3 things that should scare us about Trump’s fake video of Obama

On Sunday, our thoughtful and reserved president republished on his social site of truth a video generated by the artificial intelligence which falsely showed that the 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 marsh 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 imagery 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 leader.

The video comes as Trump says Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, discovered a “conspiracy treason in 2016” in which the senior Obama officials have colluted with Russia to disturb the election. 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 of 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 all ethnic groups, but he also played on racist tropes for political success, fear that has scared around the Central Park Five, now known under the name of five exempt, decades to scare around black immigrants eating cats and dogs in the 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.

Last year, Trump republished an image of Taylor Swift approving him (which never took place). 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, the founder of the BellingCat investigation point of sale, said that he was playing with an AI tool and had created images from Trump arrested, never thinking that she 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 of Obama are normalization, mockery, the celebration of the erosion of civil rights and violence that we currently see 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?