This is a perceptive argument that B Obama has brought together the techniques of 1960s’ New Left/Marxist ‘community mobilisation’ with networked Internet cleverness.

But allowing the masses to ‘own the campaign’ has been accomplished in part by letting all sorts of extremists (anti-semitic, communist, Jihadist and others) rant away prolifically – on Obama’s own community website!

Deliberate but over-ambitious ‘community building? A security lapse? Dirty tricks? Incompetence?

Now the most offensive contributions are quickly being removed. And the site managers are busy trying to hide their traces by ‘cleaning’ the memory caches of Google and other search sites.   

A bit late?