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Many wonder what specifically could be so fundamentally dangerous about blogs. After all, blogs are just opinion pieces of personal reflection. However, as the following real world examples show, blogs can have an impact upon the world from without the Internet, influencing events in ways that become frightening. Recently, Fairfax Republican Delegate Tim Hugo ran an attack ad against his Democratic opponent Rex Simmons. The source for the vitriol was a blog diary listed on the website www.raisingkaine.com.3 What’s even more interesting is that the source of the quoted blog was a not high-ranking politician but rather a student majoring in government and international politics at George Mason University.
Hatred for one’s fellow human being does not halt, even when the target of enmity goes the way of the all the earth. This past summer the controversial Reverend Jerry Falwell died. Not long after his death, the bloggosphere buried him with written rage. One blogger, called ‘The Moderate Left’, stated “I wish I believed in Hell, so I could imagine Falwell enduring the eternal torment he wished on so many”4 and another, named ‘Pandagon’, declared without ignominy “The gates of hell swing open and Satan welcomes his beloved son.”5
As if hatred amplified was not enough of a reason to worry about the bloggosphere, national security and threat of global terrorism expanding provide another concern. Babar Ahmad, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, was a computer wiz who organized and ran a network of websites. A couple years ago he was arrested for his online activities, for the websites he helped run “served as a propaganda and fundraising front for Islamic extremists, including Chechen rebels, the Taliban militia, and al Qaeda affiliates.”6 Could this be our future when it comes to blogs? Hundreds maybe thousands of terrorist echo chambers spewing anti-West, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian material only a click or two away from impressionable youth? This is a very possible future, for within a year of Ahmad’s arrest nearly 10,000 people signed an online petition demanding his release from British custody.7 This shows how much influence one can have in the real world via the Internet.