Misleading Joe Biden Video Is the First Viral Controversy of 2020
As the 2020 election nears, cybersecurity experts have warned about the growing threat of misinformation and distorted videos sowing discord in an effort to sway voters. A new video of former vice president Joe Biden, currently the leading Democratic presidential candidate, provides a glimpse of that chaotic future, as it purportedly shows Biden making a series of white nationalist talking points in the vein of an alt-right troll.
The video has already been widely debunked as a “misleading” edit, but it’s tailored to make Biden’s outlook on American identity one of celebratory whiteness. Rather than a deepfake—a video deliberately altered to depict someone saying something they’ve never said—the Biden video appears to be selectively edited to ignore the situation’s greater context.
“Our culture is not imported from some African nation, or some Asian nation,” Biden says in the edited video. “It’s our English jurisprudential culture. Our European culture.”
The 20-second clip seems to provide a pretty shocking dose of ethnocentrism if taken at face value, though the broader context of Biden’s particular remarks is unclear. In the wake of the video’s circulation on Wednesday, swarms of users either condemned the video’s shady provenance or used it as a cudgel to denounce the entire Democratic and media establishment. Currently, the clip has just over a million views.
Various Twitter sleuths have pointed out that Biden’s words closely mirror a speech he gave last March at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. At the event, co-organized by the Biden Foundation and It’s On Us, an organization dedicated to fighting sexual assault on college campuses, Biden delivered very similar remarks: "We all have an obligation to do nothing less than change the culture in this country,” Biden said. "This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man's culture. It's got to change."
At the time, Biden was speaking about his role in the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Thomas, who was famously accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill while they worked together at the Department of Education, was confirmed to the bench despite the allegations and controversy. Since launching his most recent presidential bid, Biden has spoken candidly about not doing enough to seriously address the allegations during his time as a senator.
Biden’s New Year’s Day clip is a grim foreshadowing of the misinformation hellscape likely to take form as the election marches forward. Democratic establishment leaders have already proven to be easy targets, in part due to their prominent roles in the Trump impeachment proceedings and other high-profile events. Last May, a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went viral on Facebook. The footage was slowed down to make it appear like Pelosi was drunk at a public speaking event. Facebook’s initial refusal to scrub the video only hastened its spread, as it earned shares from President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who tweeted a different version of the clip in his trademark ranting style.
With only one full news day elapsed in an election year, it’s clear that altered, edited, or misleading videos are primed to fulfill their turbulent promise.
Originally Appeared on GQ
