Hate speech targets Kamala Harris on social media

Kamala Harris is running for the Democrats against Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November. And she is facing perhaps the greatest barrage of disinformation and defamation ever directed at a presidential candidate in the United States.

There are claims that she worked as a prostitute and offered her "services" to politicians to advance her own career. Some viral posts also claim she was involved with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And for some, the fact that the 59-year-old has no biological children is an indication that she is a trans woman.

The false claim by some internet users that Harris was not born in the US and, therefore, cannot legally be president is also widely known. For others, she is not "black" enough to call herself "Black." Other claims about Harris have already been debunked by DW's fact check team. 

The extent of disinformation — or the deliberate spread of false information — can be explained in part by the rapid development of social networks in recent years. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, which can be used to fabricate or manipulate images, videos and audio tracks, have certainly played their part as well.

In addition, society and politics in the United States are extremely polarized. What's more, foreign actors such as Russia, China and Iran also have an interest in influencing US politics and have already been busy spreading fake news in past elections.

Study: Gender-specific disinformation is widespread

But all the fakes directed at Harris are not only due to the fact that she is currently running in the 2024 presidential election. If the 59-year-old were a white male, the disinformation targeting her would be different. What circulates online about the politician and lawyer often has to do with her gender, her skin color and her Indian and Jamaican roots.

The Wilson Center in Washington analyzed disinformation targeting 13 female politicians of different political and ethnic affiliations and varying degrees of popularity, including Harris, in a 2020 study. In addition to the finding that gender-specific disinformation narratives are widespread overall, it emerged that 78% of the keywords found referred to the then-senator.

Nina Jankowicz, former head of the Disinformation Governance Board, which was an advisory body to the US Department of Homeland Security, is one of the co-authors of the Wilson study.

"We found in our research, and other research studies have echoed this, that women who are representing intersectional identities — they're both a woman and gay, or a woman and Black, or, in Kamala's case, representing three identities, a woman, a Black woman, and a South Asian woman — are subject to compounded abuse and compounded disinformation as well," she told DW.

Intimidation, shaming, discrediting

A distinction can be made between different types of online sexism. In a 2018 study, sociologist Sarah Sobieraj identified three overlapping strategies to limit the influence of women in the digital public sphere: intimidation, shaming and discrediting.

Jankowicz and her co-researchers, on the other hand, differentiated between sexist, transphobic and racist narratives with regard to gender-specific disinformation. The political scientist knows what she's talking about: She herself has been a victim of sexist online hate and has even been targeted by rape and death threats.

Just how much more women have to put up with than men also becomes clear when Harris is compared with current US president Joe Biden or former US president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump. Who has ever taken such a meticulous interest in the dating pasts of these men or claimed that they prostituted themselves or "slept their way to the top?" Shouldn't Trump, in particular, who was convicted of sexual abuse and paid hush money to a porn actress, be of much more interest in this regard than Harris?

And how many social media posts have claimed that Biden or Trump were trans people? Or that they're not legal US citizens or are, in fact, not white?

According to Jankowicz, the comparison makes it even clearer to what extent the Harris-related disinformation is misogynistic. "Women who are in positions of power can't possibly have gotten there on their own, and they must secretly be men, which is absurd," she said.

Harris is not an isolated case — but she has been hit particularly hard

Another comparison reveals the structural nature of gender-specific and racist disinformation. People who are more similar to Harris in this respect — such as Michelle and Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — have been or are confronted with similar misinformation. For example, some also claim that Michelle Obama is a trans woman.

The associated LGBTQ+ and misogynistic conspiracy myth is called "transvestigation." And Barack Obama was also confronted with false claims that said he was not born on US territory. This gave rise to an entire conspiracy theory, adherents of which called themselves "birthers."

All this shows that women tend to be degraded to sexual objects because they are women. People of color are more frequently judged based on their family or educational backgrounds, with allegations and false claims rarely relating to individual attributes of the people in question.

And these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Countless other narratives are sexist and racist in more subtle ways, such as manipulated videos that put nonsense in Harris' mouth, or statements taken out of context that portray her as incompetent.

They also have the effect of discrediting Harris as a woman, as a person of color and as a politician, and can therefore be assigned to the field of gender- and identity-specific disinformation.

This article was originally written in German.