Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars

Screen Shot 2016-08-25 at 2.50.36 PM

Earlier this week, I published a post titled Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory, in which I wrote:

As I look at the landscape in 2016 to-date, I observe emergent signs that alternative media is finally beginning to take over from the legacy mainstream media when it comes to impact and influence. The mainstream media (unlike with John McCain in 2008), had decided that Hillary Clinton’s health was not an issue and chose not to pursue it. Many in the alternative media world took a different position, and due to mainstream media’s failure to inform the American public for decades, the alternative media drove that issue to the top of the news cycle. That’s power.

This is an incredibly big deal, and the mainstream media intuitively knows what it means. It means a total loss of legitimately, prestige and power. All of which is well deserved of course.

So here’s the bottom line. 2016 represents the true beginning of what I would call the Media Wars. Alternative media is now capable of driving the news cycle. Mainstream media now has no choice but to fight back, and fight back it will. It will fight back dirty. This is going to get very ugly, but by the time the dust has settled, I think much of the mainstream media will be left as a shell of its former self.

When I wrote the above, I had no idea that two days later Hillary Clinton would deliver a speech in Nevada specifically targeting a nebulous movement referred to as the “alt-right,” as well as several of the prominent websites associated with it. Never in a million years did I think Hillary herself would so publicly enter the Media Wars.

The speech itself was pretty bizarre. Although I found her effective on several fronts, I believe it will ultimately backfire by providing free publicity and fame to many of those she intended to demonize. Precisely because she is so polarizing, Clinton can only make an opposing movement far stronger by engaging in direct attacks on them. Since she is incapable of being a unifying figure for this country, so the moment she calls out a group as her enemy, many people on the sidelines will suddenly say, well maybe they’re not so bad.

The whole thing reminded me of something I wrote in last week’s post, Election 2016 – Why Defeating Trump Won’t Make Trump Go Away:

Hillary Clinton and her supporters are making the case that Donald Trump in 2016 represents some sort of Hitlerian existential threat that must be defeated at all costs. They are desperately trying to sell to the public the notion that all concerns about her incredibly shady past can and should be set aside for the time being because keeping Trump out of the White House takes precedence over everything else. Of course, such an argument is easily dismissed by anyone who is aware enough to understand that Trump (like Sanders) merely serves as a vehicle for justified anger percolating across the land, and that defeating him as an individual accomplishes absolutely nothing in the long-term.

Indeed, a Donald Trump loss is likely to fan the flames of populist angst further, particularly if Hillary Clinton continues along with status quo business as usual as if nothing ever happened, which she undoubtably will. Ironically, many of these delusional “lesser of two evils” Hillary supporters may be unpleasantly surprised to discover that media mogul Trump could even more formidable (and dangerous) than President Trump. Which is precisely why merely fighting against symptoms of a rigged and unethical system solves absolutely nothing, and ultimately makes the underlying problem worse.

The bottom line. It doesn’t matter what happens in this election, Trump isn’t going anywhere because his supporters aren’t going anywhere.

The other problem with the speech were its laughable and obvious contradictions. For example, she starts off by saying the Trump campaign peddles in conspiracy theories found in the “far dark reaches of the internet.” She goes on to name a few of these “dark reach” sites, spending a lot of time on Infowars and Breitbart. This is where things start to come unglued. If these sites are comparable to supermarket tabloids (as she claimed), why craft an entire speech around targeting them? Why would you spend so much energy on crazy fringe sites? The reason is because they aren’t fringe, and as such, she’s decided to personally engage in the burgeoning Media Wars.

As I discussed in my post from a couple of days ago, New York Times columnist Farah Manjoo recently whined on Twitter about how Infowars was appearing at the top of Google search for Hillary health queries. He publicly called for Google to “fix” the problem. That was Tuesday. Two days later the frontrunner for the Presidency of these United States also attacks Infowars. Something big and unprecedented is going on here.

Moreover, after her tirade against Alex Jones and Infowars, Hillary proceed to not just go after Breitbart, but she actually read multiple headlines from the website. Again, if these sites are so fringe, why obsess over them to such an extent? It’s because alternative media is now driving the news cycle and this is extraordinarily dangerous to status quo influence and power. This is simply a fact, whether you like Breitbart or Infowars or not.

But that’s just one bizarre aspect of the speech. What was even more revealing were her shamelessly misleading and contradictory comments on several topics. For one, she talked about how Trump would want foreign travels to the U.S. be subject to screening based on their religion. She then goes on to state how the only other country or group in the world that does this is ISIS. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t exactly true. As Michael Tracey points out:

Of course, we all know why the omission. It’s because the Saudis have given between $10-$25 million to the money-laundering charity fraud known as the Clinton Foundation.

Moving along, toward the end of the speech Hillary quotes a Mexican proverb. She said: “Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are.” To which Max Abrams poignantly replies:

All of this perfectly highlights the unmistakeable fatal flaw with Hillary Clinton as a candidate. She is so compromised, so shady and so corrupt, that she can’t successfully take the moral high ground even against someone like Trump.

All of that aside, she could have probably spun this speech in an effective manner if she hadn’t made one really stupid and very revealing mistake. Despite the crux of her speech being that Donald Trump is a racist who peddles in conspiracy theories, she launched into one of the most absurd conspiracy theories of all when she blamed Russia’s Vladimir Putin for the rise of the “alt-right” and global nationalism. Indeed, she actually called him the grand-godfather of it. Whatever the heck that means.

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element that has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum to have Britain leave the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a bar on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are and I quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race — that’s who Donald Trump wants by his side when he is addressing an audience of American voters.

And the grand-godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This is from someone who just spent 20 minutes bashing Trump and his hordes of conspiracy theorists. Very bizarre.

Finally, I thought her concluding statement was quite telling. She states:

We want to build an America where everyone has a place. Where if you work hard and your do your part you can get ahead and stay ahead. That’s the basic bargain of America. 

Here she seems to be implying that this basic bargain has been broken. That working hard is no longer enough and people are falling behind in droves. I agree, but why is that? Why have things not improved under Obama, and how is Hillary, who wants to carry on with Obama’s policies possibly going to restore this bargain?

She won’t, which is precisely why Trump and Sanders both created movements over the past year and a half. Hillary Clinton is not someone who can unite the country and she’s not someone who can fix our problems. It’s preposterous to think the consummate status quo insider, a war hawk who will undoubtably lead the nation into WW3 can heal this country’s wounds.

It’s not that I think Donald Trump can, it’s just that I know Hillary Clinton won’t.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

6 thoughts on “Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars”

  1. Paul Craig Roberts: Trump Vs. Hillary Summarized

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    The US presidential election this November will tell whether a majority of the US population is irredeemably stupid. If voters elect Hillary, we will know that Americans are stupid beyond redemption.

    We don’t know much about Trump, and anti-Trump propaganda rules in the place of facts.

    But we know many facts about Hillary. We know about her violation of classification laws and the refusal of the Democratic administration to do anything about it. The Democrats prefer to control the White House than to enforce the law, another nail in the coffin in which the rule of law in the US lies.

    We know from their words and deeds and material success that the Clintons are agents for Wall Street, the Big Banks, the military/security complex, Israel, agribusiness, and the extractive industries. Their large personal fortune, approximately $120 million, and the $1,600 million in their foundation, much of which came from abroad in exchange for political favors, attests to the unchallengable fact that the Clintons are agents for the oligarchy that rules America, indeed, that rules the American Empire from Australia and Japan, through North America and Western and Eastern Europe to the Russian border.

    We know that Hillary, like Bill, is a liar.

    We know that Hillary is a warmonger.

    We know that Hillary made the most irresponsible statement ever uttered by a presidential candidate when she declared the President of Russia to be the “new Hitler,” thereby raising tensions between the nuclear powers to a higher level than existed during the Cold War.

    We know that Hillary is allied with the neoconservatives and that her belief in the neocons’ ideology of US world hegemony is likely to result in war with Russia and China.

    All we know about Trump is that the oligarchs, who sent America’s jobs overseas, who flooded the country with difficult-to-assimilate immigrants, who destroyed public education, who bailed out Wall Street and the “banks too big to fail,” who sacrificed American homeowners and retirees living on a fixed income, who intend to privatize both Social Security and Medicare, who have given the public killer cops, relentless violations of privacy, the largest prison poplulation in the world, and destroyed the US Constitution in order to increase executive power over the American people, are violently opposed to Trump. This opposition should tell us that Trump is the person we want in the Oval Office.

    Some claim that it is all a charade and that Trump is playing a role in order to elect Hillary. American politics are so corrupt that anything is possible. However the ruling elites and their puppets seem to be genuinely concerned about Trump’s challenge to their control, and they have united against Trump. They have used their money to buy up “progressive” websites paid to bring the print and TV anti-Trump propaganda onto the Internet, thus joining the Internet presstitutes with the print, TV, and NPR whores who are working overtime to demonize Trump and to elect Hillary.

    The entire power structure of our country is behind Hillary. Both Democratic and Republican political establishments and both ideologies, neoliberals and neoconservatives, are united behind Hillary.

    How much more evidence do Americans need in order to know that a vote for Hillary is a vote for their own emasculation?

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/25/trump-vs-hillary-a-summation-paul-craig-roberts/

    Reply
    • “All we know about Trump is that the oligarchs…..are violently opposed to Trump. This opposition should tell us that Trump is the person we want in the Oval Office.”

      I’m going to keep saying this, folks.

      The oligarchs are playing Brer Rabbit (but they’re not REALLY stuck to a tar baby), the voters who desperately don’t want Hillary are Brer Fox, and a President Trump is the briar patch that the oligarchs are supposedly “violently opposed” to being thrown into.

      As my father always told me, “Pay no attention to what they say, just watch what they do”.

      But you can bet your last dollar that if Hillary does get elected, they’ve still got a plan B.

  2. Hillary came into politics to promoye Bill. After wealth, coruption and nefarious tactics left several people killed by suspicious means…even as recent as John Ashe..Americans are so god damned stupid they will vote for her. She is likely to win because of this stupidity. Trump is an ass. But beteen the two he is the better choice. Because there is the off chance he might change things drastically and shakebup the status quo. Hillary is the status quo. Americans are too stupid to know that even.

    Reply
  3. When I read this: “Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum to have Britain leave the European Union,” I did a small “take”. When I read this: Farage … has said women are and I quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race,” I spit coffee on the screen a bit.

    Nice characterization of Farage, although anyone who listens to him with open ears knows that he is not the rabid racist, sexist, xenophobe many try to make him out to be. Actually, for the progressive left, that’s just about their only play at this point. Either you are a progressive, or you are Hitler.

    Reply
  4. Doesn’t Israel have a religious test for citizenship? I think Hillary’s speech will do for alternative media sites what Obama’s gun control speeches have done for firearms sales…the opposite of the supposed intention. I notice now that my Facebook news feed seems highly altered, in a way it didn’t used to be: the one pro Hillary friend I have always features near the top. They’re trying to shove her in come hell or high water, and make it look like enough people like her somewhere that you don’t question the voting results….

    Reply
  5. The quote that best sums up this non-violent revolution is this, “All we know about Trump is that the oligarchs…..are violently opposed to Trump. This opposition should tell us that Trump is the person we want in the Oval Office.”

    Still, as someone who generally doesn’t watch cable news, I did see Greta Van Susteren briefly yesterday on Fox. Honestly thought Alex Jones was overplaying the whole thing about Fox being compromised. But after seeing only about a minute of Greta’s show, Fox Coup Confirmed!

    In only about a minute an awake person can see how they are twisting the narrative to promote Hillary. It’s quite disturbing that in the USA we have such a blatant marriage of corporate & government.

    As noticing how things developed with regards to the quote above, I have to admit I was for Bernie at first. Mainly because I liked his ideas about Anti-NAFTA, reinstating Glass-Steagal, and a 1% tax on high frequency robo-trading on Wall Street. But as Trump began to surge in the Republican Primary polls, I noticed establishment Republicans along with foreign governmental officials, (as if Americans care what they think of our country. Those stabs at Trump were just absurd!).

    And after that I listened to a few of his speeches. And by contrast to Bernie, I honestly felt between the 2, Trump was much more in the style of a true independent, (than ironically a guy who was supposedly independent). Funny how when someone speaks with passion and truth how it resonates with like-minded people.

    Also, I think it’s interesting to note that mainstream media has repeatedly tried to condemn Trump as racist, sexist, etc…, but when people on the ground are asked to name an example of this slander, they cannot think of anything. As I think most people who are for Trump agree, The Wall is an economic idea.

    The strangest thing about this election is that I actually like a candidate. Trump speeches are revolutionary in that he directly calls out the BS, We the People have been seeing for so long. He gets it, and despite his billionaire status, he comes off like a working man that is as fed up with the status-quo elite as the rest of us all are.

    Obviously the so-called fringe alt-right is more mainstream truth seeking media. But we should all thank mainstream media for being so ridiculously biased for Hillary that they have damaged their credibility beyond repair. We should also take time to thank Hillary for her Alt-Right speech. It was like a look into what a future with HRC as president would be like when she said she would shut down Breitbart. And the blatant lies smeared on Alex Jones reveals a desperation in the HRC Campaign that lets us know they know the truth. And that Truth is that the bogus polls & mainstream media lies will not be enough to stop this revolution.

    Reply

Leave a Reply