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After Biden’s withdrawal, Vice President Kamala Harris will very likely become the Democratic presidential candidate. Of course, it’s important to critically examine her political proposals and biography. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be in the interest of some of her opponents among the Republicans and other right-wing radicals, who prefer to work with lies and fakes instead of critical facts.
The right-wing apparently didn’t expect to have to defeat Kamala Harris, and had hoped for a weak Biden, as most of the fakes they are currently publishing have been in circulation for a while. Here’s an overview of the biggest fakes you should know about to avoid being manipulated.
1. Harris can become president because she was born in the USA
Basically, almost all of today’s Americans are voluntary or involuntary immigrants. Trump’s ancestors are also immigrants; his mother, for example, came as a low-wage migrant from Scotland.
However, you can only become president if you already have citizenship at birth. For example, the antisemite Elon Musk couldn’t become US president because he only obtained US citizenship during his lifetime.
There’s still an important difference from the e.g. German system here: Anyone born in the USA automatically becomes a citizen (jus soli), while in Germany you automatically become a citizen at birth if your parents are already citizens or have lived in Germany for a longer time. Right-wing extremists in the USA naturally hate this birth law. However, it is quite common on the American continent.
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California and thus became a US citizen, although neither of her parents were at the time, so she is allowed to become US president.
The false conclusion that Harris is not allowed to be president was loudly advocated, among others, by John Eastman, Trump’s ex-lawyer, who also supported Trump’s plans for a coup in the USA and is now indicted for it.
Similar baseless accusations were also made against Barack Obama. Although he even published his birth certificate, racists and other liars stoked doubts about his origin. Their spokesman at the time: Donald Trump.
2. Video taken out of context: Republicans mock the blind
Generally, Republicans try to make Harris look bad by sharing video snippets without context. But the truth makes these campaigns look pretty helpless.
For example, one video shows Kamala Harris at a meeting with visually impaired people. Therefore, she describes herself and her outfit – because the people can’t see her. This follows the guidelines for such meetings.
Republicans are now making fun of this, but only reveal their own lack of inclusivity towards the blind.
The antisemitic Twitter boss Elon Musk also shared the misleading tweet:
3. AI fake about Harris
In general, the right also tries to portray Harris as unintelligent. For example, an AI-generated video of Harris was created in which the fake Harris was supposed to say: “Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow today will be tomorrow. So live today so that the future today will be like the past today, as it is tomorrow”.
4. Video taken out of context: Ukraine
Another example of a video taken out of context: In an interview, Harris was asked to describe the conflict in Ukraine as simply as possible for people who know nothing about it. She replied, among other things:
“So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. Basically, that’s wrong.”
She goes on to describe why the US cannot allow such violations of rights.
Here is the complete interview. The right is now only sharing this excerpt, without the context that the moderator had deliberately asked for the simple explanation, to make Harris look bad.
This is quite an own goal, because it’s actually important that politicians communicate in a way that not only experts can understand them. Apparently, the right wants to exclude many people from the discourse.
5. Harris is not as unfaithful as Trump
This fake really backfires: Of all people, Donald Trump’s fans want to be outraged about marital infidelity.
Donald Trump doesn’t seem to think much of the conservative family image. He had three marriages, the first was already divorced because of his affair. Trump was also found liable by a jury for raping writer E. Jean Carroll and now has to pay Carroll several million euros. While his current wife Melania was pregnant, he also had an affair with porn actress “Stormy Daniels”. Here he was found guilty by a jury of misappropriating his fans’ donation money for hush payments.
These facts show how much Republicans have to twist themselves for the following criticisms of Harris. They accuse Harris of having had an affair with the married Willie Brown. Although Willie Brown was still married on paper at that time, he and his wife had been living separately for a long time. The relationship with Harris was also no secret and not an “affair”.
In 2001, she was also in a relationship with radio host Montel Williams. He defends their relationship and Harris to this day. Why not, after all.
Right-wing liars are now even claiming that Harris was a “prostitute” of Williams and that he can be seen in a photo with her, with several of his “mistresses”. However, the photo shows Williams’ daughter. You heard right, that’s how shameless right-wing liars are. In response, the liar’s tweet was actually restricted by Twitter. Miracles still happen.
6. No, Harris didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein like Trump did
This fake also clearly backfires: Republicans accuse Harris of having had exactly the same relationship with Jeffrey Epstein as their own candidate Trump had.
The right-wing photoshop the face of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein into a picture of Kamala Harris with her husband. But no real picture of the two together exists. There are, however, several with Trump and Epstein, for example from 1992 and 2000, plus several of Trump with Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The completely ideologically radicalized Republicans actually manage to criticize Harris for the things their own candidate has done, but not Harris. These deluded fakes are a series of political own goals.
7. Yes, Harris laughs (??)
Let’s also add a video, but this time one that’s real: Right-wing radical fake news accounts seem to have a problem with laughing women for some reason and share, indignantly, a video in which Harris laughs heartily.
The video seems to actually show real excerpts for once. In what world one can now discover something negative – or any political argument – in this is completely unclear to us. One must probably be so immersed in hatred against those who think differently that one perceives their mere existence and even an expression of joy as something negative.
Right-wing extremists desperately throw around lies
The strategy of simply throwing out extremely many fakes, hoping that something will stick, is also called “Flood the zone with shit”. Many of the videos contain no information about the actually relevant characteristics that make a competent president. Rather, they are only intended to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience – preferably a negative one. The fact that Harris is repeatedly accused of things that only apply to Trump is not without great irony.
The same strategy was also used against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It remains to be seen whether the media, civil society and social platforms have learned from the campaigns back then, and whether the lies will backfire this time if they are not constantly thematized. And the right-wing radical ideologues on social media – including people like Trump or antisemite Elon Musk – are consistently treated as unreliable sources and their lies are ignored or at least not uncritically retold, and instead a debate is conducted based on reality and facts.
Article image: Screenshots twitter.com / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUDr_c2PalI