Viral fearmongering after Supreme Court rules on racial gerrymandering

After the third assassination attempt against the president — who, for his part, calls his political opponents ‘traitors’ and demands their hanging — cooler heads are finally prevailing and taking the rhetorical temperature of our political discourse down.

Just kidding.

In the aftermath of a controversial Supreme Court ruling on race, gerrymandering, and the Civil Rights Act, rampant fearmongering, vile invective, and outright misinformation about the complex case are all going viral.

“The Supreme Court just made it constitutional for elections to discriminate against black people,” one TikTok video with 1.2 million views falsely claims, bizarrely comparing the high court’s ruling to viral instances where influencers have said the word “n*****.” Meanwhile, influencer Leigh McGowan, who has 3 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, falsely claimed, “Jim Crow is back,” referring to the infamous segregation-era barriers that prohibited black people from voting.

“They’re going after the 13th Amendment,” which banned slavery, another