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The Web Won't Topple Tyranny
An anonymous reader writes "Joshua Kurlantzick of the New Republic online writes that the internet--once heralded as a revolutionary force in politics--has turned out to be surprisingly nonthreatening to dictators and tyrannies. Reminds me of Howard Dean, and the trend to see technological change as a politically progressive force. Maybe this is not such a good idea?"
It is doing the same thing that television did in the 60's, when it brought the Vietnam "conflict" into the living room in all of its horrendous glory. Now we get to read the BBC and get a different take on why the world hates us.
Howard Dean was a success story for the internet. He gathered a huge amount of money and marshalled a decent amount of supporters.
He lost because he stupid campaign manager blew all that money in the insignificant first two states of the primary, mostly fighting against Dick Gephardt-- who turned out to basically be a hopeless kamakaze attack steered into the Dean campaign anyway.
If it hadn't been for incompetence on the part of said campaign manager, Dean would have won or at least made enough fo an impact you would not now be chiding the internet-oriented aspects of his campaign strategy.
The main reason that the internet has not been a threat to dictators is that the dictators don't need to control the internet. They only need to control the computers that access the internet.
This is no different than controlling any other type of media. (Control of presses/television stations/etc.)
Guess what - neither did the printing press, the telephone, radio or television.
Don't you think, though, that there is not one single factor that can bring dictators down but it's a set of smaller reasons.
I think the Internet is a rather strong eroding factor. It isn't an instant fix, but it works to undermind the foundation of these regimes. Someone above said that "radio, TV, telephone" didn't do it either.. right, but the contributed. Nothing works all at once... all the communication together eventually brings it all down at once upon itself, like it did in the USSR.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Quote: How long does this guy think these countries have had the web, and what percentage of these people does he think use it there? And finally how long does he think it takes for something like this to change culture? Holy Shit Dude! Its like saying: "we started publishing an underground newspaper three years ago, and it has yet to topple Dictator so and so.." Real soulutions take time. Cultural change takes time. And it is WAY to early to be making judgements about the way the web is affecting these places
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Did you RTFA? The major point is that although internet usage is growing rapidly in dictatorial countries, it's not making the difference that early prophets of the internet's potential as a force for freedom had hoped. Which is really too bad. I confess that I was one of those who believed that the internet would be as revolutionary in spreading "dangerous ideas" as the printing press was.
Of course, it's early days yet. IIRC, the press was generally under the control of The Authorities until a couple of centuries after it came into existence. So things might get better. we can hope.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One person cannot forcefully overthrow a government alone. The first step in an insurrection is organizing people who are like-minded that the government needs to be replaced.
But world leaders, journalists, and political scientists who tout the Internet as a powerful force for political change are just as wrong as the dot-com enthusiasts who not so long ago believed the Web would completely transform business.
This is a classic example of a writer who had an agenda first, and then sought to write a story to back it up. The whole article is bogus.
The Internet HAS completely transformed business. It has become a major source of a variety of political discussion and activism. Anyone who has been paying attention can see that.
The mainstream political/business publications are resistant to anything which upsets the existing delicate balance, so they often hold new technology (i.e. things they don't understand, or can't control, or can't profit from based on the way they've been leveraging their power and control) to ridiculous, unrealistic standards.
So if we put Internet kiosks in a communist country and the regime doesn't topple in six months, that's a failure of the Internet? Get real!
I know this is nothing new, but am I the only one who doesn't see this new mingling of promotion and editorial which seems to now be totally dominant? An entity "proclaims" something IS the way it IS. Never mind coming up with a realistic explanation. Most people have such short attention spans they don't check the facts or read between the lines.
Did someone expect that tyrants could just be voted out with a web poll?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The kind of change the article is talking about can take years, even generations. Widespread access to the web hasn't really existed in most areas of the world but for a few years. Just as radio and television broadcasts didn't topple governments overnight, neither can we expect the web to be able to. But the web will play an important role in change. Those young people surfing pop-culture sites are really the bigger threat to totalatarianism - as they grow older, they'll start to look around and see what people in more liberal, western countries have versus what they have and realize the truth.
It is to be expected that where power is derived form force, the existence of the internet will have little political effect. On the other hand, where power is derived from propaganda the internet will have significant effect. This thesis is borne out if you look at recent political movements in the west, e.g. the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements.
The number of people involved in the anti-war movement in particular was unprecedented, and depended largely for its success on the internet - both as an alternative news source and as a organisational tool.
It's true that the internet is not the cornucopia of freedom it was hyped up to be.
But the underlying premise, that information is essential to liberty, remains true, and the internet as a technology (perhaps not as a product) is the best way of getting accurate and timely information.
The very fact that the author was unable to access websites belonging to dissident groups proves the point. If the internet was irrelevant, these sites would not be blocked.
In the past, a dictatorial regime would progressively close off the flow of free information to its populace, the better to feed them the diet of lies that sustain such regimes. These days, that is harder than it has ever been, and this is largely thanks to the internet, including humble email.
I believe the internet has brought liberty to many people, it's just that the process is incomplete.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The article is actually rather detailed and well-thought. The author makes some interesting arguments about why the Internet has not been as great a vessel for democratic progress as some hoped it would be.
One argument is that yes, geeks do not socialize. More specifically, the author argues that the Internet is inherently detrimental to social debate:
Another shortcoming of the Internet is that it lends itself to individual rather than communal activities. It "is about people sitting in front of a terminal, barely interacting," says one Laotian researcher. The Web is less well-suited to fostering political discussion and debate because, unlike radio or even television, it does not generally bring people together in one house or one room.
Another argument is that many governments have simply stifled the Internet completely, reducing its utility altogether:
But the Internet's inherent flaws as a political medium are only part of the reason for its failure to spread liberty. More significant has been the ease with which authoritarian regimes have controlled and, in some cases, subverted it. The most straightforward way governments have responded to opposition websites has been simply to shut them down.
It goes on to mention a great number of examples of such activities; including government policies in Singapore, China and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. I could not fail to be outraged at reading descriptions of such vile cencorship, which is unfortunately a fact of life for a great number of the world's Internet users.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Actually, speaking as someone who follows this stuff, you're completly wrong.
The Dean supporters don't see it as a "swindle". They see it as Dean took all the media heat for that amount of time..the first person to hit the beach, and hard. And set the tone for the entire debate in a very positive fasion.
What did they get? A very good chance of not only getting Bush out of office, but starting a conversation to make real change.
Actually, very little of our revolution was fought in any way as a guerilla war. We fought mainly as a standing army in uniform, albeit one on the run for much of the time. We had spies. The Brits had spies, but in all, it was a quite traditional war for the period in which it was fought.
As for the internet spreading ideas at a rapid pace, I'd point out that B.S. spreads as rapidly as the "truth" and the poster's point is FAR MORE VALID than it's rating as a TROLL! Like any media, the Internet is infinitely abuseable. When totalitarian regimes know how to use the media to their favor--Hitler's use of radio and poster art comes to mind--the media becomes a method of control rather than a method of freedom. I see the PRC getting very good at making the Internet work for them, and while it may not be nearly so easy to control as print, it can be controlled.
If you want the old men in Beijing gone, I suggest you start stockpiling guns and put down the mouse.
--Len
Let's use Iran as an example. The postings that I have read from Iranian activists who are fightin against the Mullahs say that if it were not for the support of the British, French and Russians that the Islamic Republic would be long gone by now. It comes as a shock to many that the U.S. isn't the only country in the world that props up evil governments for its own benefit.
There is evidence coming out of both the Rwandan government and the U.N. to show that the French government all but carried out the Rwandan massacre. Its officers gave the orders and set up the scenario that made it possible. With a country like France knowingly carrying out those kinds of actions, no wonder many countries are having problems.
The Internet only works as well as the ability of the citizenry to defend it against government control. Most countries are ruled by a governing elite that make America's look like statesmen. At least in America, the elite has to give a pretense of caring about the common man's rights. In countries ranging from the U.K. to Iran to China, the elite not only doesn't care, but often openly shows its contempt.
It's a cultural conflict and that's why most geeks and nerds are so poorly equipped to understand it. The average geek/nerd's understanding of politics is basically like CmdrTaco's: "democrats good because they're not religious right, republicans bad because they are." It was sickly ironic that people like CmdrTaco supported Gore, since 2/3 of the things that were wrong with tech policy at the time could be blamed on the Clinton administration. That again illustrates why most geeks just "don't get it."
Honest political analysis and insight takes a lot of time and effort. The geek mind can deal with it on an intellectual level quite well. The problem though is that society isn't ready for many of the changes. And by society I am speaking more in a liberal cosmopolitan sense.
Most of the human race is nowhere near as liberal as the average American. That is why most geeks and self-proclaimed intellectuals fail when they try to apply American standards to developing countries. It's not that our cultures are completely equal because no culture is better than another, it's that the spread of liberalism takes time.
If you want to protect the Internet, work on spreading liberalism around the world. Give money to the Reason foundation, to the Minaret Foundation if you're a Muslim. Buy copies of Reason magazine, Liberty and other liberal (ie neither conservative nor socialist) publications.
The Internet represents the liberal "end of history" for communication systems. It cannot in the long run work in a world that is largely conservative or socialist.
Disclaimer: I have for a long time been a harsh critic of the foreign policy establishment in America because of their tendency to betray our founders. Our founders would be horrified to see how illiberal America's foreign policy is today, so do not take me to be some wild-eyed zealot. I may be an American patriot, but i'm also a southern nationalist. For those from South America, remember that we Southerners too are at least semi-victims of "Yanqui Imperialism."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Blame the router manufacturers.
If I take 4 drums of fuel oil and 2,000 lbs of ammonium nitrate I can plant 100 acres of corn with a tractor or build a car bomb. If I choose the latter it's the fault of the oil and fertilizer companies? I don't think so.
It's all very well to talk theoretically about information setting people free, but the bottom line is that if you live in one of these countries and you make "dissident information" available online the authorities will very likely track you down. Similarly, if you are seen to be accessing the IPs associated with "dissident information" you will, at the very least, end up on some kind of watchlist. Sure, the availability of Internet cafes helps some - you obtain a veneer of anonymity by hiding in the crowd - but probably not enough to really let people speak out. What would really help is something like the old (and apparently now defunct) Freedom system that Zero Knowledge Systems put together, which used strong crypto to dissociate sender and receiver from each other. Of course, then the authorities will just pick up anyone producing encrypted traffic. But if all traffic ran through a Freedom-like system...
Ok, ok, I know that's wishful thinking on my part. But I can hope, can't I? And maybe if enough of us living in countries that still retain some (political) freedom started to make use of Freedom, and encouraging businesses and news orgs to do the same, then it would begin to permeate the 'net as a whole. Sigh, there goes that wishful thinking again...
Here is one counterexample
Also see the Poland, East Germany, the Soviet Union
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
...who explained to me that in a dictatorship, it doesn't matter what people think, because you have a gun to their head. If you can control what they do, then what they think doesn't matter.
Only in a democratic system, where direct extortion is prohibited, does thought control become necessary. When people are relatively free to do as they please does it become necessary to control what they think - and that's what the media cartels have learned how to do.
The Internet allows for the relatively free flow of subversive thought and criticism, which certianly sparks change in societies where force is not king. But in a dictatorship, That's not enough. Until the Internet traffics in guns, dictatorship won't care about it.
Hmm, this sounds somewhat fractally like the process of natural selection, come to think of it...
First of all, "the Web" and "the Internet" are not interchangeable terms. I'm tired of hearing from writers who undertake to write about the social implications of technology which they don't seem to understand in depth, who seem to think the network is entirely contained within their web browser.
To find things on the web, you have to look for them. Revolutionary ideas don't jump out of the web and slap you in the face. You have to go looking for them. Which means 1) you are somewhat inquisitive 2) you know at least enough about what you're looking for to have enough search terms to plug into Google or some other index.
Which means you are already to some degree indoctrinated into the movement you want to read about. This is why political activism on the web today is something of a global circle jerk. The point of any real change is to bring new people into the fold and spread the idea that they don't need to put up with the tyranny they are living under. Once that idea reaches critical mass, people will get bolder about challenging the establishment, and take appropriate action.
As a few people have pointed out, people aren't going to embrace that idea unless they are really being oppressed in a way that has affected them personally and perhaps traumatically. Tyranny is an acceptable way of life for a lot of people if they have their basic human needs met. They don't really know how much better their life could be because they've never experienced anything better and they don't miss what they never had. Or they are beat down by their oppressors to such a degree that they no longer believe they have the power to change things.
So of course the web is not going to be a great vehicle for spreading new ideas. It's just the simplest and most accessible layer of the internet for armchair revolutionaries to utilize and bitch about. It CAN be a great medium for people who are already motivated and are actively seeking what's out there.
So, the author is half right about the web, especially when he notes that it's an especially easy medium for the despotic governments to monitor and crack down on.
What really will spread the cause of liberty and bring down the most oppressive and iron fisted dictators and oppressive governments in this world is japanese teenage girls with cellphones.
You heard me right. Look there if you want to see the prototype for your revolution. That's right... Rural chinese people and disgruntled Saudi youth are not "gettin' a Dell", dude.
Net connected consumer communications devices will become ubiquitous, and they will support new protocols which are designed from the ground up for social networking. They will support encryption and VPN, and will be all but impossible to suppress. Wireless and satellite have the potential to bypass a lot of the censorship going on at the network routing layer.
I could give this writer a break for not having the vision to see where things are going, but there is simply no excuse for not seeing how they are today. The people who are living under bad government are lucky to be able to read, have water to drink, and electricity... let alone a computer, internet access, doughnut friday, and a copy of the New Republic.
reply to sysarcathushcom
After all, the people don't control it. Revolution isn't profitable to those who do control it.
Sure, access to and control of information are important, but they distract from the Internet's most revolutionary aspect: making it relatively easy to implement new systems of commerce and governance. In other words, the value may lie more with the new processes the Internet allows than with the content it carries.
Unfortunately, Kurlantzick's article focuses mostly on content and access to content, so it misses this. It also misses the main element of Internet architecture: the revolution occurs at the periphery. As is often the case with disruptive technology, those who directly challenge the old order straightaway get swatted. They're not strong enough yet. The ones who will ultimately prevail over entrenched power will do so by finding and serving unnoticed markets and constituencies.
Throughout history (especially in Asia) groups that were fussiest about counting beans tended to thrive and rule. Now the Internet arrives, and with automation so abundantly available at its periphery, places organizational powers once reserved for nations and large corporations in the hands of small groups and individuals.
Because the technology is new, people use it like they did phone, radio and TV. That will change, as it has started to here in the USA. E-bay and Amazon.com have massively shifted commerce, and social networking sites are creating volunteer organizations and political caucuses out of thin air. These changes constitute a revolution that is gradually working its way inward from the periphery. Even in Asia, I expect, if you know where to look.
No, it is because the internet isn't armed.
The internet is a source of gossip.
Dictators are a source of guns.
If you think the pen (or keyboard) is mightier than the sword, let's perform a little experiment, shall we? You grab your keyboard, I'll grab my katana. No, let's make it a little more even. I'll only grab my bokken.
Please note that my bokken is rather less powerful than a black Ford Falcon full of armed thugs.
The pen has its greatest power only where there is already a culture of liberalism, such as in colonial America and France.
The pen did not repel the Turks from Vienna or drive them out of Greece. The Spartans found the pen to be rather useless at Thermopylae and the Athenians likewise at Marathon.
The arrival of the written word did not topple dictatorships. If anything it strengthed them by allowing the transmission of written codes. The telegraph did not topple dictatorships. Nor the telephone. Radio Free Europe, while a great boon to many behind the Iron Curtain, is not responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union, and a similar project has had no effect at all in Cuba. The internet did not topple Saddam Hussien.
To topple dictators you need guns. Recent evidence suggests that nowadays those guns pretty much have to be mounted on tanks and airplanes. Angry villagers with torches and pitchforks are no match for tanks and airplanes. They at least need shoulder launched missles.
Thinking the internet can free Tibet or Burma is a wee bit of wishful thinking. Thinking it would do so in the infancy of the WWW is really kinda silly and smacks of cognitive dissonance.
Maybe people want to think that it can because it frees them from having to think of guns. We've had some bad experiences with guns misapplied.
If Burma is going to topple its dictatorship by using the internet, it's going to be to write posts saying, "Please, send us some frickin' tanks!. Oh, and a couple of A-10s would be handy, if you can see your way clear. And maybe some people to train us in their use. Don't forget the ammo."
Of course Burma is in southeast Asia. Remember my mentioning bad experiences with the misapplication of guns?
We're a bit, ummmmmmmmm, gun shy, when it comes to southeast Asia. Beating up Arabs sitting on rich oil fields who have been living on nothing but grass for two weeks is more to our taste these days. Asians like living on grass. And they fight back. And they're not good for headlines in an election year.
Even with the internet.
KFG
If political subversion becomes so mainstream that kids in Internet cafes are reading political articles, then this tyrannical government is probably already dead.
Come on, be realistic! How many kids in the US go to political sites? Maybe 1 out of 1,000,000? How many kids in the US even know anything about politics? You might as well do like Howard Stern and go ask a stripper.
The Web is not a panacea. People still need to care. In China right now, most people don't care, they will just live however they can and try to stay out of the way of the government. Some people where I work even want to go back to China because the living is so good now in their eyes. They don't give a shit about human rights, about the right to criticize the government, etc.
The fact is that the Web is another facility for those who care to communicate. For example, e-mail was one of the things that kept the world informed about the attempted coup in Russia in 1996. During the Tiananmen Square in 1990, if activists had e-mail, I'm sure they could have been much more organized, and the people of China could have heard about it and the truth of how the army fired on their own people. The fact is that all other means of communication were completely shut down. I have friends from China who at the time knew nothing of the truth of Tiannamen square until they came to the US to study.
In South Korea, there was a massacre at Kwang-Ju where the army killed dozens if not hundreds of protesters. Again, my friends of Korea at the time said they knew nothing of it.
If more people had been connected to the web, and e-mails were forwarded like crazy between activists and then finally to the regular masses, maybe something could have been done?
This is the power of the web, and it is available to many people... it's the activists job to sell to these people that change needs to occur.
I see your principle, but has browsing the Internet been established as a Human Right? If that is the case, were we all deprived of our Human Rights before the US Military (DARPA) invented the Internet?
(If the answer is "Yes", I do find it a little amusing that the US Military is credited with creating a Human Right; it is usually accused of the opposite)
While Cisco and the rest may not be...
I also understand, and partially agree, with your point, but where is the logical end? Take the case of providing aid to the poor in third world countries. I know that some portion of that aid will be stolen by some dictator as tribute or whatnot, and, therefor, my sending aid is helping a dictator.
Of course, Cisco's intentions are no where near as pure as someone giving aid, I'm just trying to point out an extreme end to the same line of reasoning. The Department of State (I believe) establishes export controls to police this sort of thing. If Cisco is not in violation of export controls, are they doing something that society has deemed wrong?
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I see your principle, but has browsing the Internet been established as a Human Right?
No, but free expression of politcal dissent is. The train of logic is that if you provide material support knowing that it will be used to arrest political dissidents, then you are an accessory to the tyrants' crimes.
The Department of State (I believe)
It's Commerce.
establishes export controls to police this sort of thing.
The export controls tend to deal more with things that can be used against the country of origin. How the exports are used in the country of destination, I don't think are typically dealt with. When exports are limited because of how they are used in the country of destinations, it tends to be an embargo because of some international crisis of some sort. (Or atleast that's been my observation.)
Quite frankly, most of the time countries don't give a damn about the internal matters of foriegn countries. That's why cheap weapons continue to flow into, and commodities like diamonds flow out of countries with long lasting civil wars. That doesn't make it right though.
If Cisco is not in violation of export controls, are they doing something that society has deemed wrong?
While it's not against the law to say "get the hell out of my way bitch!" when you bump into someone all the street, it's not really something society smiles upon either.
Wow, disingenuous much? You know what got the British out of India? Mohandas Gandhi and several million followers refusing to obey the laws that the British had enacted. Africa? It was not the Zulu rebellion, it was the expense of maintaining African colonies in general, when compared to the profits made by buying raw materials from Africans and selling them finished product. Radio Free Europe could actually be credited with a great deal of toppling the Soviet Bloc or not, but I gurantee you that it was not guns. It was the Soviets realizing that despite the possible penalties, people wanted Levis and Springsteen records. You are oversimplifying an incredibly complex issue, and at the same time insulting some of the biggest heroes the dispossessed of this world could have. Federico Lorca, a Spanish poet was murdered by the Nationalists because he represented a threat to their power. Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet, was hunted by the Pinochet dictatorship for the same reason. Mao didn't kill people with guns, he killed those people who were smart enough to disagree with him. Same thing in Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, and many other places. The intelligentsia is targeted because it takes education and communication to rebel, not violence. Dictators do not fear people who are prone to violence, they hire them and make great use of them. Dictators fear those whose words may inflame the populace to action. Because as anyone can tell you, if you kill everyone in the country, there's no one left to govern. I suggest you read a little history before making inane statements like the one you just did.
That said, the internet won't end tyranny because in a situation of true tyranny, the people will have no access to the internet.
Yes, I am quite familiar with Gandhiji. I'm making a book charka right now. I'm also familiar with the concept of nonviolent resistence. My stepfather was a concientious objector in WWII. That was a pretty radical idea at the time. I myself am a Buddhist and Thoreauian.
You might find this hard to believe, but the British in India were not a repressive regime, as these things go. Gandhiji spent some time in prison.
He didn't disappear in the middle of the night. That would have ended his nonviolence campaign in a flash.
That's what happens in truly repressive regimes. Like Mao's China.
You are right about the intelligensia though. Sam and John Adams were intelligent and well educated.
They were smart enough to realize to start stockpiling guns and powder years before the revolution broke out. Which was possible only because they didn't leave in a repressive regime.
Repressive regimes don't fear words. That's an entirely democratic concept. Repressive regimes simply kill everyone who speaks.
Without fear.
You don't have to kill everyone in the country. You just have to decimate them (look it up if you have to. I know the meaning of the word because I spend a good deal of my time reading history). People fall into line.
It might even surprise you that about 10% or so of the population likes living in a repressive regime. Always have. Always will.
There's no accounting for people.
KFG
The guy who wrote the article does not seem to understand what drives change. I was visitng Germany on a monthly basis during the period when the wall fell, the guy does not have a clue why that happened.
Sure dissidents and activists play a critical part in a revolution. But their role is secondary, try talking to some. I have met many of the 'leaders' of the year of miracles, what they were trying to do was to share information and ideas, that was what threatened the dictators.
The Web opens up the communication channels in ways that it is almost impossible to control. The corrupt government of Singapore will get its due sooner as a result of the Web. I know rather a lot about the surveilance they use there having discussed it with some of the Mossad consultants who advised them. The whole state has been designed for surveillance. Every telephone call is logged and they perform network analysis to discover who is talking to whom. The houses are deliberatly designed to actively discourage private entertaining. Restaurants are heavily subsidized in order to encourage people to eat where they can be watched. The result is that any attempt to meet in private is sufficiently unusual to be very noticable.
This all falls apart if the information does not need a dissident movement to make it through. Look at how hard it is to stop trolls on slashdot. Now imagine that you are a blogger in a 'police friendly' state like Singapore. You have to take some care to cover your tracks but it is not impossible. If the government is not corrupt, why do they need to threaten their critics. Police states suffer from obvious internal contradictions.
And don't get me started about the idiocy of the great firewall of china. About the only use it serves is to reduce spam and virus outbreaks somewhat. The criticism that threatens the communist party cadres comes from inside the country.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Cognitive dissonance is not always concious. The imbalance may be felt and expressed without any knowledge that one's beliefs and actions are being dictated by the imbalance caused by the dissonance, because one way to deal with cognitive dissonance is to repress the knowledge, leading to abnormal psychological states with no observable cause.
A subtler form of cognitive dissonance by repression is that of avoiding the conflict altogether by refusing to acknowledge two things you know as facts are in conflict with each other. The "imbalance" never occurs because you don't allow it to. If you allowed yourself to conciously "put two and two togther" that would cause imbalance. So you don't.
Like someone lecturing on Native American culture claiming that they had no beasts of burden before the arrival of Europeans and then going on to describe Inuit culture.
Explicitly pointing this out to them can make them feel very "itchy."
Or imbalanced.
Which can make them angry rather than feeling any state of dilema.
Because they're in a state of cognitive dissonance.
An awful lot of anger is unconcious cognitive dissonance. People prefer to hit something than come to a new conclusion.
Please note that I did not say "thinking the internet can free Tibet and Burma is cognitive dissonance."
In some people who believe that and something else opposed to it, it may be.
I believe there are many such people.
KFG