Mark Phillips: The American Question

4/6/03: Battleground amazon.com.

Spent cartridges alongside the road to Baghdad.

It seems to me that one simple way in which activists can contribute something with potential long-term impact is by participating in amazon.com's online Customer Reviews.

Amazon allows site visitors to post comments re each book they sell. These are sometimes very interesting and helpful. Other times they're simply ideological axe-grinding. Taken in balance they can encourage or discourage the sales of particular works.

From the perspective of struggle over narratives they're intriguing. Participants are real people, not for the most part professional ideologues, sitting down to shape readers' mental views of the world. Ultimately it's not the fate of particular books which is in contest, but the strengthening or weakening of right-wing and left-wing perspectives.

Here's an example. A right-winger posted this terse, myth-driven review of Marilyn B. Young's remarkably inoffensive The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990:

"This book should not be read by anyone, it simply rehashes every old myth about Vietnam. Read 'Vietnam: The Necessary War' or 'The Defeat of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army' to get the truth and not his liberal axe-grinding ... that has passed for history for over 25 years."

As I think this quotation shows, amazon has built something which is more than a clever marketing mechanism. It's an ideological and cultural battleground. Shouldn't we be there?

It's simple to contribute. Some methods take very little time. Here's a list which occurs to me; there are surely more which others can invent:

• Vote. Cast positive votes supporting the works of progressive authors. Cast negative votes opposing the works of right-wing authors.
• Vote some more. Amazon lets you vote on the reviews people post, as well as the works under review. When a wing-nut posts a mythological note like the one I quoted, cast a no vote answering the question, "Was this review helpful to you?" Help less-informed visitors understand whose interventions are worthwhile, and whose aren't.
• Write short reviews. I'd suggest keeping it down to just a few sentences. If a work is helpful, explain why. If it's not, explain why not. If it's right-wing mythology, say so, without getting personal. Be reasonable, and be brief. Write a lot of reviews. Become known among amazon.com customers as an authority on the subjects you know well. Build a reputation that carries weight.

These are all actions made possible by the Web. In a real sense we can participate directly in the formation of popular consciousness. It's easy to do, and in its small way it offers the possibility of changing the world.

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