Digital Civil War: Confronting the Far-Right Menace

Written by Peter Daou

Narrated by Jonathan Yen

The Far Right's rise to power has ignited a digital civil war that rages across multiple fronts and multiple platforms. It is waged with words and images that are designed to inflict psychological harm, to injure through verbal violence, to intimidate and incite, to wreak havoc with rhetoric. The combatants are citizens, activists, politicians, pundits, coders, conspiracists, trolls, agitators, hackers, and journalists. At stake are the nation's bedrock principles: equal rights, fair elections, freedom of speech, racial justice, and the rule of law.

In Digital Civil War: Confronting the Far-Right Menace, Peter Daou, a veteran digital media adviser to major political figures, provides a firsthand account from the war's front lines. He explains that the unceasing toxicity of social media-often treated as an aberration-is a feature, not a bug, of digital warfare.

A better understanding of how the underlying value systems and moral arguments of the warring parties play out online, Daou argues, aids us in confronting the Far Right's takeover of the Republican Party and the consequent assault on truth, facts, and the foundations of our democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684572939

Reviews for Digital Civil War

[Matan Farris · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Looking at the impact of social media on political narratives, Daou's Digital Civil war works mainly as a "how we got here" chronology as well as an indication of "where we are now." It was definitely an interesting read, and we do need more people writing books that do not diminish the power of social media in 2020. It shows how the left, center, and right interact with each other online and notes the successes and failings of each of these contingents in pushing their individual messages to control media narrative.

As I find with many books that cover and lay out a timeline for events past, it does not do as much in terms of laying out strategy for, as the title indicates, "confronting the far-right menace." Given Daou's advisory roles in the both in the Clinton & Kerry campaigns and the more recent evolution of his activism further left, I am left wishing there was more information on and a dissection of the process of crafting, promoting and maintaining media narratives in the US.

To assist the many new grassroots campaigns and various movements, I do ultimately hope that another book is in the works to this effect. It could be a tool that, paired with Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (which is definitely a recommended read for anyone trying to understand US media), includes a much needed perspective on using social media today to the left's advantage.