Why is Kamala Harris the subject of so much trolling online?

Words by Aisha Kherallah

Not long after Joe Biden dropped out of the race to be US President in July, social media platforms were full of AI-generated images and conspiracy theories about Kamala Harris.

The theories were endless - she was falsely accused of "sleeping her way to the top" and being nothing more than a diversity hire. 

ITV News has investigated attacks on Harris’ race and gender over the last three months to understand whether these are now just an inevitability of a polarised political spectrum or part of a coordinated campaign. 

How big is the issue?

Biden’s resignation sent shockwaves around the political world, inspiring claims online that something more sinister had unfolded and, almost immediately, online actors began to attack Harris for her identity.

A review by social media analytics firm PeakMetrics of nearly 175,000 posts on X showed that following the president’s resignation, over 8% of the posts that mentioned Harris’ name used “radicalised” language, while 4.5% of posts used “sexualised” language. 

Nina Jankowicz, the CEO of the American Sunlight Project - an organisation tackling disinformation - told ITV News the prevalence of racist and sexist attacks on X in comparison to other platforms is unsurprising. 

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

“We found that the majority of abuse in 2020 was happening on Twitter rather than smaller platforms, like 4chan, Reddit or Parler. 

“People like to yell at their targets, not just about them. Folks want the abuse they’re sending to be seen by the intended target.” 

ITV News looked at the four most common lines of attack towards Kamala Harris to see what these narratives can tell us about the American political sphere online.

‘She slept her way to the top’

Allegations that Harris had “slept her way into politics” have been a longstanding narrative surrounding her career. 

On July 23, right-wing activist and columnist Matt Walsh posted to X: "Kamala Harris got her start in politics by sleeping with Willie Brown.

"She became Vice President because Biden needed a non-white female on the ticket. Now she likely becomes the Democratic nominee for president because the guy at the top of the ticket has dementia.

"She's made a career out of begging for hand outs from powerful men. A thoroughly unimpressive human being."

The allegations were founded on Harris’s relationship with Brown, the California politician she dated in 1994.

The following year, Brown was elected as the mayor of San Francisco and appointed Harris to the state administrative boards in that decade.

This post has been viewed more than13 million times. 

The following week, posts on X referring to claims that Harris “slept her way to the top” garnered nearly 40.3 million impressions - a 44,000 % increase from the previous two-day period, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

In a since-deleted tweet, far-right activist and current Trump campaign advisor Laura Loomer went a step further, falsely alleging that Harris “was once an escort” and got her start by giving sexual favours "to successful, rich, black men."

Harris has never responded to these specific claims, but Brown wrote in a 2020 article: “Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago."

He wrote that he supported Harris’ first race to be San Francisco district attorney - just as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Tara Flores, a cybersecurity expert from Cardiff University, told ITV News: “The range of false claims made about Harris’ personal life is not necessarily about getting one particular claim to stick, but building towards a more strategic narrative that she is not in her position by merit alone."

The motivation around promoting Harris as a sexually promiscuous and well-connected woman taps into the idea that a woman could not have reached her position without some sexual favours, but also works to undermine her credibility and political record, she added.

‘She’s not even black’ 

Harris has also faced a deluge of attacks questioning her ethnicity, mainly claiming that she is not a US citizen. 

Despite it being proven that the vice president was born in the US, fringe far-right social media accounts have circulated an image of a doctored birth certificate from Jamaica.

Data shared with ITV News by Cardiff University suggests that these campaigns are being led by a small but vocal minority. 

By September, there were more than 5 million mentions of Harris’ ethnicity on X but only 738,000 unique authors. 

The day before Biden’s resignation, we reviewed mentions of Harris’ ethnicity on X. We found only 20,000 mentions. Within 12 hours of Biden’s resignation, mentions of ‘Harris’, ‘black’ and/or ‘Asian’ had jumped to 330,000. 

‘She’s actually a man’

Harris is also the focus of false claims that she is transgender - a conspiracy theory that has been applied to many prominent women in politics.

The more conspiratorial fringes, close to the QAnon movement, claim that Harris is actually a man named Kamal Aroush.

This is not the first time the conspiracy theory has circulated; the same hoax was spread about her in 2020.

Some social media posts this month also shared a screenshot appearing to show Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump also posting about the “Kamal Aroush” narrative.

However there is no evidence that Trump's supposed post was authentic.

‘She’s a cheater’ 

Following the second presidential debate between Harris and Trump, X was full of conspiracies that Harris had cheated using earpieces disguised as earrings and received debate questions in advance, far exceeding any other allegations we observed. 

Conservatives claimed, without providing evidence, that there was a so-called “whistleblower” at ABC News who could prove that Harris had an agreement with the moderators that she would not be fact-checked. 

The theory spread online as a forged affidavit released by an anonymous X account and pushed by far-right influencers.

The allegation was amplified after Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia, who claimed the so-called “whistleblower” had died. 

Trump also picked up the allegation and claimed, during an appearance on Fox News, that Harris was being fed her answers the morning before.

“Kamala doesn’t do any shows. … That’s not fair to the public because they don’t know what they’re getting. But they saw last night what they had. They had a rigged show with somebody who maybe even had the answers,” he said.

Following the debate, several users on X alleged, without providing evidence, Harris’s earrings were transmitting audio.

“The VP cheated with earring headphones? Not surprising,” former NFL player Antonio Brown wrote to his 2.1 million X followers.

The earring narrative is repurposing a previous earpiece conspiracy theory, with Republicans accusing Democratic candidates of relying on aides via audio equipment.

In 2020, Trump pushed the conspiracy that Biden had “declined an earpiece inspection” before their debate as well.

ITV News understands Harris’ earrings were actually from Tiffany’s “HardWear” collection. 

What is causing these attacks? 

Such attacks against politicians aren’t novel but this year’s attacks on Harris appear to be turbocharged by weak oversight of social media platforms and the algorithm.

When Elon Musk took over X, he reversed policies that had previously limited abusive posts. 

X released its first transparency report since Musk’s takeover on Wednesday. The report is only 15 pages, compared with the previous 50 pages under Twitter in 2021.

In 2021, accounts reported for hateful content accounted for nearly half of all reports. In the new X report, the company said it had taken action on only 2,361 accounts posting abusive content. 

This may be because X’s policies have changed since it was Twitter; official rollbacks mean that some content no longer violates guidelines, making changes in experience hard to capture in a transparency report. 

“The profit motivation in creating a 'sticky' engaged visitor is very strong”, explained cybersecurity expert Tom Kirkham. 

Kirkham warned that the sheer volume of posts spreading misinformation can be difficult for the average voter to comprehend.

”Add in a sprinkle of free speech rights, and this human network becomes the largest the world has ever seen. Regardless if its good or bad for democracy," he added.

Musk himself also violated his own community guidelines by sharing AI-generated videos that appear to show Harris referring to herself as the "ultimate diversity hire" and a "deep state puppet". 

The videos have around 136.6 million views, and don't include accompanying community notes. Musk later claimed the video was a parody rather than a form of abuse. 

This phenomenon is not exclusively applied to the Harris campaign. Trump suffered a wave of misinformation following his hush money trial.

Narratives included that Trump would face years in prison, will be ineligible to hold federal office, can't even vote (he still can under New York law), and will be required to wear an ankle monitor until sentencing.

Kirkham concludes that there is an unfortunate base level of attacks that all political candidates must now endure because of the toxicity of social media, as neither candidate has a monopoly on victimhood.

He explains that Harris, however, is more vulnerable to these attacks because she breaks traditional molds by being a woman of both South Asian and black descent.

"This opens the floodgates for racist, misogynist, and other types of personal attacks that fan the flames of existing biases," he added.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know…