Clinton Papers: Bill and Hillary Feared the Internet

by Warner Todd Huston | April 19, 2014 6:14 pm

The Clinton Library has released over 7,000 pages of documents from Bill’s presidency, likely hoping that what ever is in them will be “old news” by the time Hillary announces her bid for president. But one of the documents is very interesting and shows that Bill and Hillary really feared and hated the free flow of information on the Internet.

A report, titled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce[1],” was meant to “prove” Hillary’s claim that a “vast right wing conspiracy” was trying to destroy her and Bill. It also made to explain “the Internet influence.”

In 1998, Hillary appeared[2] on NBC’s Today Show and said that a “vast right wing conspiracy” had been trying to destroy her husband “since the day he announced for president.”

Of course, her absurd claim became the joke of the decade and for years afterward conservatives were proud to belong to that “vast right win conspiracy.” The phrase became such a joke, though, that Clinton’s White House decided it had to “prove” the claim with a report linking that “conspiracy” all together.

In the report, Clinton pointed fingers of accusation at conservative think tanks, newspapers, and then the Internet–the latter coming in for particular fearmongering as Clinton blamed the Internet for “bouncing” negative Clinton stories “all over the world.”

The White House report said that the think tanks “serve as the idea mill” for the GOP: “The think tanks define and shape the idea’s agenda for the party and serve as the training ground for this new generation of conservatives.”

There was also a line showing just how paranoid the Clintons were about the think tanks.

“In many way, these Republican think tanks are to today’s media age of political organizations what the Democratic big city party machines were to the New Deal era of political organizations,” the report strangely stated.

This is amusing in that think tanks don’t command votes like big city Democrat political machines do. Think tanks can’t force their will on the electorate, but a party apparatus can. The comparison here is just silly, but it does show how Clinton feared the think tanks.

The most telling part of the report is the hate, fear, and disdain it displayed for the American people as seen in the section explaining to its late 90s readers just what that darned ol’ Internet was (remember, the Internet was fairly new at that time).

Here is how the report put it:

The Internet: The internet has become one of the major and most dynamic modes of communication. The internet can link people, groups and organizations together instantly. Moreover, it allows an extraordinary amount of unregulated data and information to be located in one area and available to all. The right wing has seized upon the internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people. Moreover, evidence exists that Republican staffers surf the internet, interacting with extremists in order to exchange ideas and information.

Here is what I wrote about this at Brietbart[3]:

There couldn’t be a more telling entry that at once describes the left’s lock on the media, the left’s hatred of a free flow of information, plus its hatred of the great unwashed having the gall to interact with Congress.

Note that this report is dripping with disgust over the “unregulated data” that the Internet allows people access to. Further see that the Clintons were alarmed that this information was “open to all”.

Then, when the White House wrote, “The right wing has seized upon the internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people,” it was essentially admitting that before the Internet, conservatives had few avenues by which to reach the people. This is an open admission that the left fully controlled the media until the advent of the Internet.

Finally, the White House was incensed that Republican staffers would dare interact with those commoners on the Internet, calling we, the Internet people, “extremists.”

Another hilarious thing about this is the Clintonistas’ ultimate hypocrisy here. Even after writing this report crying about how evil the right was for using these tactics, they took them right up themselves. Clinton’s pals, John Podesta and David Brock, used these exact same practices starting in the early 2000s to create their own “conspiracy commerce” by starting the Center For American Progress in 2003 and Media Matters for America in 2004.

If these things were all so evil, why perpetrate the same actions yourself? Hypocrites.

Endnotes:
  1. Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce: http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/storage/Research%20-%20Digital%20Library/formerlywithheld/batch4/2007-0080-F.pdf
  2. appeared: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy
  3. Brietbart: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/18/Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy-Clinton-Accused-GOP-Staffers-of-Colluding-with-Extremists-on-Internet

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/clinton-papers-bill-and-hillary-feared-the-internet/