Quick heads-up to remind my fellow progressives to be a bit more cautious when sharing anti-Hillary memes on the Net. Karl Rove and the Koch brothers are busy trying to undermine our strongest candidate going into 2016, because they’re afraid of her – and rightly so. According to this New York Times article, even Bill McKibben – someone I admire a great deal – fell victim to this dirty tricks campaign.
A few months ago, McKibben found something on social media that tried to link Hillary to anti-environmental lobbyists and immediately shared it with his Twitter followers.
Make the jump to find out who was behind this meme...
From the New York Times yesterday - The Right Baits the Left to Turn Against Hillary Clinton ...
Lost in the response was the source of the offending tweet. It was not another environmental organization or even a liberal challenger to Mrs. Clinton. Instead, it was a conservative group called America Rising PAC, which is trying, with laserlike focus, to weaken the woman who almost everyone believes will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in 2016.
For months now, America Rising has sent out a steady stream of posts on social media attacking Mrs. Clinton, some of them specifically designed to be spotted, and shared, by liberals. The posts highlight critiques of her connections to Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation and feature images of Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, interspersed with cartoon characters and pictures of Kevin Spacey, who plays the villain in “House of Cards.” And as they are read and shared, an anti-Clinton narrative is reinforced.
I know we're smarter than this and good writers and online activists always conduct due diligence before jumping on something and repeating smears, innuendo and lies (see Clinton Cash). We check it out. Consider the source. Do a bit of fact-checking before attacking good Democrats and their Foundation - right?
If folks fail in that task and repeat these attacks on Hillary they’re only acting as an unpaid intern for these extreme right wing groups. They’re getting played by the extreme right, and I know this online community is smarter / better than this.
Right?