Tackling the falsehoods about Kamala Harris

The likely Democratic presidential nominee faces toxic discourse unlike anything Biden ever has.

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Within hours of President Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, more than 11 percent of related mentions of her on X involved criticisms related to her race or gender, according to the data firm PeakMetrics.

Good evening. Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is only just beginning, but disinformation about her is already rampant online. My colleague Tiffany Hsu, a technology reporter, joins us tonight to take a look.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning for president for three days. And she is already facing disinformation and abuse of a far different caliber than President Biden ever has.

Ever since Sunday, when Biden backed her candidacy for president in his stead, many social media posts have parroted variations on the sexist and racist rumors that have followed Harris for years. Within hours of Biden’s announcement, more than 11 percent of related mentions of Harris on X involved attacks related to her race or gender, according to the data firm PeakMetrics. Many posts, including one from a woman running for secretary of state in Missouri, involved hostile sexual references.

Democrats such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York quickly came to Harris’s defense; some Republican leaders also urged fellow party members to focus on Harris’s record rather than her identity.

Disinformation researchers, however, said the normalization of misogynistic language had become an inexorable byproduct of an online ecosystem run with weak oversight and powered by a hunger for engagement. The toxic discourse surrounding Harris has often recycled earlier falsehoods about her, said Nina Jankowicz, the chief executive of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit studying disinformation.

“So many of the narratives that we saw back in 2020 are being repeated,” Jankowicz said. “It’s part and parcel of the violent rhetoric plaguing our political discourse, and unless politicians on both sides of the aisle stop engaging in it and call it out, it’s only going to get worse.”

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