Sunday, our president thoughtful and reserved republished on his social site Truth A video generated by artificial intelligence This has falsely shown that former President Obama was arrested and imprisoned.
There are those among you who think it is high humor; those among you who find it as tedious as they are offensive; And those among you perfectly ignoring the mental swamp which is Social truth.
Whatever the camp in which you fall, the video crosses all the demographic data by being expected – just another crazy Trump stroke in a repetitive cycle of division and diversion so frequent that the marmot day seems fresh. Epstein who?
But there are three reasons why this particular video – not made by the president but amplified to thousands – deserves to be noted, and perhaps even the trouble to be believed.
First of all, it’s a racist flat. In this document, Obama is torn from a chair in the oval office and forced his knees, almost bowing, against a laughing Trump. This imaging is not difficult to interpret: the most estimated black man in America – who recently warned that we are about to lose democracy – Forced to submit to our chief.
The video comes as Trump says Tulsi Gabbardnational intelligence director, discovered a “conspiracy treason in 2016” in which the senior Obama officials compared to Russia to disturb the elections. Democrats say that the complaint is at best wrong.
If you are inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, just before this scene from Obama is forced to kneel, A meme of Pepe the frog – An emblematic image of the extreme right and white supremacy – flashes on the screen.
Not subtle. But also, not the first time that racism has come directly from the White House. On Monday, the Reverend Amos Brown, pastor of the third Baptist church of San Francisco and a student of Martin Luther King Jr., reminded me that not so long ago, the president of the time, Woodrow Wilson, screened the pro-kk “The Birth of A Nation” to the executive mansion. It was the first film screening that never had, and its anti-black point of view sparked controversy and demonstrations.
This was largely due to a truth that Hollywood knows well – fiction has great power to influence the spirits. Brown then sees direct similarities in the way Wilson has amplified the fictitious anti-lawyer, and how Trump does now, both for political purposes.
“Mr. Trump should realize that Obama did nothing to him. But just the idea, the thought of a black man being human, is a threat to him and his supporters,” said Brown.
Brown said he was praying that the president “stops this sectarianism” and see the error of his tracks. I will pray the great gods give the reverend good luck on this subject.
But, on the ground, Brown said that “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Trump courted the black vote and has his supporters among people of all colors and ethnic groups, but he also played on racist tropes to succeed in political Central Park FiveNow known as five exempts, decades ago to attach fear around black immigrants who eat cats and dogs in Ohio during recent elections. It’s an old play book because it works.
Republicaning the image of Obama on his knees is frightening because it is a hard reminder that racism is no longer an underlying current in our society, if ever. It is a motivator and a power to be openly exercised – as Wilson did in 1915.
But the differences in media of the day by day are now what should arouse our second fear around this video. A fictitious film is one thing. A video generated by AI-AI which, for many people, seems to represent reality is a whole new level of reality.
The fear of deep buttocks in politics is not new. This is a global problem, and in all honesty, it is not the first time (by far) Trump or other politicians use deep buttocks.
Trump last year republished a Image of Taylor Swift Approving him (which has never happened). Last year, during the elections and the height of the Bromance Elon Musk-Trump, the billionaire published a False photo of the political challenger Kamala Harris Dressed in what looked like a communist military uniform.
Trump himself was not immune. In 2023, Eliot Higgins, founder of the Bellingcat investigationsaid he was playing with an AI tool and created images from Trump arrested, never thinking that it would become viral (especially as an image gave Trump three legs).
Of course, and millions of people looked at these false photos, at least some assuming that they were real.
The list of political examples Deepfake is long and disturbing. Which brings us to the third reason why the last use by Trump is disturbing by Trump.
He clearly sees the effectiveness of the manipulation of race and reality to increase his own power and promote his own program.
Obama on his knees strikes an agreement too close to the image of the Latin senator Alex Padilla taken to earth by the federal authorities a few weeks ago at a press conference. It has a frightening resemblance to the thousands of images that flood us daily from immigrants slaughtered and held by immigration agents in an often violent way.
Videos like this Obama are normalization, mockery, the celebration of the erosion of civil rights that we see currently intended for black, brown and vulnerable Americans.
There is nothing innocent or unexpected in this type of videos. They are a political weapon used for a purpose.
Because when the dull rehearsal our shock, how long before we are no longer shocked by real images of real arrests?
