A whopping 67 percent of U.S. teens use TikTok. Sixty-two percent are on Instagram. And 95 percent use YouTube, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center. While the effects of constant social media usage are alarming, equally as concerning is the messaging young people internalize on such platforms, priming them to be future voters of the Democratic Party.
While Twitter user Libs Of TikTok has shed light on the pervasive ideologies, such as critical theory, that indoctrinate young people on the Chinese Communist Party-influenced app, not much attention has been paid to Instagram — Mecca of the influencer class — and the celebrities pushing Democratic Party propaganda on adoring, unsuspecting fans.
Case-in-point: Hailey Bieber.
The supermodel and wife to pop musician Justin Bieber last week took advantage of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to peddle dangerous election misinformation on her skincare brand’s Instagram account — because to “make it” as a celebrity nowadays, one must apparently own a skincare or beauty line.
In a multi-slide post published to Rhode skin’s nearly 700,000 followers (and reposted to Bieber’s personal Instagram account of 50 million followers), Bieber used the federal holiday as an excuse to push her left-wing politics and highlight Democrat get-out-the-vote groups:
while there are many ways to celebrate and honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at rhode we do so by continuing to take action on issues important to Dr. King’s legacy through work at rhode futures foundation. and yet, over the last decade we have witnessed an erosion in our voting rights. the Voting Rights Act – a landmark piece of federal legislation meant to prohibit racial discrimination in voting – continues to be gutted. in 2022. according to a new report by Democracy Docket, partisan party groups filed a record 23 democracy-related lawsuits to challenge election results, attack mail-in voting and attempt to undermine the administration of elections. these efforts are a threat on our democracy.
Notice Bieber frames the election integrity debate explicitly through a racial lens, as Democrats are wont to do. There is no mention of the fact that it’s actually Democrats who seek to gut the Voting Rights Act through legislation that would use the power of the federal government to overturn voter ID laws, replacing King’s “worthwhile goal of ending racial discrimination with the completely partisan goal of advancing liberal political candidates.”
Democrats’ legislation would also expand the definition of voting rights violations to include not only intentional discrimination, but also what they deem disparate outcomes. This means any kind of voting requirement or practice to ensure election integrity could be overturned by the courts or federal government over alleged racial discrimination.
Besides the brand’s blatant fearmongering over imagined racism and boosting wildly problematic mail-in voting, which makes it easier for Democrats to harvest ballots, Rhode skin associates Republican-led election integrity efforts, including election challenges, with threatening “democracy.” Last I checked, challenging election results, and having a system through which to do so, strengthens the democratic process as candidates have an opportunity to redress alleged election interference or fraud.
Next, the brand recommended several left-wing groups for its followers to support: Black Voters Matter Fund (“dedicated to expanding Black voter engagement and increasing progressive power”), Democracy Docket (Russia hoaxer and top Democrat lawyer Marc Elias’ blog on his fight against election integrity efforts), and I Am a Voter (a “nonpartisan” get-out-the-vote nonprofit that gets young people registered to vote — aka, expands the Democrat Party’s voter base).
That Bieber via Rhode skin is collaborating with such obviously partisan organizations shows how skilled the Democratic Party is at recruiting celebrities and trendy brands to peddle their propaganda to young people. During the 2020 presidential election, Taylor Swift, world-renowned pop star and darling of Gen Z and millennial women, openly campaigned for Joe Biden. During the Democratic National Convention that same year, the party brought out stars Billie Eilish, Maggie Rogers, and Common to literally sing Biden’s praises and influence young people.
Using celebrities and their huge influence over youths via social media is just one piece of the Democrat Party’s plan to control the flow of information emanating from Hollywood, pop culture, and the media and to shape the electorate. As Molly Ball wrote in her article “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” which was an open admission that Democrats rigged the 2020 election:
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
The article continues by detailing the campaign’s ideological capture of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok during the presidential race. This presumably has the strongest effects among young people, a key voting bloc for Democrats, who have multiple initiatives aimed at molding them into loyal party apparatchiks. And it’s paying off. Two-thirds of Gen Z voters backed House Democrats in this past midterm election, according to exit polls. As such, Democrats are sure to stick with this strategy of dominating social media with their cultural and political propaganda through their most loyal influencers and celebrities, such as Hailey Bieber, throughout 2024 and beyond.
My advice to parents: Make sure you talk to your kids about politics before their favorite celebrities or social media influencers do.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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