Little magazines, the Internet and resistance to fascism

[AverageJoe]

I'm doing some research on the history of the small press and I came across the material at the bottom of this post. It's a clip from a short, but fascinating essay. Substitute "the Internet," or even more specifically "Democratic Underground" for "little magazines" and the arguement still holds.

Non-mainstream media is the savior of democracy, I think.


From Trace #4, June 1953:

Barth, Lawrence. “Little Magazines and Tyranny”

After noting that America was moving toward fascism, Barth argues:

“A primary means of fighting back lies in publishing media sometimes scorned as unimportant: the little magazines. What they do, what they have always done, largely, is to go in the opposite direction; this is their highest value. In the Twenties, they led in breaking through the Victorian walls about literature and other arts, in spreading the psychological understanding that came with Freud; in the Thirties, they led the process of opening the public mind to the economic pig-pen that a profit economy can make of human lives, and more sensitive to the fact of organized (and unorganized) fascism. Today, in a mixed period, when people vaguely distrust politicians without quite recognizing the basic irrational nature of politics, itself, the little magazines are islands where ideas may be developed to try to solve human problems by other means than killing off the human beings who have them.”

[Zancan]

1. The small press is what spread the ideas that founded this country

[AverageJoe]

2. Well said, Zancan

And welcome to DU! :hi::hi::hi::hi:

[RainDog]

3. Thanks for posting this

Little magazines have also been the way that literature develops as well.

In some ways more so than ever with the consolidation of publishing houses and the relentless advertising for mainstream fiction that, too often, is nothing more than a mind vibrator with no "off" button.

Project Censored has been doing great work for a long time.

George Seldes is a hero, and "In Fact" was, from what I know of it and other things, some of the best journalism going in Seldes' time.

The progressive era, with its muckrakers, show just how whorish journalism has become. Whorish and co-opted by the CIA.

[donkeyotay]

4. And, it is the minority opinion that they wanted protected because

it just might be right.