How 'dark money' is targeting America's Arab and Jewish voters

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally near the White House in Washington DC. Dark money and disinformation campaigns are afoot in the build up to the US Presidential election on November 5. AFP

In the run-up to the November election, the US is witnessing a huge expenditure of “dark money” in a disinformation campaign designed to depress the Arab-American vote in Michigan and the Jewish-American vote in Pennsylvania.

During the past three election cycles, dark money has played an increasingly important role in US elections. Dark money refers to expenditures from groups that ostensibly operate independently from official campaigns and whose funds need not be reported. There have also been disinformation campaigns before; that is, organised efforts to use deceptive, misleading, or exaggerated claims for political advantage.

A dark money group undertook such an effort in 2020, when it sought to derail Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign with a sizeable television ad by claiming that he was too old (despite the fact that the candidate against whom he was running – President Joe Biden – was about the same age), or that he was too radical to win (despite the fact that Mr Sanders had already won most of that year’s primaries and polls showed him beating the expected Republican nominee by a larger margin than any of the other Democrats in the field).

US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is being targeted by dark money. AFP

What made the effort even more dishonest was that the group sponsoring the ads was the Democratic Majority for Israel. They wanted to defeat Mr Sanders because they didn’t trust his more balanced approach to the Middle East. But knowing that argument wouldn’t win over Democratic voters, they never mentioned Israel in their ads – a clear case of using both disinformation and misinformation for a political end.

That effort’s success encouraged more pro-Israel dark money groups to join the fray in elections in 2022 and this year, spending well over $100 million in more than a dozen congressional races. Once again, they promoted misleading or exaggerated claims calling into question the character or leadership qualities of the candidates they opposed without ever mentioning that their goal was to defeat those who they deemed insufficiently pro-Israel. What we’re seeing in this election is more dark money disinformation, but with a deceptively ingenious twist.

What we’re seeing in this election is more dark money disinformation, but with a deceptively ingenious twist

A pro-Donald Trump group is spending tens of millions of dollars targeting both Arab-American and Jewish-American voters in two battleground states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with contradictory messaging designed to discourage them from voting for the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. This effort includes direct mail and digital ads on social media platforms.

Almost daily, Michigan’s Arab-American voters in precincts of heavy concentration are receiving glossy mailings with messages such as “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff: Unwavering Support for Israel” or “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, the ultimate pro-Israel power couple” or “Kamala Harris and Elissa Slotkin [the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan]: The proven team we can trust to stand up for the Jewish community”. And targeted video messaging on social media sites saying things like “Kamala Harris stands with Israel”.

Meanwhile, in areas of Pennsylvania where there are heavy concentrations of Jewish voters, homes are receiving messages such as “Kamala Harris will embolden anti-Semites” or “Donald Trump always stands up for the Jewish people”. And targeted video messaging on social media platforms saying, “Kamala Harris will not be silent about human suffering in Gaza” or “Two-faced Kamala Harris: Standing with Palestine and not our ally, Israel”.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders sparred with each other in the 2020 presidential election. Reuters

These mailings and social media posts are paid for by a dark money group, Future Coalition PAC, as has been widely reported in US media in recent weeks. Researchers have identified that one of the major donors to this group is Elon Musk, the principal owner of X and a strong supporter of Mr Trump’s presidential bid.

It’s important to note that the videos used in these ads contain Ms Harris’s speeches in which she, in fact, makes statements that are very supportive of Israel and others in which she expresses sympathy with Palestinians suffering in Gaza or the right of students on campuses to protest against injustice. What makes this effort classic disinformation is the selective use of these quotes and the way they are used to make exaggerated claims in an effort to mislead targeted groups of voters, discouraging their support for the Democratic candidate.

To look at it in another way, we can ask, what would be the impact of these ads if they were reversed, with Arab-American voters targeted with the pro-Palestinian ads and Jewish-American voters targeted with the pro-Israel ads?

Disinformation has long been a problem in American elections. Now with significant expenditures from dark groups and their ability to use advanced micro-targeting to identify and deceive specific voter groups using their social media behaviour, what was a problem has now become a crisis.

I am reminded that on two separate occasions in the past two years, a group of Democratic National Committee members tried to get the party to ban the use of dark money in primaries. We warned that allowing billionaire donors to skew American elections with disinformation and misinformation was a threat to our democracy.

On both occasions, the party leadership blocked our effort to have a vote on our resolution. Little did we know that just a year later, the very dark money disinformation effort funded by Republican donors – about which we warned – could very well contribute to upending the campaign of the Democratic nominee for president.