Jay Rosen:

Laura Rozen retweeted, because, foreigner confused bout what he was taught bout  'merca

Interesting suggestion I just ran across in context of seeing how they are basically planning to present a vacuous Trump show, giving it over to him. Especially after I just  at the same time heard Brian Stelter on CNN talk for a whole segment how he thinks it an undercovered story how poorly Fox News is managed since Roger Ailes left, how it's chaos over there, falling apart, with no one in charge, and how after enough of that everyone including Trump fans are losing interest in Trump's traditional show and Fox's traditional show. How he needs to come up with something new (reminder how empty Tulsa rally was, etc.)

Trump’s Black supporters bring attacks from the Internet to convention prime time, in answer to diverse Democratic ticket

Analysis by Isaac Stanley-Becker @ WashingtonPost.com, August 25, 2020 at 11:57 p.m. EDT

On Monday, former football great Herschel Walker rhapsodized about how Donald Trump had once accompanied his family to Disney World, while Sen. Tim Scott, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, lauded Trump for creating an “inclusive economy.” On Tuesday, Trump used the spotlight of the Republican National Convention to pardon Jon Ponder, a Black man who served a five-year prison sentence for bank robbery and now runs a nonprofit helping former prisoners reenter society.

Black advocates for President Trump appearing at the Republican convention this week sought to soften the image of a man whom, polls show, many Americans consider a racist.

But there was also Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Black Democrat who noted that “all hell broke loose” when he endorsed Trump this year.

Herschel Walker: ‘I’ve seen racism…and it isn’t Donald Trump’

His words stood out, offering a rare onstage link to an alternate online universe that has been the hub for much of the energy behind efforts by Black conservatives to boost Trump. In that world, far from the speeches presented on national television this week, Black influencers who have built their brands on their controversial support for Trump are using extreme tactics to tear down the president’s Black critics.

The language used by Jones — likening African Americans held in chattel slavery to present-day Black voters — borrows from the rhetoric of prominent Black conservatives, including Herman Cain, the late former presidential candidate and Trump champion who spoke of leaving the “Democratic plantation.” But the term has been popularized in large part by Candace Owens, a conspiracy theorist and former communications director for the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. Owens has more than 4 million followers on Facebook — more than many mainstream media organizations.

The rhetoric online has grown more explicit since Joe Biden tapped Sen. Kamala D. Harris as his running mate, making the Democrat from California the first Black woman and first Asian American to ascend to a major party’s presidential ticket.

Kimberly Klacik, a Black Republican whose viral video attacking Democratic management of cities helped vault her to a speaking spot on the convention’s opening night, has disparaged Harris as “mediocre,” suggesting she is a “prop” chosen simply for her “look.” Owens has argued falsely that Harris’s Indian heritage negates her Black identity. Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, sisters and video bloggers better known as Diamond and Silk, have attacked Harris for marrying a White man and embracing his children as kin — a meme spreading not just in right-wing echo chambers but also among some Black nationalists active on social media.

All are followed by Jones, the Georgia lawmaker, on Twitter — among just 127 accounts he follows. Diamond and Silk’s account is one of just 50 followed by Trump.

“It is because of the huge platform on social media enjoyed by someone like Candace Owens that these attacks, from denying the Blackness of Kamala Harris to suggesting anyone voting for the Democratic ticket is enslaved in some way, have been introduced to a national audience,” said Tyler D. Parry, a professor of African American history at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “These ideas have never been more popular among a certain segment of the Republican Party than they are now.”

Fueled online

The political combat shows how the diversity of the Black community and the debates within it about what signifies Black identity in America are being weaponized by Trump and his associates. Last year, Donald Trump Jr. amplified criticism of Harris arising from a small movement on the left holding that Harris’s roots in Jamaica and India mean she is not connected to the history of Black people whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States.

He later deleted the tweet. But some of the president’s most vocal Black supporters have been unwavering in their criticism. David J. Harris Jr., a pro-Trump commentator and founder of a health supplement company, argued on his blog that the president was right to lend credence to a racist conspiracy theory about the senator’s citizenship.

The online onslaught — when it comes from Black voices and plays on genuine disagreements among voters of color about issues of identity and authenticity — “positions misinformation and hate” as a legitimate critique of the Democratic Party, said Andre Banks, a co-founder of Win Black/Pa’lante, a group combating disinformation targeting Black and Latino communities. “No White person,” Banks said, could deliver similar anti-Black broadsides without “experiencing harmful side effects.”

The meme attacking Harris for marrying a White man spread not just in far-right corners of Facebook but also on the anti-establishment fringes, in groups with thousands of members devoted to highlighting topics dismissed by the mainstream media. One particular image of Harris and her husband — paired with the text, “Never trust the opinions of a black woman on black issues who has invested her future with a White man” — circulated widely in groups devoted to black nationalism and the Nation of Islam.

The harsh judgments about Harris, delivered online and at Trump’s nominating convention, are at least partially intended to help blunt her appeal among Black voters already unlikely to vote for Democrats, said experts in digital communication. The messaging is more likely to sow cynicism, causing voters of color to withdraw from the political process, said Ashley Bryant, also of Win Black/Pa’lante.The approach may be most powerful, however, in the cover it gives to White voters who harbor anti-Black sentiments, said Michael Steele [....]

I would tend to trust her opinion on this: