The Art of Spin
How Hillary Clinton backers deployed faux feminism and privilege politics to divert attention from her destructive policies

http://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/spin-clinton-campaign-feminist-privilege-politics/
Date Written:  2016-11-06
Publisher:  Jacobin
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX20096

Propaganda and misdirection have been deployed to great effect in the 2016 American election.

Abstract: 
Excerpt:

Clinton supporters like to believe that they are above such spin. However, this is not the case. On the one hand, Trump has been a dream come true for the Clinton campaign, which has happily focused the bulk of its efforts on the self-destructive Republican in an attempt to distract attention from Clinton’s serious flaws.

On the other hand, the campaign and its supporters have produced an impressive array of bite-sized, disingenuous, and specious claims designed to silence their leftist critics, guilt possible waverers, and win over Bernie Sanders supporters. Propaganda and misdirection have been deployed to great effect in 2016.

...

In the meantime, structural racism and sexism will remain unchallenged. Just as the Obama era offered the false promise of a new "post-racial" world, Clinton's election will inaugurate a "post-feminist" era. But the reality on the ground will remain one in which a small wealthy elite continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the great majority, especially the most vulnerable among us.

The challenge for those who seek to advance an agenda of social and economic justice will therefore be to cut through this propaganda, fighting the new administration's crimes tooth and nail and building the groundwork for a genuine left alternative.