After President Joe Biden stepped back from the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor, Russian propagandists unleashed a wave of disinformation steeped in racism, sexism, and conspiracy theories. What began as a cautious reaction from the Kremlin has swiftly evolved into a full-blown assault on Harris.
The dean of Moscow State University’s Faculty of World Politics, appearing on Russian television, disparaged Harris with the grotesque remark that “Kamala with the nuclear button is worse than a monkey with a grenade.” Adding fuel to the fire, Russian propagandist and show host Vladimir Solovyov aired a video of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who mocked Harris’s laughter as a sign of her being “crazy.” The Kremlin’s campaign against Harris appears to have reached new, outrageous depths.
Russian propagandist Sergey Mardan, using blatantly offensive language, wrote: “The Deep State really plans to elect a woman as president, as wooden as Pinocchio. I think now Zelensky is truly frightened. Khokhols [Russian ethnic slur for Ukrainians – ed.] are now facing Russia head-on.” On a separate broadcast on Russia-1, State Duma member Oleg Matveychev labelled Harris as “distilled evil,” adding that “At least Biden represented a remnant of the old conservative America…In [Harris], you have the devil in his purest form,” as quoted by Newsweek.
Meanwhile, the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda has derisively described Harris as “an accomplice of a lame duck with a nuclear button,” according to the German publication Frankfurter Rundschau.
The tone of these attacks stands in stark contrast to the more reserved comments from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, who noted that with four months remaining until the election, “a lot can still change.” Peskov suggested that Putin is preoccupied with more pressing concerns than the squabbles of foreign political enemies.
Politico has dubbed Russia’s effort to vilify Harris as “Russia’s new punching bag.” The publication highlighted that, despite the Kremlin’s official stance, Moscow has exploited the turmoil in the U.S. to position itself as a superior alternative to the West and to deflect from its own domestic issues. “State media and numerous pro-Kremlin social media posts have relentlessly hammered home the same narrative: Biden is a failure, Harris is malevolent, and American democracy is fundamentally corrupt—a sentiment also echoed by Trump,” the article observes.
Russia’s goal is clear: to belittle Harris and erode her credibility
Nina Jankowicz, a digital disinformation expert and author of a study on gender-based violence targeting female political candidates, explains that four years ago, 78% of the abuse was aimed at Kamala Harris, then a U.S. Senator from California and a Democratic presidential hopeful. The most common attacks were sexualized myths falsely accusing Harris of “sleeping her way to the top” due to her past relationship with California politician Willie Brown in the 1990s.
“When President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, I anticipated the flood of venomous attacks that would follow online,” Jankowicz writes in her column for MSNBC.
As Jankowicz reveals, one notorious site dedicated to fake pornography features over ten pages of videos that exploit the Vice President. “The aim is blatant: to degrade Harris and question her authority and suitability for office,” she asserts. In 2020, baseless claims circulated online suggesting Harris’s success was only possible if she were secretly a man. Her photos were manipulated to make her appear more masculine, and QAnon conspiracy theorists concocted a detailed but entirely fictional past for her.
“These toxic narratives have resurfaced this week, now joined by racist accusations that Harris doesn’t deserve the presidency because her parents were immigrants. Much like in 2020, critics argue that she is not ‘black enough’ or ‘Indian enough’ to serve,” Jankowicz notes.
Moreover, Jankowicz argues that if women from both Democratic and Republican parties denounce these gendered and sexualized attacks on Harris, it will send a powerful message that misogyny has no place in American politics and that a commitment to equal representation is both necessary and welcome.
