What ISIS Gets That Hillary Does Not

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In 2008, when Hillary was running for President (the first time), my wife and I were invited to a ‘Clinton Fundraising Dinner’ in the Hamptons.

For a mere $10,000, we got a David Bouley dinner (which was not bad), but!, we also got about 30 seconds to ‘talk to Hillary’, one-on-one.

(To be fair, my wife Lisa was seated next to Bill for part of the ‘desert course’. The Clintons furiously rotate seats during the meal).

Our interest, however, was to talk to Hillary.

When you only have 30 seconds or so, you tend to get to the point quickly. So she did.

“Your online videos are terrible,” she said.

This got the candidate’s attention.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Now, my wife speaks with a proper BBC British accent, so in the US, what she says ‘carries’.

“They suck.”

Combine that with Downton Abby and you can break through the clutter – if only for a moment. However, a moment was all we needed and we were soon joined at our table by Huma Abedin, Hillary’s long-time right arm.

“I understand you think there is a problem with our online videos,” said Huma.

We started our pitch.  They were boing. They were predictable. They were ‘Madison Avenue. They were not real.

“You should be all over Youtube,” we said.

Huma looked at us quizzically.

“Youtube..” we said.

She wrote down U-Tube.

We corrected her.

We were hoping for some kind of consulting contract. Something!  We didn’t get anything, except a ride in a golf cart back to our car.

However, about three months later, we did get a call from the Clinton camp.

“We took your advice,” she said.  “Check out or website. Hillary is going to go live online.”

And so we did. And so she did.  There, in a tiny corner of the website, was Hillary, “live”, answering “your questions”.  She was dressed in pearls and sitting in front of a bookcase.  The thing was extremely well lit and seemed to be done with three cameras.  It was like an ABC News production.  In a corner sat an assistant who would ‘read the questions you have been emailing in”, and Hillary would answer them.

We emailed back to the Clinton Camp that this was not exactly what we had in mind.

But they never answered.

(Although we have been on a perpetual fundraising mailing list ever since).

When new media come along, it generally takes time for people, particularly politicians to ‘get’ the medium.  But when they do, watch out!

Hitler ‘got’ radio. That’s how a virtual  nobody from nowhere was able to rise to the heights of power in a relatively short period of time. He also ‘got’ movies and mass media (see Leni Reifenstahl – Triumph of the Will).  Roosevelt also ‘got’ radio, as did Churchill.  (Fortunately for our side).

Later, Kennedy would ‘get’ TV, long before anyone else.

As of yet, there is no Presidential candidate who ‘gets’ social media.  Oh, they may try to ‘tweet’ (or more likely have a member of their staff tweet from time to time).  Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina recently announced that he “doesn’t do email” (a very 1990s technology by the way).  New York Senator Chuck Schumer said that he ‘does an email’ about ‘once every four months’.

Boys, this is nothing to be proud of.

Ironically, the political party that seems to ‘get’ social media the best (so far), is ISIS – those rather unpleasant mass murderers currently at the doorstep of Damascus.

There is a reason that some young Muslims from Europe and America are packing their bags and heading for Syria.

In his recent book, Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yurbal Hoan Harari, Harari makes the point that human beings are unique for their ability to ‘organize’ themselves.  Tribal or group organization is limited to about 150 people, Harari states.  But if you can enthuse people with an ‘idea’ (like nationalism or religion), you can organize and control the forces of millions.

The Internet is great at communicating  ideas. And unlike nationalism, it has no borders.

It’s an entirely new technology – a new experience, this ‘connecting’ everyone on the planet, all the time, for free. It is something human beings have never experienced before. So we don’t really know how to deal with it or how to use it.

But a few people are starting to get the hang of it.

And not always the best people.

Someday, in the not too distant future, someone  is going to ‘get the hang’ of social media and how it could be used for political purposes – the way Hitler ‘got’ radio or JFK ‘got’ TV.

When a viral video can reach a few hundred million people for free, what is the value of buying political ads on TV?  What is the value of carefully controlled and scripted ‘debates’?

Something ‘different’ is coming. These new technologies carry with them the seeds of enormous change. But there is not guarantee that that change is going to be for the best – unless we are very aware and aggressive.