It should come as no surprise to anyone that suppressing the black vote plays a key part in maintaining white supremacy and right-wing control of government in the United States. Given the fact that black voters overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and in these times are a foundational part of the Democratic base, those forces who want to see Democrats lose will use both open and subversive means to keep black Americans from casting ballots.
Gerrymandering, voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement, closing down of polling places, or limiting of voting hours and access are all items in the Republican legislative toolkit. Other well-funded efforts, by right-wing groups and foreign actors, have been used to turn some of us off from voting, period, or if we manage to vote, to steer us away from the Democratic Party to choose third parties, or to do write-ins.
All of these tactics are easier than getting us black folks to vote in significant numbers for Republicans. Black voters, especially black female voters, fueled the 2018 blue wave—all the more reason for hostile forces to target us.
These issues, among others, are discussed and documented in a report just released by the National Urban League, in conjunction with the Brennan Center for Justice and the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
State of Black America 2019
Now in its 43rd edition, the State of Black America has become one of the most highly-anticipated benchmarks and sources for thought leadership around racial equality in America across economics, employment, education, health, housing, criminal justice and civic participation. Each edition contains thoughtful commentary and insightful analysis from leading figures and thought leaders in politics, the corporate and tech sectors, the nonprofit arena, academia and popular culture.
The 2019 State of Black America, Getting 2 Equal: United Not Divided, focuses on the state of the Black vote with an emphasis on its power—and heightened vulnerability to suppression.
Today, there is no denying that American democracy is under serious threat and sustained attack.
Key in this report is the examination of Russian voting interference—specifically that targeting black Americans.
Civil rights group urges action against Russian effort to suppress the black vote
“National Urban League uses its annual State of Black America report to decry Kremlin targeting of black voters.”
Adding its voice to a crescendo of complaints about Russian interference in both the 2016 presidential and the 2018 midterm elections, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights and urban advocacy organizations decried efforts by foreign agents to use social media outlets to suppress voting turnout among black Americans. In its State of Black America 2019 report, released Monday morning at a news conference in Washington, D.C., the National Urban League (NUL) said that state-sponsored Russian activists fed into the nation’s simmering racial antagonism in an effort to tamp down black voters’ confidence and dissuade voting participation.
“A Russian-linked social media campaign called “Blacktivisty” used Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election,” National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial said in a statement released to coincide with the public dissemination of the report. “It used the integrity of the Black Lives Matter hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) to carry out an insidious campaign of voter suppression.”
During comments made at the news conference, Morial said black voters were targeted because black Americans have exercised political strength over the decades since the passage of voting rights laws in the 1960s. What’s more, he noted, the nation is rapidly becoming more racially diverse, which could lead to greater black voting participation.
Mark Morial, president of the National Urban League, discussed the report with Rev Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, emphasizing the role in black voter suppression played by Russia, and the implications for 2020.
Russian Efforts to Exploit Racial Divisions in 2016 Found Firm Ground in U.S., Report Says
The report’s findings on the Russian interference drew from academic research and federal investigations to highlight the huge campaign run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, which deployed thousands of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. One such account on Twitter, called @WokeLuisa, garnered more than 50,000 followers, and its posts were highlighted by dozens of prominent news outlets, the report said. The account sought to explicitly and implicitly discourage black voters from going to the polls in an effort to secure Republican victory, even as other Russian-backed efforts bolstered white extremism online, said Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League.
“It was targeted, it was focused,” Mr. Morial said. “It’s intentionally pouring gasoline on racial division.”
The F.B.I. has warned that the threat of Russian interference in American elections persists. Intelligence officials have said that Russia interfered throughout the midterm elections last year, and that those efforts are likely to intensify during the next presidential campaign. Bret Schafer, the social media analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative to combat efforts to undermine democratic institutions that is housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote about the Russian interference in the report and described @WokeLuisa as one of many fake accounts that impersonated African-American people to exploit pre-existing animosity and discourage voting.
“It’s moving the dial just a couple of degrees in the direction they want it to go,” Mr. Schafer said in an interview. “The anonymity of the internet allows you to be whoever you want to be, and of course you’re going to be far more persuasive if that target audience thinks you’re one of them.”
Please find some time to download and read the full Russian election interference report, ”The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency.”
Document Purpose and Overview
Upon request by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), New Knowledge reviewed an expansive data set of social media posts and metadata provided to SSCI by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, plus a set of related data from additional platforms. The data sets were provided by the three primary platforms to serve as evidence for an investigation into the Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations.
The organic post content in this data set has never previously been seen by the public. Our report quantifies and contextualizes Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations targeting American citizens from 2014 through 2017, and articulates the significance of this long-running and broad influence operation. It includes an overview of Russian influence operations, a collection of summary statistics, and a set of key takeaways that are then discussed in detail later in the document. The document includes links to full data visualizations, hosted online, that permit the reader to explore facets of the IRA-created manipulation ecosystem.
Finally, we share our concluding notes and recommendations. We also provide a comprehensive slide deck accommodating a wide array of selected images directly from the data set illustrating our observations, and, as an appendix, a comprehensive summary of relevant statistics related to the data set.
The report contains Russians narratives and themes, and looks at some of the graphic themes and memes that were used to target black folks.
...the YouTube channel of Williams & Kalvin Facebook page and @williams.and.kalvin_ Instagram account – included voter suppression tactics targeting African-American voters – advocating Black voters stay home, or vote for Jill Stein. Titles included “The truth about elections”, “HILLARY RECEIVED $20,000 DONATION FROM KKK TOWARDS HER CAMPAIGN”, “A Word Of Truth: Dr. Alveda against fu**in’ Hillary”.
It’s important not only to get an understanding of what happened in the recent past, but also to be clear that this is ongoing, and that these tactics and types of online influence warfare will be used in 2020 and beyond.
Some of the current targets of hostile online attacks by ostensibly “black” groups (whose activities are in reality being sponsored by hard-right groups and Russian elements) are Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, MSNBC host Joy Reid, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roland Martin, Malcolm Nance, Rev. William Barber, SiriusXM Make it Plain host Mark Thompson, and rapper/activist Talib Kweli Greene … just to name a few.
Don’t dismiss all the attackers as simply bots, or white people masquerading as black online. There are also some real live black folks who have bought the hype, and they are assiduously working to influence others.
We are not immune to these attacks here at Daily Kos: They have already occurred, and as we move further into election season, they will more than likely increase.
I’ve had white people figuratively jump in my face online, citing or quoting some of them and telling me to STFU because they are quoting someone who is “authentically black.” Those white folks are being manipulated too.
I’ll have more to say about this next Sunday. Stay tuned.