SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
hillary clinton
Hillary Clinton Is Wrong: The Gaza Genocide Isn’t 'Fake News'
Youth support for Palestine reflects a changing media landscape.
Dec 21, 2025
As unconditional support for Israel becomes more of a political liability and solidarity with Palestine establishes itself as a litmus test, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her fellow status-quo defenders are blaming social media for the US public’s growing solidarity with Palestine.
In accusing young people of falling for fake news, they rely on an outdated assumption that equates social media with falsehoods—and equates legacy media with trustworthiness. What’s clear is that Clinton and her peers who partake in similar rhetoric fail to grasp the nuances of today’s media landscape, particularly as it has unraveled around Palestine.
More and more Americans have realized that Israel’s post-October 7 assault on Gaza is not only disproportionate but genocidal, and that in spite of the carnage, the US government continues to provide diplomatic cover and send billions in military aid. It’s no wonder that public sentiment has shifted considerably against Israel in the past two years, with young people in particular being increasingly supportive of Palestine. This sea change has made establishment politicians very nervous. In several recent speaking engagements, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lamented that these pro-Palestine young people have the unfortunate habit of getting their news from social media; to her, that makes them uninformed and sorely misled.
“More than 50% of young people in America get their news from social media. Just pause on that for a second,” she said at an event for the newspaper Israel Hayom earlier this month. “They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing. And that’s where they get their information.”
The claim that social media is misleading and misinforming young people is simply an attempt not only to delegitimize pro-Palestine sentiment but to cast doubt on the devastation in Gaza itself.
Clinton’s framing is reminiscent of 2016-era misinformation discourse, back when the US public hadn’t fully figured out what to do with social media’s rapid acceleration and impact on politics. But that familiar rhetoric does not apply to the youth-driven political realignment on Palestine. When Clinton implies that pro-Palestine sentiment is a result of misinformation—a fraught umbrella diagnosis that often tries to encompass too much, and whose remedies can clash with the ideals of free speech—she attempts to place it within the context of Facebook fueling atrocities in Myanmar, Russian information campaigns working to influence the US election, and then-candidate Donald Trump labeling every media outlet “fake news,” forcing them to have tough conversations about when and how to fact-check his claims.
While the current media landscape and its relationship to politics is still bleak, Clinton’s accusation is much more about her fealty to Israel and the centrist-liberal order. The claim that social media is misleading and misinforming young people is simply an attempt not only to delegitimize pro-Palestine sentiment but to cast doubt on the devastation in Gaza itself.
The data point that half of Americans get (some of) their news from social media alarms most people—perhaps a valid instinct, given the current media landscape of local news in decline, billionaires taking over outlets, and profit-driven influencers peddling dubious wellness claims via vertical video. Social media did democratize information sharing without necessarily embedding any accountability mechanism for its quality and accuracy, resulting in a lot of low-quality content of dubious veracity.
But this doesn’t mean that social media users are only, primarily, or even significantly consuming fake news or slop. Pew Research Center reports that users, shockingly, do make assessments about what content they’re looking at. Not to mention that plenty of the content on social media is content from news outlets themselves.
According to Clinton, what’s most concerning is the fact that so many young people are getting their information from TikTok, given that the app is “governed by an algorithm—at least up til now—still largely manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party.” Her geopolitical paranoia echoes CNN commentator Van Jones, who in October placed blame on Iran and Qatar for running a “disinformation campaign” that flooded social media users with images of “dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.” Both try to convince audiences that concern for Palestine is just an information-operations campaign from our geopolitical enemies. Reports from earlier this year indicated that the legislation banning TikTok was, in part, ushered along by lawmakers’ worries about the prevalence of content critical of Israel on the platform.
Yet the most damning lesson here is not the growing reliance on getting information from social media, or even the fact that our collective outlook toward it should be more nuanced (it should!). Rather, it’s the collapse of trust in traditional legacy media that has accompanied young peoples’ shifting views on Palestine. The media industry utterly failed in its charge to report the news, and it failed to defend colleagues in Gaza as they were systematically murdered by the Israeli government. The New York Times in particular has been especially egregious, most infamously failing to retract their story “Screams Without Words” even after its credibility was seriously questioned.
Let’s say Clinton and her peers are only consuming these news sources (and even then, they’d have to be taking great lengths to avoid reading the quality reporting on Gaza that mainstream publications do often release, not to mention ignoring the numerous reports from human rights organizations and experts), then they’d be the ones who are uninformed—not the bogeyman of kids on social media.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued a statement last week on Clinton’s baseless accusations:
What truly seems to unsettle Secretary Clinton is not “misinformation,” but rather the fact that younger generations are no longer consuming a single, state-controlled narrative. They are accessing unfiltered images and testimonies that challenge decades of political messaging.
Clinton’s basic premise—denying the genocide in Gaza—is false. Young people know that they’re being gaslit. Yes, it is true that they’ve experienced “TikTok smashing their brains all day long with videos of carnage in Gaza.” They’ve seen Western media bend over backwards to diminish blame on Israel. And they’ve seen resilient Palestinian journalists like Bisan Owda showing Gaza through her own eyes.
At the Doha Forum, Clinton said it’s “a provable fact that most Americans... get their news from social media.” To echo Foreign Policy editor-in-chief Ravi Agrawal’s response: “Is that a bad thing?”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lemkin Institute Rebukes Clinton for Blaming Youth Outrage Over Gaza Genocide on TikTok
"Young people in the US are not stupid or gullible. They simply reject genocide—something the secretary might consider."
Dec 10, 2025
The world's leading genocide prevention group this week accused former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of "outright genocide denial" for comments last week attributing young Americans' opposition to Israel's US-backed genocide in Gaza on social media.
Speaking last week at the Israel Hayom Summit in New York, Clinton asserted that young people's support for Palestine stems from the fact that they are "getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok," adding that many younger Jewish Americans “don’t know the history and don’t understand" the Israel-Palestine issue.
On Monday, the Philadelphia-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security—named for Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer and Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide—published a statement arguing that "Secretary Clinton’s framing is not at all an accurate reflection of why Americans are growing more critical of Israel."
"Young Americans of all political stripes have not fallen prey to propaganda, though that is always a legitimate concern," the institute said. "Rather, they have consumed two years of videos depicting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians that have been uploaded by Palestinian journalists, ordinary people trying to survive in Gaza, [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers, and ordinary Israelis themselves."
"There has been no convincing refutation of the sheer amount of raw evidence of genocide coming out of Palestine," the institute contended. "Young people in the US are not stupid or gullible. They simply reject genocide—something the secretary might consider doing as well."
Wow: Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (named for Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, who coined term "genocide") calls Clinton's remarks "genocide denial.""Young people in the US are not stupid or gullible. They simply reject genocide – something the Secretary might consider doing as well."
[image or embed]
— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) December 9, 2025 at 11:15 AM
LIGP continued:
Secretary Clinton appears not to be bothered by the reality of genocidal violence—in fact, she did not mention anything about it. Her concern is, rather, in her words, “the narrative”—the fact that these crimes are no longer hidden and are now being livestreamed and documented in real time, making it harder for her and others to control it. TikTok cannot be blamed for the fact that many members of Gen Z understand that Israel is committing genocide, since so many other people, including those who never look at TikTok, also hold that view. Apart from the Lemkin Institute, the vast majority of large, mainstream human rights organizations, the [United Nations], and many scholars as well as international legal bodies have denounced Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Many carefully researched reports by international organizations have established that Israel’s crimes meet the international legal threshold for genocide. We encourage the former secretary to read them.
"The Lemkin Institute continues to support students and young people worldwide for having the courage to stand up for their convictions, to speak truth to power, and to fight against the scourge of genocide in Palestine and elsewhere," LIGP added. "Secretary Clinton’s remarks are not only inaccurate—they are also a shameful example of the lengths to which people complicit in genocide will go to to deny its existence."
The institute's rebuke of Clinton's comments came as the International Court of Justice in The Hague adjudicates a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza that fueled famine and disease—are also wanted by the International Criminal Court, also located in the The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and forced starvation.
Lemkin's denunciation also comes amid a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a truce Israeli forces have broken more than 500 times, according to officials in the Palestinian exclave. Israeli officials say Palestinian resistance fighters have violated the ceasefire more than 30 times.
Since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, Israel's annihilation and siege of Gaza have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Israeli military data suggests that of the the more than 70,000 Palestinian deaths, over 8 in 10 were civilians.
Through it all, the United States has backed Israel with more than $21 billion worth of weaponry and diplomatic support including repeatedly vetoing United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions.
Keep ReadingShow Less
How Corporate Democrats Made Trump Possible: A 10-Year Timeline
Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing—and then overcoming—the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.
Dec 09, 2025
Ten years after Donald Trump first ran for president, he stands at the helm of Titanic America. How did this happen?
No factors were more pivotal than the outlooks and actions of the Democratic Party leadership. Scrutinizing them now is vital not only for clarity about the past. It also makes possible a clear focus on ways to prevent further catastrophe.
Here’s the actual history that corporate Democrats pretend didn’t happen:
2016: Hillary Clinton offers more of the status quo. Her allies in the Democratic Party pull out all the stops so she can win the party’s presidential nomination. With a big assist from the Democratic National Committee, she prevails over the strong primary challenge from Bernie Sanders, but her campaign trail goes downhill from there. After rallying behind Sanders’s genuine progressive populism, many young people don’t trust the pseudo-populism of Clinton’s campaign. She has earned a millennial problem, and it prevents her from becoming president.
2017: Democratic Party leaders can hardly blame themselves or their nominee for the virtually unbelievable circumstance of the Trump presidency. A critical focus on Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street won’t do. Neither will critiquing her thinly veiled contempt for the progressive wing of the party. But blaming Trump’s victory on Russia becomes an obsessive theme.
2018: The Democratic leadership is mapping out a battle plan for the midterm elections in November. At the same time, a key priority is to thwart the inside threat posed by progressive forces. Establishment Democrats are keeping a watchful eye and political guns trained on Bernie Sanders.
2019: Democrats take control of the House, and a large cast of political characters is off and running for the party’s presidential nomination. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren are at the left edge, while more than a dozen others jostle for media attention. For elites determined to retain undemocratic power, seeing either Sanders or Warren in the Oval Office would be the worst possible outcome.
2020: Early in the year, the economic populism of the Sanders campaign continues to catch fire, while many forces team up to function as fire extinguishers. The Democratic Party establishment acts to smother the grassroots blaze. After Joe Biden’s fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary puts his campaign on life-support, rescue comes eighteen days later from South Carolina, where Biden wins a landslide primary victory—and then several corporate-friendly contenders quickly drop out of the race and effusively endorse him. When Biden clinches the nomination, progressives largely close ranks behind him to defeat Trump. Biden squeaks through.
2021: President Biden’s first year includes backing and signing legislation with real benefits for tens of millions of Americans. But his resolve dissipates. Before the end of the year, he abandons Build Back Better legislation that would have been transformational. Notably, Biden withdraws all US troops from Afghanistan in late summer—but overall he opts to fuel militarism, with ever-higher Pentagon spending instead of devoting adequate resources to meet human needs and protect nature. The president goes full speed ahead with “modernization” plans for ever more dangerous nuclear weapons that already have a pre-overrun price tag of $1.7 trillion.
2022: Biden relapses into his customary “moderate” political mode, while his capacity to speak coherently weakens. Party discipline, internalized by Democrats in Congress, precludes independent-minded leadership as they begin to proclaim that Biden should run for re-election. Conformity of groupthink and fear of retribution from the White House keep people quiet.
2023: A real-life Shakespearean tragedy unfolds as Biden throws down a gauntlet to run for re-election even while his mental frailty becomes more evident. Enablers ignore the party’s base, with polls continuing to show that most Democrats don’t want him to be the next nominee (including 94 percent of Democrats under 30). A common canard—pushed by Biden’s coterie of sycophants—contends that because he defeated Trump once, he’s the best person to do it again; the claim ignores the fact that Trump 2020 represented an unpopular status quo, and Biden 2024 would represent an even more unpopular status quo, as “right track / wrong track” polling makes crystal clear. Soon after Hamas attacks Israel on October 7 and the Israeli military starts its siege of Gaza, Biden begins to further alienate many of his party’s usual voters by massively boosting US military aid as the slaughter of Palestinian civilians escalates.
2024: Among top Democrats, denial about Biden’s evident cognitive infirmity grows along with the infirmity itself. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June, the political reflex of dissembling prevents him from bowing out for another 28 days. That leaves 107 days for the newly installed nominee Kamala Harris to pick up the pieces before Election Day. At first it seems that she might find ways to depart from coming across as Biden’s yes-woman, but there is no such departure. Nothing epitomizes the Harris campaign’s moral collapse more than her insistence on echoing the Biden line about Gaza while the US continues to arm Israel’s military as it methodically kills Palestinian civilians. In the process, Harris chooses to ignore both human decency and polls showing that far more voters would be likely to cast their ballots for her if she were to come out against sending more armaments to Israel. Electoral disaster ensues.
Last month, two events showed the huge contradiction between the potential for true progressive change and the dire reality of feckless Democratic Party leaders. When socialist Zohran Mamdani won election as mayor of New York after running as a Democrat, he said: “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one.” A week later, eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus surrendered to Trump, betraying efforts to defend Obamacare and a healthcare status quo that still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. The capitulation meant that the nation’s healthcare crisis would get even worse.
Craven and conformist Democratic Party leadership—coloring inside corporate lines while enmeshed with rich backers—hardly offers a plausible way to defeat the Trump forces, much less advance a humane political agenda. Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing and overcoming the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.
The timeline above is drawn from my new book about the 10-year political descent into the current inferno, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, which is free as an e-book or PDF at BlueRoad.info.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular