Disinformation targeting Harris is distinctive not only because it consists of falsehoods, but also because it is gender-specific, infused with stereotypes and prejudices that undermine a woman’s ability to attain a high position. What circulates online about the politician and lawyer Harris often has to do with her gender, her skin color and her Indian and Jamaican roots

Author: Miroslava Simonovska

Kamala Harris, U.S. presidential candidate, was allegedly involved in a traffic accident in 2011, in which she injured a thirteen-year-old girl and fled the scene, after which the girl remained paralyzed. This fake news spread as a result of the organized Russian propaganda in the eve of the US election, with the goal to influence the election results and to sharpen the blades of the public court against the candidate from the Democratic Party, which would benefit the Republican candidate Donald Trump. Researchers at Microsoft discovered that the fake story about Kamala Harris and the alleged traffic accident in San Francisco, in 2011, is organized and that money has been poured into it from the Russian propaganda machinery for manipulation of public opinion.

The propagandists behind this, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, created a video with her false claims and then spread the disinformation through a fake website for a non-existent San Francisco news outlet, with a made-up name—“KBSF-TV”. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm, writes Reuters.

Storm-1516 is known for producing misleading videos featuring on-screen voice actors who impersonate whistleblowers or journalists that share false, scandalous information, experts told Reuters.

This disinformation did not reach the Macedonian-speaking region, however, other disinformation narratives surrounding this presidential campaign are spreading in North Macedonia and the Balkans: ranging from ones stating Kamala Harris does not have the right to be a presidential candidate because her mother and father were from India and The Bahamas, to ones stating she has allegedly attended the controversial parties full of abuse that rapper Sean Combs, who is in custody awaiting trial, is currently accused of. All those stories about candidate Harris are linked to old and repeated conspiracy theories that were popular during the COVID-19 pandemic—that she allegedly did not get vaccinated, but that it was a fake vaccination, which is also not true.

There is no doubt that disinformation about the Democratic presidential candidate intensified immediately after the current president, Joe Biden, dropped out of the race. Harris then became the immediate target of disqualifications with falsehoods and half-truths. After the debate between her and her opponent Donald Trump ended, disinformation emerged that she was plotting an agenda that would curtail people’s right to eat red meat and instead promote eating worms, insects and cats. Often, such unsubstantiated and unsupported stories are promoted in the series of disqualifications for the so-called globalist agenda, however, one element cannot remain unnoticed—the candidate for the presidency of the United States, Harris, is attacked on the basis of her family origin, on the basis of the ideology she represents, but also on the basis of the fact that she is a woman.

Such is the case in North Macedonia and in the region. In Croatia, for example, disinformation from the US spread about Harris allegedly being unable to compete as a new presidential candidate since her and her parents are not Americans. This is not true. Kamala Harris, otherwise born in Oakland, California, is eligible to run for president and has held numerous public offices since the beginning of her career in the US legal and political system. The US Constitution stipulates that only a citizen born in the US, at least 35 years old and who has lived in the US for at least 14 years can become president. Harris meets those conditions, but is once again the target of disinformation. In North Macedonia, as well, representatives from the political party Rodina, which is pro-Russian and supports Donald Trump, spread antagonistic speech about Harris on this basis, spicing up her origin with the stereotypical talk that because of her, migrants and criminals poured into America across the border. In her memoirs from 2019 titled “The Truths We Hold,” Harris described growing up with a father economist from Jamaica and a mother from India who researched cancer. Her father, Donald Harris is a professor emeritus at Stanford University who was active in the civil rights movement.

In the region, just like in North Macedonia, after Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, a new wave of claims was raised that Harris is an “Indian American” pretending to be African-American. The “diversity, equity, and inclusion” reference of the Democrats was also the target of attacks. Then, when the ideology was no longer the subject of criticism and disinformation, other tricks entered the limelight, ones that were supposed to present the candidate as someone who cheats and is not intellectually equal to Trump and cannot even engage in a presidential duel with him. The hoax was that Harris’s earrings contained audio transmitters, a violation of presidential debate rules, which state that only those on stage (in this case, in the studio) are allowed to communicate with each other. Of course, Harris’s earrings are not transmitters, but are part of the famous Tiffany collection.

There was a bizarre narrative being pushed last night claiming the Vice President wore earrings with an audio receiver. I am comfortable stating that was clearly not the case; these are the same Tiffany earrings she has worn for months, wrote Susan. E Kelley on her webpage, What Kamala Wore.

In our country, Facebook posts which falsely represented that Harris was allegedly against the celebration of Christmas and against Christianity in general, were also promoted, although those statements of hers were made in the context of protecting the rights of immigrants who were brought to America as children.

She wanted to say that Americans celebrate Christmas, but forget about its core—helping the poor, the unhappy and so on. In that statement, Harris also said:

And when we all sing happy tunes and sing “Merry Christmas” and wish each other “Merry Christmas,” these children are not going to have a Merry Christmas. How dare we speak “Merry Christmas”? How dare we? They will not have a Merry Christmas.

The online portal Epoha from Croatia, which also has its followers and fans in North Macedonia did not fail to misinform about the future activities of Kamala Harris, stating she will decriminalize pedophilia if she wins. In that sense, AI generated photos were also shared with her and the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of crimes related to sexual abuse. Those pictures are not real, but a product of artificial intelligence. However, the tendency to portray her as liberal to the point of illegality and depravity is obvious. Even a years-old clip of her with her then-boyfriend before she got married has been misused to falsely claim the man in the video is Sean Combs, who is awaiting trial for racketeering and sexual exploitation.