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Rivals and critics have for years accused Harris of changing her personal identity to gain political advantage, and those attacks are especially intensified online, since she is a Democratic standard-bearer.
By Ken Bensinger
When former President Donald J. Trump revealed Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity on Wednesday, he moved a long-standing false line of attack from the margins of political discourse to the very center of the presidential campaign.
For years, her rivals and critics have accused Harris of altering her personal identity based on her political merits and that she is not really who she says she is. These attacks, based on lies, misinformation and conspiracy notions, have increased dramatically in the week and part since she is the Democrats’ almost certain standard-bearer.
Just hours after President Biden announced he would not seek a second term, right-wing firebrand Laura Loomer posted on social media site X that Harris is “pretending to be black” as part of what she called “delusional Democratic politics. ” DEI fee.
The next day, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, said in his popular interview that the vice president “is a black guy guy, an Indian guy. “A follower who has about 20 million followers on Instagram, TikTok and X, said Sunday that “Kamala Harris is rarely very black. . . is Indian. “
His comments, intended to advise the black electorate that the Democratic candidate does not constitute them and, more generally, sow the concept that Harris is not genuine, have helped turn what was just a trickle of content into a stream of water. . Conservative corners of the Internet, long obsessed with Biden, turned to what appeared to be her new target. Years-old video clips of Ms Harris acknowledging her South Asian heritage have found new currency, along with memes poking fun at her fondness for talking about herself. and even a Billy Joel song modified to say that “she ain’t black or white or Indian or Jamaican. “
In fact, the vice president is the daughter of a black Jamaican father and an Indian mother, who immigrated to the United States before Harris was born in Oakland, California. For a long time she has been known as black and Indian.
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