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"Vast right-wing conspiracy" is a phrase popularized by a 1995 memo by political opposition researcherChris Lehane and then referenced in 1998 by the then First Lady of the United StatesHillary Clinton in defense of her husband, U.S. PresidentBill Clinton, characterizing the continued allegations of scandal against her and her husband, including theLewinsky scandal, as part of aconspiracy by Clinton's political enemies.
Into the 21st century, the term continued to be used, including in a question posed to Bill Clinton in 2009 to describe verbal attacks onBarack Obama duringhis early presidency. Hillary Clinton mentioned it again during her2016 presidential campaign. Additionally,conservatives used or adopted the term to mock it.
While popularized by Hillary Clinton in her 1998The Today Show interview,[1][2] the phrase did not originate with her. In 1991, theDetroit News wrote that "Thatcher-era Britain produced its own crop of paranoid left-liberal films. ...All posited a vast right-wing conspiracy [emphasis added] propping up a reactionary government ruthlessly crushing all efforts at opposition under the guise of parliamentary democracy."[3] AnAssociated Press story in 1995 also used the phrase, relating an official's guess that theOklahoma City bombing was the work of "maybe five malcontents" and not "some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy."[4]
A 332-page memo titled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" was commissioned byMark Fabiani and written byChris Lehane in 1995. It was the first document to describe the conspiracies surrounding the Clintons.[5] It described how conservative media outlets such asThe American Spectator spreadconspiracy theories about thesuicide of Vince Foster, theWhitewater controversy, and other events. According to the memo, these conspiracies spread fromconservative think tanks to British tabloids and then to the mainstream press.[6]
In response to ongoing accusations surrounding the Clintons' investment in a real estate development known asWhitewater in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Attorney GeneralJanet Reno had appointed anindependent counsel, the RepublicanKen Starr, to investigate those accusations in 1994.[7]
Starr's investigation began to branch out into other issues, fromFilegate toTravelgate and Bill Clinton's actions in the civil case of his alleged sexual harassment ofPaula Jones prior to his presidency. In the course of the last of these,White House internMonica Lewinsky signed an affidavit that she had not had a relationship with Clinton. Lewinsky's confidantLinda Tripp had been recording their phone conversations and offered Starr tapes of Lewinsky describing her feelings for, and alleging intimate encounters with, the president. Clinton was asked to give a deposition, and accusations that he lied about an affair under oath first made national headlines on January 17, 1998, when the story was picked up by the conservative-right e-mail newsletterThe Drudge Report. Despite swift denials from Clinton, the media attention grew. On January 27, 1998, Hillary Clinton appeared onNBC'sThe Today Show in an interview withMatt Lauer.[8][9]
Lauer: You have said, I understand, to some close friends, that this is the last great battle, and that one side or the other is going down here.
Clinton: Well, I don't know if I've been that dramatic. That would sound like a good line from a movie. But I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this—they have popped up in other settings. This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.[8][9]
Clinton elaborated by decrying the tactics and "the kind of intense political agenda at work here".Bob Woodward recounted in his bookThe Agenda (1994) that Hillary Clinton claimed that when her husband was making his decision to run for the presidency in 1991, he reported receiving "a direct threat from someone in theBush White House, warning that if he ran, the Republicans would go after him. 'We will do everything we can to destroy you personally,' she recalled that the Bush White House man had said."[2]
David Brock, a conservative-turned-liberal author, said he was once a part of an effort to dredge up a scandal against Clinton.[10] In 1993, Brock was part of theAmerican Spectator and was the first to report Jones' claims.[10] As Brock explained inBlinded by the Right, after learning more about the events and conservative payments surrounding Jones, he personally apologized to the Clintons. He documented his experience inBlinded by the Right, wherein he alleged thatArkansas State Police troopers had taken money in exchange for testimony against Clinton which Brock had published in a previous book.Adam Curtis also discussed the concept in his documentary seriesThe Power of Nightmares. Brock agreed with Clinton's claim that there was a "right wing conspiracy" to smear her husband, quibbling only with the characterization of it as "vast ", since Brock contended that it was orchestrated mainly by a few powerful people.MSNBC also described the comment as once-ridiculed but now taken more seriously by "many Democrats" who point "to the well-documented efforts by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife to fund a network of anti-Clinton investigations".[11]
Specific claims of such funding were made against conservative Republican supporter and billionaireRichard Mellon Scaife.[12] Scaife played a major role in funding theArkansas Project investigating President Clinton; former Clinton White House CounselLanny Davis claimed Scaife was using his money "to destroy a president of the United States". Scaife claimed to be public about his political spending (q.v.[13]).CNN stated in a study the news outlet conducted on Scaife, "If it's a conspiracy, it's a pretty open one."[14] Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2003 autobiography, "Looking back, I see that I might have phrased my point more artfully, but I stand by the characterization of Starr's investigation [regardless of the truth about Lewinsky]."[15] By 2007, her experiences caused her to say in presidential campaign appearances that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" was back, citing such cases as the2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal.[16] On thestump forAl Franken's 2008 Senate campaign, Bill Clinton acknowledged hisAir America Radio show by quipping that he had been taking on the "vast right wing conspiracy before others even acknowledged that it existed."[17] When asked onMeet the Press (September 27, 2009) whether the "vast right wing conspiracy" was involved in the attacks on PresidentBarack Obama, Clinton said, "Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was ... when they accused me of murder and all that stuff."[18]
Two other figures who used the phrase are Nobel laureate economistPaul Krugman and journalistJoe Conason. Conason did so in an article called "The vast right-wing conspiracy is back", referring to theNational Republican Trust PAC andNewsmax, which are run by former foes of Clinton, and who made attacks on then-President Obama. The National Republican Trust PAC sponsored a campaign commercials against Obama in 2008 that was described byFactCheck.org as "one of the sleaziest false TV ads of the campaign". One of Newsmax's owners "was among the most insistent endorsers of theObama birth certificate myth" and a popularizer of the canard that Clinton's White House counselVince Foster did not commit suicide—as determined by five official investigations—but was murdered.[19]
In some of his books, Krugman used the phrase ("Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy"),[20] for example to refer not to a conservative Republican-leaning campaign against Clinton or Obama but more generally to "an interlocking set of institutions ultimately answering to a small group of people that collectively reward loyalists and punish dissenters" in the service of "movement conservatism". In Krugman's view, the network of foundations that fund conservative scholarship, the national and regional think tanks and advocacy groups, talk radio media outlets, and conservative law firms through which they pushed their agenda to move the Republican Party to the right, far surpassed in funding, size, inter-connectedness, or influence anything theDemocratic Party or theAmerican Left and liberal movement have at their disposal. According to Krugman, the network of institutions provide "obedient politicians with the resources to win elections, safe havens in the event of defeat, and lucrative career opportunities after they leave office. They guarantee favorable news coverage to politicians who follow the party line, while harassing and undermining opponents. And they support a large standing army of party intellectuals and activists."[21]
In April 2014, theClinton Presidential Center published the original 1995 memo on the alleged conspiracy.[6] Chris Lehane, the memo's author, wrote, "As for the premise of the memo, I absolutely stand by it. Not only was it right about the right wing then, it is more accurate than ever today."[22]
In 2016, Hillary Clinton said she still believed in the "vast right-wing conspiracy", adding that it was "even better funded" 18 years later.[23][24] At the same time, she opined, "At this point it's probably not correct to say it's a conspiracy because it's out in the open."[23] In October 2016, afterfootage ofDonald Trump "boasting" about his sexual exploits emerged andmultiple women accused Trump of sexual misconduct,Melania Trump defended her husband and said, "This was all organized from the opposition."[25] Writers for theLos Angeles Times andThe Washington Post observed that Melania's response "echoed" Clinton's original use of the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy".[26][25]
After the release of a deposition Clinton had given to for theStarr Report in which heperjured himself, some conservatives began to adopt the "vast right-wing conspiracy" prahising or its acronym "VRWC" ironically. In 2004, conservative lawyerMark W. Smith wrote theNew York Times Best SellerOfficial Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, which came with a "membership card" that made its owner an "official member of the VRWC". Similarly, a number of newspaper, magazine, and website articles used the phrase to report onleft-wing politics.[27][28]Eugene Volokh's blogThe Volokh Conspiracy is said to have derived its name from as a reference to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" statement.[29] Into the 2010s, the term itself continued to be mocked by conservatives.[30][31]
... Clinton holds an affinity for conspiracy theories little known to the American public.
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