Taylor Swift

Subterms

    More stories

    • 238 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the US presidential debate: Kamala Harris’s triumph isn’t transformative, but it was essential | Editorial

      by

      If presidential debates don’t really matter, as some have contended, Kamala Harris would not have been on the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Yes, the spectacle can lead to excessive focus on their impact. But Joe Biden’s disastrous performance, which triggered his withdrawal from the race, showed how these choreographed political events can catalyse, if not create, voters’ sentiment about candidates.Only weeks before the nation makes its choice, Ms Harris’s success was critical. Debates are often remembered, as in Mr Biden’s case, when things go wrong. The vice-president didn’t merely clear the very low bar set by her boss – basic competence – but soared over it. Her desire to stick it to Donald Trump may not have elucidated matters for undecided voters who say they want to know more about her and her policies. She did mention a few, including measures to codify abortion rights and promote an “opportunity economy”, but was keener to focus on the broad messages.However, Donald Trump thought the 2024 election would be about his supposed strength against Mr Biden. In contrast, it was Ms Harris who dominated the debate, from the moment she took the physical initiative by crossing the stage to shake his hand – dispelling uncomfortable memories of him looming behind Hillary Clinton in 2016 – to her remark that Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch”.Mr Trump’s vanity made him incapable of resisting the obvious bait she laid out for him, especially her observation that supporters were so bored they were leaving rallies during his rambling, incoherent speeches. Her air of amused disdain for his lies gave her the air of, well, an experienced prosecutor listening to the desperate bluster of a felon. In hitting him on abortion, on healthcare, on democracy itself, she was clear and incisive. When he lied about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, she simply mocked him: “Talk about extreme.”Mr Trump’s claim was symptomatic of his reliance on rightwing memes, while Ms Harris sought to reach across the aisle, touting her gun ownership and talking of an America where “we see in each other a friend”. He is still struggling to navigate a position on abortion that will maintain his evangelical support without alienating other voters, but on Tuesday he ludicrously claimed that Democrats wanted to “execute the baby”.There was no doubt that this was the vice-president’s victory, albeit one facilitated by strong moderation. In a flash CNN poll, 63% of viewers said that Ms Harris had turned in the better performance, while 37% opted for her rival. Yet Ms Clinton was judged to outperform Mr Trump by a similar margin after their first debate in 2016 – and edged up less than 1% in the polls over the next week.A boost for Ms Harris is desperately needed because polls suggest the candidates are effectively deadlocked, with Mr Trump gaining some ground recently after her initial surge. Inflation has softened to the lowest level since February 2021, and the Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates. But improvements in the economic picture may not feed through to voting intentions quickly enough to help the Democrats. Cumulative disgruntlement at the cost of living is not quickly dispelled even when price rises slow and are offset by wage growth.An extraordinarily turbulent race may yet have more surprises in store. Nonetheless, in a contest that comes down to a tiny fraction of the electorate, across a handful of battleground states, everything matters, be it debate success or – yes – Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Ms Harris’s campaign knew they needed a clear victory on Tuesday. But even as they celebrate, they know it is only one step along the way.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Is Taylor Swift a secret Trump supporter? | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      It was the embrace that launched a thousand tweets: on Sunday, Taylor Swift hugged Brittany Mahomes – the wife of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes – at the US Open. A photo of the hug immediately had tongues wagging.If you’re not Extremely Online, the only thing that might stand out from the innocuous-seeming hug photo is that Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce (also in the photo) has horrendous taste in hats. The broader context, however, is Mahomes’s link to Donald Trump. Last week the former president thanked Mahomes for “strongly defending me” after she liked one of his Instagram posts back in August. That post, titled “The 2024 GOP Platform”, outlined what a second Trump term would consist of – things such as “the largest deportation operation in American history”. Mahomes did not appreciate people criticising her for liking the post (which she seems to have later unliked), calling them “haters” with “deep-rooted issues … from childhood”.This drama matters because Swift is one of the most influential people on the planet. There has been intense speculation about whether the pop star will endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle. In the absence of any such endorsement, people have been scrutinising her actions for clues about her political leanings. Hugging Mahomes after her Trump controversy? Well, that’s been taken by some as a sign that Taylor is Team Trump.The Mahomes hug isn’t the only evidence people are citing to suggest Swift, who endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, might be leaning to the right now. There’s also the fact she was tight-lipped when Trump recently shared a bunch of AI-generated images on his Truth Social platform that implied Swift and her fans were endorsing him. “The Swifties for Trump movement is real!” the post, originally created by a murky rightwing non-profit, read. “I accept!” Trump wrote above the fake photos.A presidential candidate using your image without your consent to claim you support his racist and regressive views is a big deal. If you think his views are abhorrent, you’d want to publicly distance yourself from him, right? There are scores of famous musicians, from Céline Dion to Beyoncé, who have made it very public that they don’t want Trump using their music at rallies. “Don’t even think about using my music, you fascists,” Jack White said last month, after a Trump aide used a White Stripes song in an online video. White added that he would sue the Trump campaign. If you’re angry a man like Trump is associating himself with you, then that’s how you act. Meanwhile, various media outlets reported that Swift’s “spokesperson did not return multiple messages seeking comment” after Trump posted the fake endorsement photos.To be clear: I don’t think Swift is a secret Trump supporter. She’s been critical of him in the past, after all. But it can’t be stressed enough that Swift isn’t a billionaire just because she sings catchy songs. She’s a billionaire because she is a brilliant businesswoman who exerts meticulous control over her personal brand. Everything she does is intentional, done with the knowledge that her fanbase will scrutinise and attempt to decode even the most banal action like it’s the Rosetta Stone. One imagines the reason her spokesperson didn’t comment about the fake Trump photos wasn’t that they were too busy, it was that they’d decided silence was the savviest choice.Swift may have endorsed Biden-Harris in 2020, but that was a very different time. After the George Floyd protests, “Brands, which often remain silent when it comes to social justice issues, began speaking out,” a 2021 AdAge article noted. They did so because they knew that being in tune with the zeitgeist was good for their business. Now companies are being targeted by the right with boycotts and harassment if they align with progressive causes. That bullying has worked: industry experts have warned of a worrying trend of brands taking significant steps back from diversity and sustainability initiatives. Swift is one of the biggest brands there is; it’s only natural she’s shying away from politics.That said, I hope Swift proves me wrong and speaks up this election cycle. We live in a world where everything is political. Swift isn’t avoiding politics by staying quiet: her silence speaks louder than words. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Swifties for Kamala rally raises nearly $140,000 for Harris

      by

      Taylor Swift has yet to publicly endorse a candidate, but some of her fanbase are already mobilizing for Kamala Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched on Tuesday, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.Swift, who has no affiliation with the group, was not present on the Zoom call nor involved in the event. The group has amassed about 250 million followers on social media platforms since Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July and endorsed the vice-president.More than 26,000 people joined the Zoom call on Tuesday, according to CNN.King was introduced as the self-proclaimed “original cat lady” and began her speech by praising Swift as “my musical and songwriting granddaughter”. Swift inducted King into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 with a performance of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, calling her “the greatest songwriter of all time”.“I’m excited about Kamala, because so many people are excited about Kamala,” King said after rapping the chorus to Swift’s 2014 hit Shake It Off. “I have admired her, the idea that this happened, and the stars lined up, and Joe Biden did a really gracious, hard thing to do, and I’m so proud of him … But this is about you. This call is about you.”King provided attendees with advice for volunteering, such as phone banking and door knocking. “I’ve been a political activist for years. I’ve been a volunteer, I’ve been a door knocker, even as a famous person,” she said. “I’m telling you all this because if any of you are thinking of volunteering to be door knockers or phone callers, but you’re a little nervous about what you might say, please believe me: there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.”Each speaker, including the senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, the congresswoman Becca Balint of Vermont and the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, Anderson Clayton, named their favorite Swift song before their remarks. Warren picked the 10-minute version of All Too Well and her 2022 hit Karma. Warren also praised Swifties’ battle against Ticketmaster and summoned the “era of the first woman president”.“You are resilient, and you know how to take on bullies and you know how to be your most authentic, most joyful selves,” Warren said. “You come together hand-in-hand, friendship bracelets on your wrist, and you overcome pretty much anything that life throws at you. And that is what the Kamala Harris campaign is all about. It’s about standing up for what is right in the face of bullies, like Donald Trump.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Swift has yet to comment on the 2024 election, she did ultimately back the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020. But the group is not waiting for her endorsement. “We are not waiting on Taylor to show her support for Kamala Harris,” the group’s social media manager, Rohan Reagan, told Cosmopolitan in August. “We are doing this outside of her, using the platform of Swifties as a way to get people involved in the election. Taylor did throw her support toward Joe Biden during the 2020 election, so it is possible that she’ll show her support again. But Swifties for Kamala aren’t waiting for her to do that.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      How did Donald Trump end up posting Taylor Swift deepfakes?

      by

      When Donald Trump shared a slew of AI-generated images this week that falsely depicted Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president, the former US president was amplifying the work of a murky non-profit with aspirations to bankroll rightwing media influencers and a history of spreading misinformation.Several of the images Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, which showed digitally rendered young women in “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, were the products of the John Milton Freedom Foundation. Launched last year, the Texas-based non-profit organization frames itself as a press freedom group with the goal of “empowering independent journalists” and “fortifying the bedrock of democracy”.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenThe group’s day-to-day operations appear to revolve around sharing engagement bait on X and seeking millions from donors for a “fellowship program” chaired by a high school sophomore that would award $100,000 to Twitter personalities such as Glenn Greenwald, Andy Ngo and Lara Logan, according to a review of the group’s tax records, investor documents and social media output. The John Milton Freedom Foundation did not return request for comment to a set of questions about its operations and fellowship program.After months of retweeting conservative media influencers and echoing Elon Musk’s claims that freedom of speech is under attack from leftwing forces, one of the organization’s messages found its way to Trump and then his millions of supporters.Disinformation researchers have long warned that generative AI has the ability to lower the bar for creating misleading content and threaten information around elections. After Musk’s xAI company released its largely unregulated Grok image generator last week, there has been a surge of AI content that has included depictions of Trump, Kamala Harris and other political figures. The Milton Freedom Foundation is one of many small groups flooding social media with so-called AI slop.A niche non-profit’s AI slop makes its way to TrumpDuring the spike in AI images on X, the conservative @amuse account posted the images of AI-generated Swift fans to more than 300,000 followers. On the text of the post, which was labeled “satire”, was a watermark that stated it was “sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation”. Trump posted a screenshot of @amuse’s tweet on Truth Social.The @amuse account has considerable reach itself, with about 390,000 followers on X and dozens of daily posts. Running @amuse appears to be Alexander Muse, listed as a consultant in the investor prospectus of the Milton Foundation, who also writes a rightwing commentary Substack that includes posts exploring election conspiracy theories. The @amuse account has numerous connections with Muse. The X account is connected to a Substack posting the same exact articles that Muse publishes on his LinkedIn page, which also has the username “amuse”, reflecting his first initial and last name. Muse’s book on how to secure startup funding, which includes examples of him asking ChatGPT to pretend it’s Musk and offer business advice, lists that same Substack account as its publisher.Prominent accounts including Musk have shared and replied to @amuse’s posts, which recently have included AI depictions of Trump fighting Darth Vader and sexualized imagery of Harris. Its banner picture is currently an AI-generated photo of Trump surrounded by women in “Swifties” shirts. The account posts misleading, pro-Trump headlines such as claiming Harris turned hundreds of thousands of children over to human traffickers as “border czar”. The headlines, like the AI-generated Swifties for Trump images, come with the watermark “sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation”.The John Milton Freedom Foundation, named after the 17th-century British poet and essayist, has a small online footprint: a website, an investor prospectus and an X account with fewer than 500 followers. The team behind it, according to its own documents, consists of five people based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with varying degrees of experience in Republican politics. Muse’s daughter, described as a 10th grade honor student on the non-profit’s site, serves as the Milton Foundation’s “fellowship chair”.The foundation’s stated goal is to raise $2m from major donors to award $100,000 grants to a list of “fellows” made up of rightwing media influencers. These include people like the former CBS journalist turned far-right star Lara Logan, who was cut from Newsmax in recent years for going on a QAnon-inspired rant that claimed world leaders drink children’s blood, as well as the author of an anti-trans children’s book. The organization believes that this money would allow these already established influencers to “increase their reach by more than 10x in less than a year”, according to its investor prospectus.While only one of the fellows listed on the foundation’s site mentions the organization on their X profiles and none follow its account, the @amuse account has a prominent link to the group’s community page and the foundation often engages with its posts.It is not clear that the foundation has any money to give and if all the media influencers listed as its 2024 fellowship class know about the organization. One Texas-based account that posts anti-vaccine content lists itself as a “JMFF” fellow in their bio, but none of the others advertise any connection. The most recent tax records for the Freedom Foundation place it in the category of non-profits whose gross receipts, or total funds received from all sources, range from $0 to $50,000 – far below the millions it is seeking.The organization’s board includes its chair, Brad Merritt, who is touted as an experienced Republican organizer with claims to have raised $300m for various non-profits; its director, Shiree Sanchez, who served as assistant director of the Republican party of Texas between 1985 and 1986; and Mark Karaffa, a retired healthcare industry executive.Muse’s experience in digital media appears to be far more extensive than the non-profit’s other members. In addition to his blog, he claims to have worked with James O’Keefe, the former CEO of the rightwing organization Project Veritas, who was known for hidden camera stings until he was ousted last year over allegations of misplaced funds. Muse, who is described in the prospectus as a “serial entrepreneur”, also blogs about how to make money from generative AI. More

    • 288 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      If you are outraged by Trump’s use of AI and deepfakes, don’t be – that’s exactly what he wants | Sophia Smith Galer

      by

      A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump decided it would be fun to accuse the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, of using AI in images showing a large crowd greeting her at an airport. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump furiously thumbed into his phone. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d it […] She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”Just as some animals are more equal than others, some politicians are more honest. So this week, when the former president himself posted an obviously AI-generated image of what looks like the back of Harris’s head in front of an enormous communist crowd with a huge hammer and sickle unfurled above them, he presumably did not consider it election interference. Trump has also recently shared AI-generated images of himself, Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.These images are concerning – especially given most image generators have put up guardrails against making content of real people. But it seems that Trump isn’t trying to pass the images off as real: I think this is him trying to be funny.Over on the Trump campaign team, someone has learned how to work an AI-image generator and has become a little prompt-happy. A weird video of Trump and Elon Musk dancing together isn’t exactly an example of the kind of election-manipulating deepfake media that many disinformation commentators are worried about. It is an example of a candidate desperately trying to remain on your algorithm. AI generation just requires a few prompts and maybe a paid subscription to a generator. It’s a lot cheaper, and quicker, than hiring creatives who need to spend time ideating and creating before something is ready to publish.AI-generated images and deepfakes are the poor man’s meme. Actual successful memes – a humorous piece of content designed to be spread online – are crafted by individuals who have adopted the language and culture of the internet, and know how to inject zeitgeisty topics into social posts designed to resonate and go viral. The combination of text with images or video is a subtle art, and it is one that Harris’s campaign team practises well. Everyone online knows about the coconut tree, and the chronically online will know about the Charli xcx accolade that “Kamala IS brat”.By contrast, the AI posts Trump has shared are not high internet humour; they’re cheap algo-fodder. A trick he is also trialling is combining AI images with real ones in an attempt to lend them some veracity, or perhaps just to sharpen the comedy potential. In his post where he states “I accept!” alongside images suggesting Swifties are “turning to Trump”, he has combined a real photograph of a woman wearing a “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt with a satirical AI compilation of fans wearing T-shirts with the same slogan and an AI-generated image of Swift as Uncle Sam, captioned “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump”. It’s the kind of content your family’s errant uncle might forward to you, that he in turn got from his mate, because they haven’t got anything better to do.Trump doesn’t expect or need Swift’s endorsement, and so the humour is in the incredulousness of it. Posts like this aren’t about genuinely persuading audiences that Swift supports him; it’s about ensuring the intravenous drip of content into his supporters’ Facebook groups and WhatsApp conversations never runs dry. Trump has also always been a wind-up merchant. He knows Swift fans would react angrily to his post. He also knows that such rage-baiting will amplify his content on Truth Social’s and X’s algorithms – and garner coverage in the mainstream media. When people wag their fingers at him for posting content like this, some see it as righteously battling misinformation, but to his fans it looks like not getting the joke. (Of course, it is easier to understand jokes when they have at least one measly crumb of decent comedy to them.)The idea that Harris is a communist, that Trump and Musk are dancing pals, and that even Swifties can’t escape Trump fandom aligns with the narrative of popularity, relatable light-heartedness and prestige that Trump likes to court. Narrative is far more important than truth, particularly in the US, where political ideology is so powerful it was one of the most significant factors determining whether somebody would take the Covid-19 vaccine or not. Trump’s AI posts are best understood not as outright misinformation – intended to be taken at face value – but as part of the same intoxicating mix of real and false information that has always characterised his rhetoric. Trump isn’t interested in telling the truth; he’s interested in telling his truth – as are his fiercest supporters. In his world, AI is just another tool to do this. Whether he is willing to accept the reality that he can’t make a joke, or take one, is another story.

      Sophia Smith Galer is a journalist, content creator and the author of Losing It More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Getting back together: Swifties mobilize to support Kamala Harris

      by

      When Emerald Medrano learned Joe Biden was dropping out of the 2024 presidential election and endorsing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, Medrano knew he had to speak now – as his favorite artist, Taylor Swift, would say.“I feel like us US Swifties should mass organize and help campaign for Kamala Harris and spread how horrendous Project 2025 would be to help get people’s butts down to the polls in November,” the 22-year-old posted to his 70,000 followers. He added a sobbing emoji. “Like if we don’t want democracy to end we really need to move and push blue votes.”Fourteen thousand likes later, the coalition Swifties4Kamala was born. Dozens of people signed up to help and run accounts on X, Instagram and TikTok, as well as strategize activities and communications. Within three weeks, Swifties4Kamala amassed more than 180,000 followers across its social media platforms.Twenty-four hours after Swifties4Kamala announced its kick-off Zoom call, scheduled for 27 August, more than 5,000 people had signed up to join, according to April Glick Pulito, the coalition’s political director.With organizing collectives built around identities like Win With Black Women and White Dudes for Harris drawing record-breaking numbers to Zoom calls, Swifties4Kamala is built around a different kind of identity: fandom. Long dismissed as unserious, in part because it has long been thought of as the domain of women and young people, fandom is now a potent political force in the 2024 elections – an election in which young women and LGBTQ+ people are expected to vote, rally and otherwise participate in politics at historic levels.On its social media accounts, Swifties4Kamala posts Swift-themed video edits and memes involving Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, as well as suggested action items, such as specific organizing calls or rallies that Swifties can join. The coalition’s most recent Substack includes volunteer opportunities for phone banking and working at the polls, explanations of the proposals found in the conservative policy wishlist Project 2025, and information about down-ballot races. Naturally, each section is a reference to a different Swift lyric.The goal is in effect twofold. First, Swifties4Kamala wants to use the decades-old Swiftie community to energize people in support of Harris. Second, they want to infuse politics with fun.View image in fullscreen“We’re talking about throwing bracelet-making parties and talking to people there about making sure they’re registered to vote, making sure they know how to vote,” said Glick Pulito, a 36-year-old who works in political communications and worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign. “These individual identity groups that are popping up –everyone feels so excited to connect with their own communities, and the Swiftie community is so big and so powerful.”Swifties4Kamala’s explosive growth is not only a reflection of the sheer scope of Swift’s fanbase – even before her planet-conquering Eras tour, 16% of Americans identified as “avid fans” of the singer – but also of the burgeoning political power of fandom itself. K-pop fans first proved back in 2020 that the social media skills that fuel modern fandoms, such as coordinating fundraising and ticket-scoring campaigns, could be turned towards political aims, when they claimed credit for sinking a Donald Trump rally.Four years later, fandom has already shaped the course of the 2024 election.Memorably, the first fandom to seize on Harris’s candidacy was not the Swifties, but the Angels, fans of the singer Charli xcx. Hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, Charli xcx tweeted: “kamala IS brat,” a reference to her album Brat and its brash party-girl aesthetic. The internet was immediately awash with green-tinted supercuts of Harris – the Brat album’s signature color – while CNN reporters tried to decode the meaning of “brat” for less online audiences at home. (“So is the idea that we’re all kind of brat and Vice-President Harris is brat?” Jake Tapper asked.) Harris’s official campaign account even changed its banner on X to brat green.Swift’s political cachet, though, far outstrips that of Charli xcx and the Angels. In 2022, after Swift urged her millions of Instagram followers to vote, Vote.org recorded more than 35,000 voter registrations. Ticketmaster’s botched rollout of the Eras tour led to a 2023 Senate hearing. Swift’s endorsement is one of the coveted prizes in the 2024 election; although she has not said anything about this year, the odds are not looking good for Donald Trump and JD Vance. Not only did Swift endorse Democrats in 2018 and 2020, but she is also probably the world’s most famous “childless cat lady”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionExperts told the Guardian earlier this year that Swift’s endorsement could compel people who might otherwise sit out the election to vote. Most Swifties identify as Democrats, a Morning Consult poll found last year.Irene Kim, co-founder and senior communications director of Swifties4Kamala, expects that Swift will ultimately endorse Harris. But Kim isn’t waiting on the singer.“I also personally resent this idea that floats around a lot, that Taylor needs to issue an order to activate the Swifties. We are a diverse group of very intelligent, very different people. We’re not mindless drones,” said Kim, 29. “These are our friends, so of course, I’m going to care if their rights are being taken away. They’re going to care if my rights are being taken away.”“I knew I was gay from a younger age, so my life is turned into politics. I’m forced to keep up with it,” said Rohan Reagan, a 21-year-old first-time voter. “I’ve attended rallies, protests, donated – but it’s never been something where I’m helping coordinate anything. It’s always like showing up in support instead of me trying to help be part of leading people.”Now, Reagan, who has 60,000 followers on his Swift-focused Instagram account, leads Swifties4Kamala’s Instagram presence. (He’s particularly proud of his “You Need to Kamala Down” video edit.) He’s more engaged in politics than he’s ever been.“I don’t want to go back to what it was like when Trump was president,” he said. “To me, that is just not really an option.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The voting bloc that could decide the US election: Swifties

      by

      After weeks of maddening speculation over whom Taylor Swift might support in the 2024 US presidential elections, the venerated pop star finally revealed her endorsement: the right to vote itself.“Vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” Swift urged fans in an Instagram story amid Super Tuesday’s primary elections, perhaps the last chance to stop Donald Trump from once again seizing the Republican nomination for president.Although Swift could still endorse a candidate in the months ahead, her “no comment” on who should win on Super Tuesday was a noted refusal to engage in party politics at this stage. Joe Biden’s campaign is still jockeying for her endorsement, while Trump has said Swift would be “disloyal” for backing Biden and rightwingers have suggested that her 18-year career is a “psy op” – a ludicrous theory that nearly one in five Americans have said they believe.What is true, though, is that Swift currently possesses unprecedented power: an endorsement from the most beloved singer in the United States could potentially tip the balance in what’s likely to be a close election. A reported billionaire, Swift can reroute economies, trigger congressional action and spur tens of thousands of people to register to vote. While her endorsement is unlikely to sway a voter who is undecided between Trump and Biden – if such an American exists – experts believe Swift could convince people who don’t feel energized by Biden to vote for him anyway.But whether Swift will wield that power or instead stay out of the electoral fray remains unclear. Although Swift endorsed Democrats in 2018, she has in recent years increasingly withdrawn from such overt displays of partisanship or making controversial statements. That change that has coincided with her return to the top of the celebrity food chain and, in the process, left some Swifties feeling like their idol could do better.View image in fullscreen“She’s at the height of her popularity right now, so I think she’s probably pretty hesitant to do any sort of political activism,” said Jared Quigg, a 22-year-old Indiana journalist who said he listened to Swift every day. “But because of the influence she has, if she came out and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, I think that … would put more pressure on the US government, especially if Biden wants her endorsement.“I don’t think that’s an exaggeration,” Quigg added. “She is one of the most popular people in the world.”So are Swifties a voting bloc the parties should be targeting?Usually portrayed as a blur of sequin-wearing women draped in friendship bracelets, Swifties are not quite so homogeneous as they may seem. More than half of Americans identify as Swift fans and 16% say they are “avid fans”, according to a March 2023 Morning Consult poll that was conducted before the launch of Swift’s Eras tour. While the avid fans are mostly white and suburban, 48% are men, contrary to the popular perception that Swift’s music appeals largely to women.If about one in six Americans is a Swiftie, there is simply no way they’ll all agree – on Swift, or on anything else.However, there is a clear political tilt within Swiftiedom. Swift’s own politics lean to the left, and her listeners follow suit: more than half of her avid fans are Democrats, while 23% are Republicans and another 23% are independents.Swift has long taken a pragmatic approach to politics. She timed her Instagram post endorsing Democrats in the 2018 midterms to hit the internet after the US leg of her Reputation tour concluded, breaking her career-long silence on politics but shielding herself from red-state backlash. Swift then portrayed her next album, Lover, as an embrace of liberalism and love – including queer love, in the song You Need to Calm Down.By any normal artist’s standard, both Reputation and Lover were wildly successful, but neither album sold quite as well as 2014’s 1989. Notably, neither garnered many Grammy nods; in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, which tracked Swift’s political awakening, Swift was devastated by the snub to Reputation.Yet, at her (extremely relative) commercial lowest – and when politics could feed into the personal narrative linked to Lover – Swift was willing to use her cachet for divisive political causes. In May 2020, when that year’s presidential nomination process was all but sewn up – much like this year’s Super Tuesday – Swift took to the platform then known as Twitter to spit at Trump: “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”Today, three original albums and one Ticketmaster-breaking world tour later, Swift has managed to soar past even the stratospheric heights of her 1989 fame, becoming as ubiquitous as gravity and just as untouchable. Yet after endorsing Democrats in 2018 and 2020, including Biden, she only urged fans to “vote” in the 2022 midterm elections, just as she did on Super Tuesday.“I feel like a lot of the things that she has spoken out about are things that are directly benefiting her if they go one way or negatively affecting if they go the other way,” said Jess Simpson, a 21-year-old who is a member of the University of Oregon Taylor Swift Society, which holds Swift-related karaoke and trivia events. “She claims to be a feminist, but that’s not what that is. It’s not just speaking out about the things that you fall into. It’s about reaching past that.”Ryan Kovatch, who also belongs to the University of Oregon Taylor Swift Society, was frustrated to see the Eras tour visit states that had passed laws attacking the rights of LGBTQ+ children.View image in fullscreenSwift did give a short, relatively vague speech about those laws and Pride month. “There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put people in the LGBTQ and queer community at risk,” Swift told a Chicago crowd in June. “It’s painful for everyone, every ally, every loved one, every person of these communities, and that’s why I’m always posting, ‘This is when the midterms are, this is when these important key primaries are.’”Meanwhile, far less successful artists, such as Swift’s friend Haley Kiyoko, took a risk by bringing drag queens on stage in Tennessee after the state passed a law banning drag shows. Ariana Grande, whose fame comes closer to Swift’s, has publicly pledged to donate more than $1m to fight bills targeting transgender people.“It feels like the stakes have gotten higher and she’s backed off pretty starkly,” Kovatch said. “It is strongly disappointing, as a member of the LGBT community, to see that and see the potential there and watch it be foregone time and time again.“Especially using the rainbow during the You Need to Calm Down set,” Kovatch added, referring to a song in which Swift struts amid rainbow lights and proclaims her support for LGBTQ+ rights.“What is there to lose? You have billions of dollars,” asked Trey Pokorny, a 21-year-old whose drag persona is Treylor Swift and another member of the University of Oregon Taylor Swift Society. “Small artists – their careers can be canceled by a tweet. It takes so much more than a tweet to end Taylor Swift.”Swifties have also repeatedly raised eyebrows at Swift’s use of private jets. In 2022, Yard named Swift as the celebrity with the worst CO2 emissions; a Reddit post about the topic on the main subreddit for Taylor Swift fans triggered more than 2,000 comments.“It’s a little rough to see how many celebrities abuse their power of flying all over the place in their private jets and clogging up the environment,” said 19-year-old Addy Al-Saigh, who said she paid $2,000 to sit in nosebleed seats at the Eras tour. But, she added: “In the end, I know that there’s not really much I can do about it.”If Swift does endorse Biden, Al-Saigh said she would probably direct her Pennsylvania college’s Swift fan club to get involved in the 2024 elections. “If she came out and actually did that, I think I would have a reason to also put it up and say, ‘Go vote for Biden,’ because we’re related to Taylor,” she said.View image in fullscreenWhen it came to the 2024 elections, the Swifties who the Guardian spoke to said they were confident any Swift endorsement would ultimately be for Biden – a move they support. (Or, at least, preferred to the alternative.) But Quigg also cautioned fans to think for themselves.“I generally believe that people should not get their politics from a pop star,” he said. “At the end of the day, she’s a songwriter. She’s not a political genius.”He’s not sure fellow fans share that view. He recently saw a post on X declaring: “I definitely believe Taylor could convince Swifties to do a January 6.”“There is something to that,” Quigg said. More

    • 188 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Taylor Swift can teach us all a lesson in how democracy works | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      If you’re any kind of a Taylor Swift fan, you’ve seen the footage of the pop star arguing with her father. The subject is politics. Or, more specifically, whether Taylor should express herself publicly on political issues and candidates, in this case in defense of women’s reproductive rights.Dad makes the case against it. In protective mode, he wants his daughter to stay in her lane: music. It’s not good for her safety or her career or her mental health to go prancing through this minefield of controversy, alienating people and drawing abusers along the way. One of her managers agrees – does she really want to see only half as many people at her next show?Taylor is, at times, in tears. Speaking out about her core beliefs is simply something she feels a moral obligation to do, she tells her father. And, of course, she does just that – in fact, eventually, she went so far as to endorse Joe Biden for president in 2020. (It must have worked; he did win, after all, despite what certain ex-presidents would have you believe.)Swift spoke out again this week when she urged her fans to take some basic democratic action.“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent you into power,” Swift said on her Instagram story on Super Tuesday. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”In this case, she wasn’t pushing for a specific candidate – merely telling her millions of followers to be engaged citizens. It wasn’t just “vote” – it was “make a plan to vote”. Swift was specific: she told people to check the locations and hours of their polling places, in her state of Tennessee and beyond.For November, “make a plan to vote” means getting registered, something that Swift has urged before, and which has resulted in voting registration spikes in the tens of thousands. The Biden campaign, of course, hopes that she’ll go further eventually and endorse him again.But even this basic message is important. And simple though it is, it made some people angry. Why can’t she shut up and just be an entertainer, they seemed to think? The Guardian reported one response posted on social media: “WOW: Taylor Swift has officially begun interfering in the 2024 election. She tells her young female fans to vote the candidate that ‘most represents you into power’.”Horrors! Representative government at work! There’s a strong “stay in your lane” vibe from that and other negative responses.I admire Swift for using her vast influence for something important. And she serves as a good role model for the rest of us. We may not have her mass numbers of followers – no one does – but we can all play a role in sustaining American democracy, which is looking rather fragile right now.Last year, when I interviewed scholars, authors and commentators on my podcast, American Crisis, I asked each of them for a pro-democracy “call to action” for both the media and for citizens. They had plenty of pointed advice for the media – like prioritizing journalism’s public service mission instead of focusing on polls, the horserace and chasing clicks. And they were in general agreement about what regular people – non-celebrities – can do.“We face a really existential choice about the type of country we want to have and how we want to be governed,” the author Garrett Graff warned. He added that he had been shocked at how radically and quickly the guardrails of democracy have crumbled in recent years and how “cynically” the news media has played along for the sake of profit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo, Graff counseled, citizens need to be intensely focused on the stakes – the consequences – of the coming presidential election and down-ballot elections as well. And to act accordingly.As Ruth Ben-Ghiat told me, staying well-informed is crucial. An expert in authoritarian leaders and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she knows how important it is that citizens resist the temptation to tune out and throw up our hands. Taking advantage of a passive electorate is one way that strongmen manage to gain power.Democracy, by its nature, requires participation. You have to give a damn. That can mean donating to a campaign, volunteering as a poll worker, helping people to register or to get to a voting location. And make your own plan to vote; then carry it out.Being an engaged, vocal citizen isn’t the easiest thing to do, as Taylor Swift’s father tried to tell her.But she went ahead anyway. And so should we all.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More