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In Latino exile communities across the United States, questions are being asked whether Kamala Harris is really a communist.
Since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate, the vice president has made numerous misleading claims that he is a socialist or communist, according to Facchequado, the largest Spanish-language fact checker in the United States.
Experts say these claims tap into genuine fears among some voters fleeing repression in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.
In one viral video, Kamala Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz appear to take a selfie in front of a sign for the far-left group American Revolutionary Communists.
The video is fake. This background was fabricated by a group of Donald Trump supporters known as the Daily Meme Team.
Their original post was viewed over 420,000 times, shared by many Spanish accounts and repeated offline.
“The question, ‘Is this person a communist?’ is everywhere,” South Florida cultural strategist Evelyn Perez Verdia told the BBC.
She was listening to La Nueva Poderosa, a Spanish-language radio station in Miami, when she heard the hosts discussing fake memes.
“Did you see them standing in front of that photo? They are not ashamed of who they are,” the organizers said.
She contacted the police department to express her concerns. The hosts later said on air that while they wanted to clarify that the story was “not true,” it “doesn’t take away the reality that Kamala is a Marxist.”
“Genuine fear” becomes a weapon
There are nearly 36.2 million Latino voters in the U.S., making up about 14.7% of the U.S. electorate, many of whom live in key battleground states like Nevada and Arizona, making them coveted by both sides. It is layered.
Although they are by no means a homogenous voting group, Latinos have historically tended to support the Democratic Party. In 2020, 44% voted for Joe Biden, compared to just 16% who voted for Trump. But polls show Republicans have an advantage this election cycle, citing a number of factors including the economy, immigration and abortion rights.
And for some immigrants, concerns about America today reflect past experiences in their home countries.
Political messages warning of “socialism” and “communism” are particularly prevalent in areas with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations, such as southern Florida, experts say.
Samantha Barrios, a Miami, Florida-based Venezuelan-American who votes Democratic, said these foreigners are especially vulnerable to misinformation about communism because of the trauma of fleeing oppression.
She accused Spain’s right-wing media of using these terms to “scare Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans” and said that “the main reason we left the country was because of these It was an attempt to secede from the government.”
For some, criticism of the Democratic Party is based on the opinion that the U.S. government has not responded harshly enough to political repression in Cuba and Venezuela.
But Barrio is wary of these legitimate concerns being weaponized through false claims that Kamala Harris herself is a communist.
Perez-Verdia agreed, but criticized the Democratic camp for not doing enough to address concerns.
“Don’t laugh at people’s fears. It’s really rude. People came to America with real fears and left everything behind. If they have questions, you can should be addressed.”
Debate fuels ‘communist’ claims
X/AI generated image
The Digital Democracy Association of America (DDIA), which monitors more than 1,300 WhatsApp groups and more than 200 Telegram channels in Spanish and Portuguese, says not all claims target only Latinos. said.
Since 2020, the group found, prominent right-wing and pro-Trump actors and influencers have been spreading “fear of socialism.”
But while Joe Biden was accused of being a communist when he ran for president, Laura Sommer, founder of Factchequeado, says her company’s fact checkers have never tested such a large amount of AI and falsification. He said he had “never seen the image”.
Some of this misinformation was spread by Trump himself or by his prominent supporters.
Elon Musk, a supporter of President Trump, posted a fake image of Kamala Harris wearing a red uniform with a communist hammer and sickle on it and wrote, “Kamala has been a communist dictator since day one.” I swear. Can you believe she’s wearing that dress?”
It has been viewed over 83.9 million times. A reverse image search reveals that this is the first time the image was posted on X.
Donald Trump shared an AI image of Harris addressing a crowd of communists that has been viewed at least 81.5 million times on X, but it was not the first time he had posted the image.
A DDIA report prepared for the BBC found that posts linking Harris to communism really increased online after the presidential debate.
During the debate, Donald Trump called Kamala Harris and her father “Marxists” and suggested he intended to turn the United States into “Venezuela on steroids” through immigration policy.
After the debate, “Marxist” became a trending topic on social media, and the number of searches for “Marxist” on Google in the United States soared by 1,000% in 17 hours.
Faccecuado said the most searched question in Spanish after the debate was “Who is Kamala Harris’ father?”
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BBC Verify has traced the membership card image to a website that enables the creation of fake Communist Party documents
DDIA said two claims in particular gained attention in the week following the presidential debate. One of them is the spread of a fabricated document falsely claiming that Kamala Harris is a member of the Russian Communist Party, according to Meta’s own metrics. Another claim that Harris is a “comrade Kamala” arose from a speech by President Trump in which he portrayed Harris as a “comrade comrade.”
BBC Verify tracked a website allowing the creation of fake Communist party documents using images of membership cards.
The membership number and stamp on the card were the same as the template on the party membership card creation site.
A post sharing the fake image, first shared in August, has been viewed more than 500,000 times.
“We will move to communism.”
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Republicans have gained support among Latino voters in recent years.
The Democratic Party is not a socialist party, nor does it claim to support a communist regime. However, some prominent members of Congress, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, describe their political views as “democratic socialists.”
While a California senator, Harris was a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, which introduced single-payer health care to the United States. She has since said she no longer supports a single-payer health care system that would eliminate private insurance companies.
She never advocated communist policies such as the abolition or confiscation of private property.
Kamala Harris’ plan to crack down on “price gouging” in supermarkets has been branded “communist” in a social media post in Spain. Musk claimed it would lead to “empty shelves like in Venezuela.”
His proposal calls on the Commerce Commission to investigate price increases that far outpace rising production costs, and is a far cry from the widespread price controls seen in Cuba and Venezuela as contributing to severe food shortages. different.
But for some voters who have fled these countries, their fear lies in anything that even remotely resembles the policies of their countries of origin.
Duke Machado, who runs the Latino Republican Facebook page “Latin Strikeforce” in Texas, said he fears the country could slide down a slippery slope toward communism if Democrats win. spoke.
“If we’re not careful, we’ll slip into Cuba and Venezuela. Their ultimate goal is to destroy capitalism.”
Asked whether the Democratic Party has a responsibility to share with its supporters, including Latino exiles fleeing persecution, the fear that the United States is turning the United States into a communist country, he said: . I consider it an obligation. ”
With additional reporting from BBC Verify’s Kayleen Devlin
