Free Speech

Hillary Clinton attended a summit hosted by the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom in New York City last week. Israel Hayom is owned by Miriam Adelson, Donald Trump’s largest donor. It’s a newspaper that is distributed free in Israel, a newspaper that (specifically and exclusively) supports Netanyahu and the far Right Israeli government.

This “summit”, where speaker after speaker smeared pro Palestinian activists and students as either uninformed or deliberately malicious antisemites, this “summit” that hosted zero Palestinian voices (or really any mention of Palestinians at all) where Eric Adams, John Fetterman and Hillary Clinton declared that the only possible reason anyone could oppose the genocide in Gaza is because those icky Chinese Communists were allowing pictures of the carnage to appear.

Clinton : “Smart, well-educated, young people from our own country, from around the world, where were they getting their information? They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok.”

She claimed to have tried to “engage in some kind of reasonable discussion” with young people about the Israel–Palestine conflict, while never being specific about who, but said she found it “very difficult because they did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”

Clinton went on to do the now-obligatory Right wing Dem tactic of just asking questions about this MANCHURIAN (Muslim) CANDIDATE WHO TRICKED OUR YOUTH on Zohran Mamdani:

And maybe what symbolizes most what you've just said is. Zohran Mamdani being elected here in New York. He was a brilliant social media candidate. It proves my point. Just think about it. And he drew from across the city. And young people were the drivers, and they were young people from every background, every ethnicity, every religion, who related to him, who really admired the way he presented himself.

And the social media campaign was so effective. And I think that is a very strong case as to why people need to pay attention to how you get information and, particularly, young people. And I think now we'll see what happens in the governing and what the, you know, the real consequences are. But study the campaign. Because the campaign was extremely effective in conveying an image and a message that young people are drawn to.

She wasn’t alone - all the Trump hires in attendance also took the opportunity to smear Mamdani, for his unforgiveable sin of actually supporting standards of US and international law no matter who is violating it.

This isn’t the first time. Clinton also appeared recently with Condoleeza Rice, a war criminal who lied this country into an unlawful attack on Iraq where half a million Iraqis were slaughtered. Clinton and Rice patronizingly lectured young people who oppose genocide (no matter who is perpetrating it) about how they aren’t getting all the “facts”. Ahem. Clinton voted for the unlawful invasion and Rice prosecuted it. They’re not in a position to lecture anyone about falling for blatant propaganda. Next time, maybe read something other than what Dick Cheney plants in the NYTimes before invading a country, ladies.

For that scolding lecture, Clinton appeared on Bari Weiss’ Right wing CBS, another free speech bastion:

CBS News parent company, Paramount Global, officially merged with Skydance Media in August. The new media conglomerate has faced widespread criticism for how it handled the $8.4 billion deal under political pressure from President Donald Trump.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger just weeks after Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company in a case that many legal analysts described as frivolous. 

Critics say CBS has taken a conservative shift since the merger, especially after Paramount Skydance bought The Free Press for $150 million earlier in October, along with making the "anti-woke" media outlet's founder, Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News. 

Once again there were no pro Palestinian advocates or representatives invited to speak, 80,000 dead Palestinian civilians were barely mentioned and Clinton and Rice nodded along in unison while reciting exactly the same pro Netanyahu narrative, because that’s the single narrative that is, apparently, “the truth”.

Tech billionaire Larry Ellison and his family are poised to establish a media dynasty. In the past few months, Ellison and his son, David, have taken control of CBS News. President Trump tapped them to run TikTok, and they’re set to make a bid for CNN’s parent company.

So Clinton, while speaking at a summit hosted and paid for by a far Right US billionaire, a Trump backer who owns a pro Netanyahu propaganda organ in Israel, surrounded by a carefully selected group promoting a single anti Palestinian narrative on Gaza and speaking and nodding along with a war criminal on CBS News (which has been taken over by Larry Ellison and his son David, another far Right US billionaire) lectures young people about critical information gathering and processing and exposure to diverse views.

Do you get it yet? Do you get why young people think we’re full of shit? Because we are.

Soon she won’t have to worry about young people getting any information out of Gaza, (where Israel still refuses to allow any independent media) because of course Ellison has now been given editorial control of Tik Tok.