The International Herald Tribune today puts the long running ‘mad cow’ story in Korea into a Web 2.0 context. I’m not sure whether this is heartening or deeply disturbing.

On the one hand it shows that the world really has changed; that the power of the Internet to pull people together and address major social issues continues to be a force to be reckoned with. In theory this should lead to greater oversight of government and business as their actions and motivations come under closer scrutiny.

On the other, it shows how dangerous that power can be in the absence of rational, critical thought. The protests in Korea are sustained by a comparatively small number of agitators with a specific political agenda and fed by junk science and mindless nationalism. The result is not a triumph but a breakdown in the democratic process.

I see some disturbing parallels between this situation and the current Ahmadayah issue in Indonesia. In both cases the prejudices of a few people are being fed into a giant public megaphone that effectively drowns out the voice of dissent. In the IHT story, one sentence stood out:

“In the online discussions on beef, you are welcome only if you voice a certain opinion, and you’re attacked if you represent an opposing view,” said [Kim Il Young, a political scientist]. “I doubt the debate is rational.” (emphasis mine)

The Internet culture in Indonesia is not nearly as pervasive as it is in Korea, but the tendency to shout “Merdeka” and jump on the anti-establishment bandwagon looks, to my admittedly fresh view, disturbingly similar.

Bigots have always had the capacity to whip up popular outrage, but it’s sad to see a tool with an unrivaled capacity for constructive debate be used instead to promulgate the tyranny of the mob.