US Rightwing Spreads “Big Lie” on US Vice-President’s Remarks on Climate Justice

The US rightwing ecosys­tem is per­pet­u­at­ing the “big lie” that US Vice-Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris has said fed­er­al Hur­ri­cane Ian relief would be based on equi­ty and pri­or­i­tize peo­ple in “com­mu­ni­ties of col­or.” Accord­ing to a Fox News report:

Twit­ter ham­mered Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris for a recent speech in which she described that fed­er­al Hur­ri­cane Ian relief would be based on “equi­ty” and pri­or­i­tize peo­ple in “com­mu­ni­ties of col­or.” Speak­ing to actress Priyan­ka Chopra Jonas at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee’s Wom­en’s Lead­er­ship Forum on Fri­day, Har­ris claimed that peo­ple of col­or and low-income com­mu­ni­ties are most affect­ed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as Hur­ri­cane Ian. Because of this, Har­ris described how fed­er­al relief should be giv­en “based on equi­ty.” The Vice Pres­i­dent declared, “It is our low­est income com­mu­ni­ties and our com­mu­ni­ties of col­or that are most impact­ed by these extreme con­di­tions and impact­ed by issues that are not of their own mak­ing.” Chopra inter­ject­ed, “And women,” to which Har­ris replied, “Absolute­ly.” The Vice Pres­i­dent con­tin­ued: “And so we have to address this in a way that is about giv­ing resources based on equi­ty, under­stand­ing that we fight for equal­i­ty, but we also need to fight for equi­ty, under­stand­ing not every­one starts out at the same place.” She added, “And if we want peo­ple to be in an equal palace, some­times we have to take into account those dis­par­i­ties and do that work.” The audi­ence applaud­ed Har­ris’ state­ments. Though crit­ics on Twit­ter were out­raged by her claims, with many accus­ing her of being racist towards vic­tims of Hur­ri­cane Ian in Flori­da. Some even claimed she was con­fus­ing and scar­ing storm sur­vivors wor­ried they might not get help quick­ly because they weren’t liv­ing in low-income communities.

Read the rest here.

A Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) review of Har­ris’s remarks sug­gests that Har­ris’ remarks have been tak­en out of con­text. Begin­ning around time 5:45, Har­ris begins to dis­cuss the issue, and her wide­ly cit­ed state­ment that “we have to address this in a way that is about giv­ing resources based on equi­ty” (time 7:18) refers to what she had ear­li­er called “cli­mate jus­tice” in gen­er­al and not fed­er­al Hur­ri­cane Ian relief specif­i­cal­ly. That did not stop a cam­paign advis­er to Flori­da gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis who accused  Har­ris of caus­ing “undue pan­ic” with “her sug­ges­tion that Hur­ri­cane Ian–relief aid should be dis­trib­uted based on equi­ty.” A myr­i­ad of oth­er rightwing out­lets repeat­ed the charge.

The GIOR FAQ states:

The US is unique among demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries at this point in time because it is the only demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that is known to have its own gov­ern­ment and/or a major polit­i­cal par­ty con­duct­ing influ­ence oper­a­tions direct­ed at its own cit­i­zens. This looks like­ly to con­tin­ue for the fore­see­able future.

The GIOR exten­sive­ly cov­ers these influ­ence oper­a­tions in the US.