The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov

The internet, far from promoting democracy or liberal values, has become a tool of authoritarian
regimes, insists this trenchant survey

John Kampfner

Rarely can a book’s publication have been so well timed and so badly timed. When he began writing
his forensic account of the internet and its role in democracy promotion, Evgeny Morozov might have
assumed it would be required reading for geeks and diplomats. Now, thanks to Julian Assange and the
Wikileaks furore, it is required reading for all.

Yet, through no fault of his own, the writer is unable to address the burning questions that have been
raised by the industrial leaking of confidential American government documents. Still, readers should
not be put off. The Net Delusion is a compelling primer and rebuff to the “cyber utopians” who have
argued with their characteristic ardour that the world wide web would join up citizens around the world
in a common fight against dictatorships. As Morozov puts it in his introduction, the internet promised
to be “the ultimate cheat sheet that could help the West finally defeat its authoritarian adversaries”.
What the photocopier and fax machine did for the dissidents in 1989, the computer would do in China,
Burma and beyond. As we all know, this has not happened. Why?

Morozov guides the reader through the explanations. For starters, he argues (aided perhaps by his
Belarussian upbringing) that policymakers in the West consistently overestimate popular desire for
change. He suggests that the overthrow of communism in the 1980s had more to do with structural
explanations, such as an inability of Soviet bloc economies to produce consumer durables, than people
power. Citing an intriguing thesis by two German academics, Opium for the Masses: How Foreign
Media Can Stabilise Authoritarian Regimes, Morozov contends that West German television, far from
increasing the anti-communist yearnings of its East German brethren, served instead to anaesthetise
them to politics. Things really weren’t so bad under Erich Honecker when you could watch Dallas and
Miami Vice. (Taking a leaf out of Honecker’s book, the modern Kremlin has taken to swamping
Russia’s internet service with diversionary entertainment — everything from shows in which jealous
spouses can spy on their wives or husbands, to a You’ve Been Framed type late-night nudity
programme.)

Where this book really comes into its own, however, is when describing the extent to which 21st-
century authoritarians have learnt to exploit the internet for their own ends. Hugo Chavez, for instance,
has a Twitter feed called Chavezcandanga (a mischievous play on the word devil) that purports to be a
conversation between the Venezuelan president and supporters and critics, but which in reality is a
handy tool for pumping out propaganda (the amorous Chavez is also prone to respond to female
interlocutors with mild admonishments to his “darlings” and “cuties”). And I was fascinated to read not
just how the Iranian regime saw off the “Twitter uprising” of June 2009, but how it went on to exploit
the same technology. Using social networking and texting, millions of citizens began receiving
warnings of “destabilising propaganda” disseminated by American-backed trouble-makers. More
sinisterly, once the revolts had died down, the security services then used details gleaned from
chatrooms and social-networking pages to track down and punish critics.

The Chinese are particularly adept at using the internet as the ultimate surveillance tool to trace current
and potential dissidents. As the author remarks, we make it easy for authoritarians to find us. “Every
time we post a greeting to our friend’s Facebook wall…or leave a disapproving comment on the
website of our favourite newspaper, we leave a public trail.”

Punishment is one tool. Prevention is another. The technology companies — still predominantly
American — are the people who incur the costs, do the dirty censorship work on the behalf of
governments, and then get blamed by the users. The author lists a number of instances of the Silicon
Valley giants doing the bidding of dictators. I was particularly struck by the record of Facebook taking
off pages of anti-government groups in Morocco, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

The strength of Morozov’s account lies in the individual examples he assembles. Some are familiar,
such as the “50 cent” brigade in China who get paid for posting pro-government blogs and attacking
dissenters. There are, according to latest estimates, around 280,000 Chinese computer geeks who help
“neutralise undesirable public opinion”. But I did not know the story of Konstantin Rykov, the
godfather of the Russian internet, who began with a porn site then became a Kremlin propagandist. And
I was disconcerted but not wholly surprised by the notion of the Jewish Internet Defence Force, a pro-
Israel advocacy group that apparently deleted nearly 110,000 members from an Arabic language group
sympathetic to Hezbollah. My favourite, though, was the Ukrainian version of RentAFriend. Instead of
paying someone to accompany you to a restaurant or a first night at the opera, you can apparently pay
$4 an hour to each person who joins your political demonstration, chanting slogans of your choice.

The overall argument is trenchant and persuasive: the internet, per se, Morozov shows, has not
promoted democracy or liberal values. The tone the author adopts, however, is occasionally off-putting;
a little too much holier-than-thou is employed to remind readers of the infelicitous remarks of certain
public figures. It was crass of Gordon Brown to assert that the world would not see another Rwanda
massacre because information would get out too quickly; it was cringe-making to read, from a
Columbia University economist, that “the PC [personal computer] is incompatible with the CP
[Communist party]”; or this, courtesy of a New York Times columnist: “By giving the Chinese people
broadband,” the Chinese leaders are “digging the Communist party’s grave”. Yes, hindsight is a
wonderful thing.

Still, this is a valuable contribution to a debate in which Morozov has become a leading figure. In the
new world after Wikileaks, two bulls are locking horns — the neo-anarchic view that all governments
are bad and all information is good, versus the increasingly intolerant approach by governments
(including now America) to internet freedom. The bit in the middle, mediated journalism, NGOs and
other institutions, is being dangerously squeezed.

John Kampfner is the chief executive of Index on Censorship