"Keen" is something of a misnomer

In which Andrew Keen fails to understand the subtle nature of the medium:

The 1930s fascists were expert at using all the most technologically sophisticated communications technologies - the cinema, radio, newspapers, advertising - to spew their destructive, hate-filled message. What they excelled at was removing the the traditional middlemen like religion, media, and politics, and using these modern technologies of mass communications to speak with reassuring familiarity to the disorientated masses.

Imagine if today’s radically unregulated Internet, with its absence of fact checkers and editorial gatekeepers, had existed back then. Imagine that universal broadband had been available to enable the unemployed to read the latest conspiracy theories about the Great Crash on the blogosphere. Imagine the FDR-baiting, Hitler-loving Father Charles Coughlin, equipped with his "personalized" YouTube channel, able, at a click of a button, to distribute his racist message to the suffering masses. Or imagine a marketing genius like the Nazi chief propagandist Josef Goebbels managing a viral social network of anti-Semites which could coordinate local meet-ups to assault Jews and Communists.

Well, gosh, it'd be kinda like Digg, wouldn't it? Or perhaps Fark?

The media from the "Fascist Thirties" share a common element: the distribution of the information is unidirectional, straight from a centrally-controlled source to the general public. Radio and cinema existed independently of each other until the advent of television, which is undoubtedly a more restricted format than its predecessors; broadcasting rights require government approval. What could possibly offer a more insidiously invasive method than to have a government-controlled box in nearly every home for the manipulation of information?

Conversely, as John Gilmore observed, the Internet has the peculiar trait that it "interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." This has been show time and time again, through the inability of the MPAA/RIAA to stem the tide of file-sharing amongst peers, the development of GPL software, the several varieties of Linux and Firefox, and the rise of the Blogosphere; each of these formed as a response to a centralized monopolistic entity abusing its position at the expense of John and Jane Q. Public. Each entity responded with attempts to crush the opposition, and in each instance they failed, are failing, and will continue to fail in a miserable fashion.

Keen goes on:

Even before the October crash, Americans had become ever-increasingly suspicious to all institutional forms of authority - from traditional political parties to mainstream media organizations to Wall Street executives, educators, and lawyers.

I have an interesting theory: this bleak opinion did not appear ex-nihilo, but as a response to the ever-increasing similarities in candidates from the Democrat and Republican parties, and the institutionalized complicity in the education, financial and judicial systems. But why now? Why at all?

In truth, the advent of the Internet and the resultant magnitude-of-shift in peer-shared information was the death-knell for the halcyon days of central-programming. The people are talking, sharing, creating, and shaking off the fetters of the State and its mewling quislings, and worse yet, they're loving it.

But soft, what fail through yonder comment breaks?

In 2008, the Internet elected Barack Obama; in 2012, in an America with 15 percent or 20 percent unemployment, I doubt that the digital crowd will be quite as wise.

Wrong again, Keen. The Internet elected Ron Paul by way of fundraising, recognition and even as Time's "Man of the Year".

Finally, the pièce de résistance:

For another sneak preview of digital fascism, it’s worth looking at South Korea, another country with universal broadband infrastructure. In April, the new democratically elected South Korean President, Lee Myung Bak lifted a ban on imported American beef. This resulted in an eruption of anger on the Internet-first amongst teenage girls, then on the popular online portal Daum, and finally through teenage "citizen journalists" on blogs, videocasts, and social networks. The rumor spread that all the American beef was tainted with mad cow disease and an online petition for Lee’s impeachment got 1.3 million signatures in a week. And for an even more real-time example of digital fascism, take a look at the way in which this week’s raging anti government violence in Greece by the young and unemployed (already at over 9% in the Greek economy) has been coordinated by Facebook, Twitter and other viral digital networks.

To paraphrase Vox, it's a pity an educated fellow such as Keen cannot muster the presence of mind to open a dictionary:

fas⋅cism
   /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ [fash-iz-uhm] - noun

1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

2. (sometimes initial capital letter) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.

3. (initial capital letter) a fascist movement, esp. the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922-43.

Vox has also been kind enough to permanently link this historical reference.

Clearly, a popular movement to recall a politician is in no way a fascist activity. If anything, advocating the restriction of information to media that have been shown to be propaganda-dissemination mechanisms by authoritarian governments is itself a fascist viewpoint, considering the intimate nature of the relationship between the "approved distributors" and said government.

I did not have a high opinion of the Daily Beast before this, and it has not improved.