On the 30th anniversary of Green Left’s founding, February 18, we woke up to discover that we had become collateral damage in the power struggle between the old media oligarchs, such as the detestable Rupert Murdoch and the new media oligarchies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Google.
Overnight, Facebook blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content.
Green Left’s Facebook page was instantly stripped of its content, making it much harder to share our important stories and political analysis.
Many of our readers find our articles — and share them — on social media, so this is a significant blow to getting our message around.
At this stage, we can still share our articles on Twitter (@GreenLeftOnline) and Google has not yet acted on its threat to cut Australia off from its search engine.
This fight between old and new corporate media giants (which are notorious world leaders in corporate tax dodging) is essentially a clash over access to billions of dollars of advertising revenue.
Green Left, which does not rely on advertising revenue, along with other community media sources, has been caught in the crossfire.
We have been overwhelmed with messages congratulating us for 30 years of publishing.
We invite you to join us for our online celebration on March 27. Our guest speaker, Indian socialist and feminist, Kavita Krishnan, will speak about the inspiring Indian farmers’ resistance to corporate greed.
This new threat to our people-powered project comes on top of the continuing challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the imminent roll-out of vaccines, it is likely that the many Green Left fundraising events our loyal supporters organise each year to keep us afloat will be disrupted throughout 2021.
So we are writing to ask our readers to dig deep and make a special donation to our 2021 Fighting Fund.
We also appeal for your help in encouraging more people to take up a Green Left supportership. With the growing restrictions on social media, this is the best way to regularly get GL articles to readers, and to keep GL financially afloat.
There is an old African saying: “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers”.
We are appealing to you to help the grass rise up again!