The design of the site suggests that the left is a huge, interconnected web of shadowy figures and money flows. The database entries make for interesting reading. Trawling around in it (note that the site is in beta, so these links may stop working soon) I find that you can “follow the network” for people like these:
I could go on. And that’s just the database of individuals. There’s also the list of groups, where you can find invaluable information on terrorist groups like Hamas, Habitat for Humanity and the Harvard Alumni Association. And like any good blacklist, everyone is invited to submit any information they might have.
Update: Blogger Jack Balkin is on the list, as another “‘Progressive’ Academic.” What are we at CT? Chopped Liver?
Update 2: It seems like the Follow The Network has been taken offline, but those helpful people at RMPN have a Mirror Site for you all to play with.
Is this now going to be a badge of honor on the left? ‘Well, of course, I don’t look at my FollowTheNetwork entry myself, but my friends tell me it grows daily’…
Why doesn’t everyone go and put their own names on the site? It should be a badge of honor to be here. Then we could all have some nice little icons for our blogs saying we’re listed in Horowitz’ database!
Ah, yes, Osama bin Laden. A radical feminist Commie, right?
I mean, really. If you were putting together a list of bin Laden supporters and wanted to include an American academic who’d opposed invading Afghanistan or Iraq, that would be one thing. Stupid in my opinion, but I understand the logic. But calling bin Laden a lefty is another thing entirely.
Sample letter:
Self-described liberal [your name here] wishes to join “the network”.
CV:
* Supported Howard Dean for US President (2004). Donations: $450
* Gave $50 to Al Gore for President, (2000)
* Subscriber and regular reader of salon.com, crookedtimber.org and other card-carrying members of the VLWC 5th column
* Member in good standing, Sierra Club, NRDC.
I’m furious I’m not included yet. Darn, what’s a fella gotta do to get himself included with all his friends? I don’t wanna be the last lib left when they round up my buddies and ship them off to gitmo, y’know.
Hey, I’m not on the list either and I’m really pissed!
I agree, tristero — I think my beliefs probably are close to Joan Baez’s, I’m just not famous!
Question: If we make a list of “the political right”, can we put Horowitz on the same list as le Pen or some of the other really awful people? I mean, since he did … and how in hell did bin Laden get labeled a ‘political left’?!
If they’re doing this, we should start pushing the Bush family’s bin Laden connectiions, hard.
I’m actually astonished that someone on the right would think this kind of thing was a good idea - or at least that they’d think it was a good idea to make it public. It almost cries for someone to take the idea and pull in the assorted details on the right, including all the administration links back into Reagan, Iran/Contra, Nixon, etc.
What would the links from Prescott Bush look like?
Ginzberg, Allen??????????????
Isn’t he dead, or is he like a lefty Elvis
I guess Leftster.org was already registered.
What would the links from Prescott Bush look like?
Funny you should mention that, Alan. Check out this most excellent Bush family tree, starting with its scion, Samuel Prescott Bush.
Does the fact that the Harvard Alumni Association is on it means that everyone who ever graduated from Harvard is supposed to be part of it? So if I’m class of ‘86, does that automatically make me an associate of bin Laden?
Also, aren’t there a lot of lefties at Yale?
i am proud — PROUD! — to have taken my college Intro to Sociology course from prof. Troy Duster. (while he was still at berkeley.)
i guess i have one degree of separation from the SLWC… mwahahahaha…
John Grubor and Steve Boursy have moved on to political activism, I see.
(Truly, those who cannot remember Usenet are doomed to repeat it.)
I justed checked and, well, whom do I have to fuck to get on the list?
For a much more compelling right-wing version, take a look at Mark Lombardi’s “Global Networks” drawings. There’s a show touring around; right now it’s at the SF Yerba Buena Center. I think Mobutu Sese Seko showed up in every other drawing (I guess he got around); the Bush clan figured prominently as well. Bill Clinton shows up in one or two of them.
It’s fascinating looking at individual countries under the issues index. Apparently, for example, supporting Tibetan independence from Communist China is now a left cause, as is supporting US intervention in Kosovo.
If Osama is a leftist, then we’d better get busy adding Fidel to diagrams of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
My favorite part about this list is that the site took hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop.
So, is it the “left” or the “right” that’s got pots of money to spend on advancing their paranoid conspiratorial agenda?
Sheesh.
Chopped Liver - c’mon - don’t be greedy. You were on that Right Coast thing the other day. There’s glory for you.
Y’know, it just goes to show how divorced from reality Horowitz is. He clearly doesn’t realize what the equivalent database for Republican contributors would look like, otherwise he wouldn’t start this.
Chopped Liver - c’mon - don’t be greedy. You were on that Right Coast thing the other day. There’s glory for you.
I suppose it was a nice knockdown argument.
Is it OK to nominate yourself? Or do you have to be seconded by a MBF?
> (note that the site is in beta, so these links may stop working soon)
Gee, was it wrong of me to slip and run wget against this database? Damn clumsy keyboarding…
I notice that if you look up individuals by letter, they’re listed by first name. Hilary Clinton, for example, is listed under “H.” Which confirms pretty much what you’d expect about Horowitz’s ability to deal with details.
(Bill Clinton, BTW, has no listing under C, B (Bill), W (William)or J (Jefferson).)
In related news: Follow the dynasty.
If they ever do one on the right, they will find all roads lead to the conservative’s savior, Rev. Moon. He’s spent billions putting them in power. No Moon and the theocrats and fascists who now control the republican party would still be called “Bircher’s”.
quoting:
U.S News and World Report March 27, 1989
>Through this method of recruiting, the church(Unification) has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation, the largest of the conservative think tanks and an important source of government personnel during the Reagan administration.
…..
“Most people are afraid to address the issue because they don’t want to publicize the extent of the church’s involvement,” says Amy Moritz of the Conservative National Center for Public Policy Research.
Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to the church, conservatives also fear repercussions if they expose the church’s role. end quote
_________
did you catch this? deserves repeating///
the church(Unification) has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation,…
Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to the church,
___________
Moon’s organization has been the backbone of the right for twenty years. Their leaders know it but the grunts, the pod people, have no idea.
yep, who is the ‘go to’ guy for the right?
http://www.au.org/churchstate/cs6013.htm
>Just a few years ago, Moon announced he was ready to give up on the United States, but the change of administrations in Washington seems to have sparked a change of heart in him. Frederick Clarkson, a journalist who has studied Moon and other far-right movements, notes that Moon specializes in the creation of “Astroturf organizations” – groups that appear to have grassroots power but that in reality speak mostly for Moon. Moon has used these groups to curry favor with Republicans for more than 30 years, Clarkson said, and is revving them up again to help the new Bush administration.
“Whenever the conservatives identify an issue as important to their agenda, Moon creates an Astroturf organization to create the appearance of grassroots support for these initiatives,” Clarkson said.
________
Read these for a touch of info on Moon and the soul selling right.
http://www.mediachannel.org/originals/moontranscript.shtml
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon.html
“web of shadowy figures and money flows” On the left? Where? Please tell me! So….what’s the plan? Are we going to take down the corporate class or what?
Somebody’s been drinking their kool-aid out of their tinfoil hat.
My grandfather, George Wald, went to his grave disappointed that he’d only made Nixon’s second enemies list.
America’s the land of opportunity, right, where children should do better than their grandparents? I’ve got to get myself on Horowitz’s list somehow.
It does have Bill Clinton.
It also has Jean Genet, but not Andre Gide, Emma Goldman or Rosa Luxembourg. Nor UC Berkeley.
Harvard Alumni Association, which of course includes the B-School, right? Which includes ummmm…Fearless Leader, right?
Why does Fearless Leader hate America, going to such a lefty school and all?
Davey thinks he’s hid his site. But we still have it. Heh, heh, heh.
Louis Farrakhan?! Oh, that’s right, the anti-semetic thing.
From this morning’s Rocky Mountain News;
…Horowitz said he was “flabbergasted” Monday when told of some of the Colorado groups listed on the site. Editors and researchers he hired entered that information and he hadn’t seen it, Horowitz said.
Marjie Griek, executive director of the Colorado Association of Recyclers, said her group represents industry and city-based recycling programs and does educational work.
“I think it’s a rather sad statement for their organization that they would consider us leftist,” she said, then added with a laugh: “Who knows? We just might topple the government if we recycle too much.”
Perhaps this is unfairly nitpicking for a site still in beta, but in addition to all the missing people (me, for instance) and the dead people, it has people listed at their old jobs. Rogers Smith and Robert Johnston have both left Yale, for instance. And while it has the Harvard Alumni Association (that bastion of socialism), it doesn’t have <a href=”http://www.alumniforabetteryale.orgAlumni for a Better Yale, which truly is a progressive alumni association.
Another lefty-bashing web site?
One seriously wonders who is paying the bills.
Well, Marx supposedly supported Arsenal, as does bin Laden. Oh, but then so do I. It’s a fair cop, guv — put me on the list!
Well, Marx supposedly supported Arsenal, as does bin Laden. Oh, but then so do I. It’s a fair cop, guv — put me on the list!
It looks as though you need a username and password now. Anyone have one they would like to share?
Surely you can do this for the right as well. In fact, it would be much more convinving to build a map like this for all political actors everywhere, without assuming some straightforward left-right split must exist. There are plenty of people on the right with links to bin Laden and Iraq’s Baath party too, after all.
Christ, the American Hydrogen Association is in there. What a maroon Horowitz is.
C’mon, folks: this is David Horowitz we’re talking about: Karl Marx would make his big-deal lefty-link-list-o-fame, but so would Harpo and Chico, no doubt.
The guy is just a chromosome shy of being Ann Coulter with a beard: who takes this clown seriously?
Feels very similar to activistcash.org which takes easily accessible public information, and tries to whip a nice froth of hysteria over their discoveries.
Getting mentioned to AC is definitely something of a status symbol in certain groups. FtN will have to work hard to match its breathless sincerity.
There’s another thing they’ve got in common - they’re all descended from monkeys!!!
Bit late here, but there is a site tracking the right:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
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Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
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Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
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Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
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Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
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Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
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Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
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Andrew Gelman
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Moment, Linger on
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Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
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Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
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Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
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