Mainstreamed White Supremacy Sits Behind Social Media Hate of Kamala Harris [View all]

[Budi]

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Article:
Mainstreamed White Supremacy Sits Behind Social Media Hate of Kamala Harris

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/05/30/mainstreamed-white-supremacy-sits-behind-social-media-hate-of-kamala-harris/

US Vice President Kamala Harris has been the target of hateful and violent abuse online and Twitter has failed to react, a new report has found.
The Bot Sentinel research comes at a time of rising and mainstreamed white supremacism in the US, and a white nationalist movement emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidency.

Trump was famously endorsed by white supremacists such as Klu Klux Klan Leader David Duke; referred to “fine people on both sides” following the Unite the Right rally; and hired high-ranking staff members with far-right beliefs and ambitions.
He told the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by” during Black Lives Matter protests – a former member said that Trump was “speaking their language“.
The report also comes as the tech billionaire Elon Musk has bid to own Twitter, with the promise that he will restore freedom of speech to the platform.

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Abuse uncovered by the report includes tweets using racist and misogynistic language, and men sharing manipulated photos of Harris engaging in lewd sex acts.

A total of 4,265 problematic and disparaging tweets about Harris were sent in the first 135 days of 2022. However, of the 40 tweets reported to Twitter, only two were removed by the social network.
Tweets that were allowed to remain included those referring to Harris as the n-word. A tweet discussing assassinating the Vice President was removed but the account was allowed to remain active.
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The scale of online hate directed at Kamala Harris fits a pattern of increasingly overt and normalised racism and white supremacy on the US right and far-right.