At the same time as the Trump campaign had to keep the hard core of conspiracy theory believers, they also had to win the middle ground voters. The Trump campaign systematically spread urban legends and slander memes about political opponents, to frighten the undecided from voting for them. As the election race heats up, the Trump campaign has largely focused on fear-mongering about immigration. Their approach involved a two-step strategy aimed at dissuading voters from supporting Kamala Harris:
- They do not argue so much about the number of refugees and immigrants, but spread fear about them by portraying them as dangerous people. First, they circulated alarming cherry picked news , urban legends or wandering stories with refugees and immigrants in the role as “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals”.
- Second, they followed up the stories by depicting the opposing candidate, in this case Kamala Harris, as a “Terrible Border Czar”. The meme “Worst Border Czar” carries the idea of a gatekeeper who have abandoned the gate. As memes contain ideas, they stick easily to your mind, much the same way as metaphors in stories.
The reason why this work is not its logics. The Biden administration, like every administration in the western world, has sought to limit immigration, often at the expense of Human rights. BBC reports that between January 2021 and May 11, 2023, the Biden administration oversaw the removal of two million people from the United States.
Research from Brennan Center for Justice and Cato Institute conclude that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born American citizens.
False stories and memes of “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals”
Donald Trump told a frightening story about a Venezuelan gang with weapons better than the US army. Trump claimed that “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals” had taken over an apartment building and invaded and conquered the city. The local authorities say the story is false, that the building and the city had not been taken over, and that 9 out of 10 of the alleged gang members are arrested.
Donald Trump said in a speech in Aurora 11. October that “Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” Politico reports.
The Guardian reported that Trump in a rally in Aurora 11. October memed the city as a “war zone”, following a video of armed men. Trump, on a stage decorated by posters of mugshots of alleged Venezuelan criminals, spread the story despite Aurora’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated” and insisted: “The narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”. Authorities say the incident happened in a single block and the area is again safe, noting that the local crime rate is actually declining.
Trump stated“I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. With your vote, we will achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters. It’s going to go very quickly,”
He then showed a series of news clips of murders of US citizens by undocumented criminals. Trump branded Harris a “criminal“ and the “Worst Border Czar“ in the country’s history. This claims about Harris is repeated again and again despite the fact that she never has had the responsibility for border control.
Trump said “I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered. These towns have been conquered and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country and we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of our country,”
The Guardian described Trump claiming undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and presented the racist claim that those suspected in homicide cases “have bad genes”.
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Video stating that “America is being invaded” from Trump Facebook post 11. October 2024
Trump claims: “Illegal Haitians are stealing and eating cats”
James Fleurijean, a Haitian Community Help & Support Center member, referred by ABC News: “I know some parents like for this period of time they’re trying to keep their children home, like, by the time they see how things gonna be, like, wait for a couple of weeks to see if things that are calm down, or if things gonna escalate,” Fleurijean said. “You see, that’s why, like some parents, they don’t even send their children to school, like, for this week.”
The President of Haiti’s transitional council said before the UN General Assembly about the Trump campaigns protested: “The passions that naturally arise during an election campaign should never serve as a pretext for xenophobia or racism in a country such as the United States, a country forged by immigrants from all countries, and which has become a model of democracy for the world.”
Huffington Post told that Trumps Vice President candidate JD Vance in a X-post claimed that people in Springfield, Ohio have had their pets “abducted and eaten by Haitian illegal immigrants.”
It bubbled up from the of right-wing internet spaces directly to the X account for the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee.”.
JD Vance later said to CNN s State of the Union host Dana Bash that “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do”
According to Huffington Post the posts have been amplified by far far-right X accounts and reached a 2.9 million followers on the app. “Apparently, people’s pet cats are being eaten,” Elon Musk, X owner and Trump endorser, responded to Trump aid Charlie Kirk’s post about the fourth-hand claim of the missing cat, Huffington Post cites.
The Guardian told how Donald Trump repeated the claims in the presidential debate with Kamala Harris Tuesday 10. sept 2024: “They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
The story about Haitians is a story that has spread virally, but no one has so far managed to connect it to real events. Huffington Post writes that this claim is false. “There are no credible reports that people that “people who shouldn’t be in this country” are eating pets.
NPR cited The Springfield Police Department saying it has “dealt with its fair share of rumors and misinformation.”
“I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” says Officer Jason Via, Deputy Director of Public Safety and Operations. “We get these reports ‘the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ‘the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store’. And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward,” says the police to NPR.
It is described in chapter 1 that the folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand documented similar urban legends from the 1980’s. These stories falsely claimed that Asian refugees were consuming cats.
“Bad genes” meme
NBC News cited Trump saying on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” that immigrants were bringing “bad genes” into the country. Trump presented the story that Kamala Harris would allow 13 000 murderers into the country. He also said that this alleged criminal behaviour was caused by the genes that these claimed murderers would bring into the country.
There is absolutely no credible evidence to support the claim that “illegal immigrants” are disproportionately responsible for committing murders more frequently than other groups. The claim that immigrants carry bad genes linked to alleged criminal acts is a violation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination articles 1 and 4.
“When you look at the things that she proposes, they’re so far off she has no clue. How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers,” Trump said, referring to Kamala Harris.
“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he added. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here, that are criminals.”
BBC stated that this was misleading because the figures are statistics that span over the last 40 years. Kamala Harris has not allowed them to come. A great portion of the mentioned criminals came into the country while Trump was president.
A country can not simply deport who they like when they want. Part of the reason why the US can not deport somebody to countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua is the lack of agreement with those and other countries.
This is the probable reason why neither Trump nor anybody else has deported the 425,431 non-citizens with criminal convictions on ICE’s “non-detained docket” – a database of people facing deportation proceedings but who are not held in ICE custody.
Though misleading, the story would still be effective in scaring people. The idea of having a large number of murderers going free would be frightening. There is however no evidence to suggest that “illegal immigrants” are more frequent perpetrators of murder. The libertarian Cato Institute, who found that for the years 2013-2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for “illegal immigrants” was 2.2 per 100,000, while that of native-born Americans was 3.0 per 100,000.
Brennan Center for Justice has published substantial research on the matter. Their research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants.
The “Worst Border Czar”
Facsimile of memes targeting Kamala Harris as failing “Border Czar” on Trump Facebook posts 11. October 2023
The Trump campaign has repeatedly depicted Kamala Harris as a “The worst Border Czar”. The meme is set together of the words “Worst” “Border” and “Czar”. Czar was the title of the all-powerful Russian emperors. There is little logical connection, as Kamala Harris never had autocratic control over or responsibility for border control.
The phrase “Border Czar” is short, easy to understand and easy to spread as social media memes, or in conversation or news headlines. The phrase gives a singular description of very complex questions. The phrase combined with superlatives like “Worst” or “Failed” carries the idea of a gatekeeper who has abandoned the gate. The underlying idea makes the meme easy to remember.
The idea implied that in the phrase “Terrible Border Czar” is that Kamala Harris has had autocratic control over immigration, but has failed unwillingly or willingly. BBC reports that The Trump campaign repeatedly memed Kamala Harris “The terrible Border Czar”, blaming her for immigration from Central America.
The label “Terrible Border Czar” transforms a complex, sprawling issue involving multiple agencies (Homeland Security, State Department, the judiciary, Congress), laws, international agreements, Human Rights, international factors, and decades of policy into a simple story of one persons success or failure.
Video claiming that “America is being invaded” from Trump Facebook post 11. October 2024 https://www.facebook.com/reel/3750782021852169
Kamala Harris was in reality never in charge over the border or immigration policy as vice president. She has had a mission in Central America to get the private sector investing there. BBC describes how the Biden administration forced out two million people from USA between January 2021 and 11 May 2023.
There has been increased movement of people in Central America, South America and the Caribbean for a number of economical, social, political and other reasons the last years. Some have moved to close neighbouring countries, and some have moved to North American countries.
There is no quick fix on the complicated questions such as border, refugee and immigration politics. It is an area that raises many complicated moral, ethical, international and legal issues. This complexity provides an information gap of questions that are hard to answer. The extreme right can manoeuvre easily in this empty gap, with claims of others disability and own ability to solve the questions easily.
Chapter9 shows that the “Worst Border Czar” meme also can be understood as a more sinister reference. Functioning as a “dog whistle” meme, it also aligns with the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, that the “elites” for some reason want to replace the population.
Slandering refugees and immigrants in general as violent criminals is the main focus area for the extreme right. As research about the extreme right from the former German Democratic Republic implies, the ones that are susceptible of slander about refugees and immigrants are those who have little or no contact with refugees and immigrants.
The same research shows ones that receive information about these groups from informal sources. By the introduction of social media platforms on the internet, the impact of these informal sources has been multiplied.
Washington Post has refered Donald Trumps Presidential announcement 16. June 2015 where he said that “When Mexico sends it people they are not sending the best… They’re sending people that have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I presume, are good people”.
Washington Post have fact-checked these claims and found that there is no evidence immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans.
Nicknames
Nicknames are a kind of memes that gives a very short description of a person. Nicknames contain often combines a claimed description of a persons behaviour, by a single, exaggerated characteristic. These nicknames stick to your mind, as they carry ideas, -that the people caricatured behave in a specific way. Nicknames can be especially effective if they start circulating between people, as they then will stick to the person.
Trump have among other spread the nicknames “Sleepy Joe”, “Joe Hiden”, “Slow Joe”, “Autopen” and “Crooked Joe” about Joe Biden, “Crooked Hillary” about Hillary Clinton, “Crazy Kamala”, “Comrade Kamala”, “Lyin´Kamala Harris” “Jamala”, “Kamabla”, and “Laffin´ Kamala” about Kamala Harris, “Governor Newscum” and “Slimy Newscum” about Gavin Newsom.
Other memes try to paint Democrats as left wing extremists. The democratic party is not a leftist party, but a mainstream party, that has vowed to strengthen the middle class. It would be placed on the right side in European politics.
The Democratic party is not an authoritarian party, but respects the rules of democracy. It would be more adequate to fear the authoritarianism in Trump-dominated Republican party with background of the Capitol siege insurrection.
The Independent gives details of how Donald Trumps opposing candidate Kamala Harris is characterised by Trump as “Comrade Kamala”. “Comrade” is how socialists and communists addressed each other in the old days. Kamala Harris is neither. No socialist would think of addressing Kamala Harris as “Comrade”.
Democrats have been surprisingly inactive in defending themselves against such descriptions. Their strategy appears to rely on the voters ability to see through these political actions.
Deepfake memes
The Independent describes how Artificial Intelligence generated deepfake memes has become an important tool in the trump campaign. AI generated deepfakes has become so good that it can be hard to separate from fiction from reality.
NBC News details how Elon Musk har posted a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris, that he thinks is amazing, in a post in his social media platform X. The post has been seen more than 150 million times.
The AI voice says among other: “I am a your Democrat president candidate because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility.–I was seleceted because I am the ultimate diversity hire, and both a woman and a person of colour. And if you criticise anything I say, you a both a racist and a sexist. I may not know the first thing about running the country. But that is a good thing if you are a deep state puppet.”
The message is camouflaged as humour and can be spread effectively a such, but contains slander degrading the opposing candidate. It also contains a reference to the conspiracy theory about “The deep state”, that surely will be understood by the inner circle of conspiracy believers.
X-owner Elon Musk, who according to The Guardian have endorsed Donald Trump and have pledged to pay 45 million US Dollars a month to a Trump supporting Super-Pac (Super-political-action committee).
Other slander victims: Antifa
Antifa are slandered as generally violent. Antifa is not an organisation, but a broad diverse movement by people who have in common that they want to defend human rights and to oppose racism and fascism. The greatest threats of violence, terrorism and authoritarianism comes from the extreme right, like the Capitol siege and terror actions in Norway. The antifascists are in general trying to prevent it by non-violent civil action and defend freedom and democracy.