Thousands of Black people receive sinister texts threatening slavery – National & International News – FRI 8Nov2024
Thousands of Black people receive texts threatening slavery.
Pelosi blames Biden’s late dropout for Harris’s loss.
Thousands of Black people receive texts threatening slavery
The FBI, Federal Communications Commission, and attorneys general in several states are investigating after thousands of Black people received texts telling them they have been “selected” to become “a slave” or to pick cotton on a plantation. There were several versions of the texts, but many told recipients to “be ready” at certain dates and times, and said they would be picked up in a brown or white van. Some of the texts referred to the recipient by name, and in at least some instances, the text mentioned that their minor children (also named) would be taken as well.
Reporting does not indicate even a ballpark figure for how many people received the texts nationwide. However, thousands of Black college students received texts in Alabama alone. So far, these texts have been reported by recipients in at least 17 States. The recipients ranged from adults to children as young as middle school age. College students seem to have been a particular target. So far, all reported recipients were Black.
Whodunnit
It’s not clear who is behind the texts, but it appears to be more than one person. Some of the numbers were linked to TextNow, a company that allows customers to create phone numbers for free. TextNow says it shut down the accounts and is working with authorities.
CBS News managed to track down at least one person who sent a version of the text. The person’s area code was linked to Fort Wayne, Indiana. The person said that the message was “a prank” before hanging up.
Cori Faklaris, an expert in software and information services, believes that the miscreants targeted their victims by taking advantage of bulk-messaging industry databases used by mass marketers. Faklaris says it is surprisingly easy to make a guess about the race or ethnicity of individuals attached to phone numbers. A person can buy massive collections of personal information through the internet, and then use machine-learning algorithms to combine this data with other available data.
Election connection
The first of these texts went out on Wednesday, hours after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election. Some of these texts apparently even mentioned Trump by name. The Trump campaign has repudiated the texts and said they will take legal action “if we can find the origin of these messages which promote this kind of ugliness in our name”.
It is by no means certain that the responsible parties are even ideologically aligned with Trump. However, the timing and content of the messages make it clear that their purpose was to foster a climate of fear and intimidation following Trump’s election. In this, they succeeded. Recipients of the texts reported feeling fear and vulnerability. Many in marginalized communities are already wary, given the toxic and often hateful rhetoric that is frequently embraced by Trump and his surrogates.
Pelosi blames Biden’s late dropout for Harris’s loss
Days after Kamala Harris’s resounding defeat at the polls, many Democratic politicians are publicly engaging in postmortems. Speaking with the New York Times podcast “The Interview”, which will be released tomorrow, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blamed Harris’s loss Biden’s delay in dropping out after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June.
“Had [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race” Pelosi said. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary”.
She went on to say, “Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in [the primary] and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened.”
Pelosi also made clear that she had wanted an open primary rather than having Harris be anointed Biden’s successor. After dragging his feet for almost a month, Biden finally did drop out. Minutes after announcing he was ending his candidacy, he endorsed Kamala Harris. Many noted at the time that despite Biden’s endorsement, it was several days before Pelosi, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and former President Obama publicly got behind her.
“Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately,” Pelosi said, “that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
Bad blue blood
It is widely acknowledged that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was instrumental in convincing President Biden to drop out of the 2024 election. What is not widely known is that ever since, a massive rift has remained between Biden and Pelosi. The Biden team also apparently resents former President Obama, who also had a hand in forcing him out.
Following Harris’s loss, there is a lot of finger pointing between Biden and Harris’s respective teams. Some commentators have also pointed to embarrassing gaffes by Biden that may have further undermined Harris’s messaging.
What is not being widely acknowledged is that Harris’s prospects were also certainly hurt by Biden’s insistence on arming and funding Israel’s year-long military assault on Gaza. Biden’s policy on Gaza was deeply unpopular among Democratic and independent voters. Harris herself also bears responsibility for failing to distance herself from Biden’s Middle East policy. This very likely cost her Michigan, which is home to a sizable Arab and Muslim population, and probably also hurt her turnout among young voters nationwide.
