Beyonce has her BeyHive and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has her own swarm — KHive. Online followers of Queen Bey not only support and defend the superstar but also attack anyone who goes against her. Harris fans seem to get just as vicious.
“If you’re talking about Kamala, you can bet the #KHive is going to be there,” said Reecie Colbert, a 36-year-old financial analyst in Washington, D.C., in a Vox interview. “Like how the #BeyHive stings, the #KHive is going to sting.”
The #KHive recently went after hip-hop activist Ice Cube, who met with the Trump campaign to help President Donald Trump formulate a plan for Black Americans known as the Platinum Plan.
Colbert, the founder of BlackWomenViews Media, tweeted about #KHive and Ice Cube in a post that went viral.
Colbert tweeted a video accompanied by the caption, “Be clear: Trump ain’t shit, Ice Cube ain’t shit & the Platinum Plan ain’t shit but a SCAM! Black people there is NO $500 billion from Trump for us! His plan for us is “herd immunity” to wipe us out. Trump blew smoke up Cube’s ass while the rest of us will get a kick in the ass!”
In the video, Colbert also called Cube out for not insisting that Trump’s Platinum Plan include something about the deaths of Black trans people and the Black LBGTQ community.
As of late July, a Twitter account run by Colbert, @BlackWomenViews, is one of about 38,000 accounts that have used the #KHive hashtag.
The #KHive hashtag surfaced in August 2017 and has since spread. It has been shared more than 73,000 times on Twitter, and in most cases, it’s associated with a positive statement, according to the social media analytics firm Meltwater. The number of tweets from the #KHive is still relatively small, the reach of those sharing these posts is apparent: Thus far, they’ve accrued an estimated 360 million impressions, Vox reported in July 2019.
Members of the KHive “see themselves as defenders and boosters of Harris, particularly as she faces an onslaught of racist and misogynistic harassment as the first Black and first Asian American woman to be nominated for vice president by either major party. Harris and her allies have shouted out the group multiple times,” The Huffington Post reported.
One person agreed on Twitter. “Like everything she does the Vice-President elect will continue to center Black women…”
Some however, believe that the KHive is dominated by white women pretending to be Black. One Twitter user posted, “This is why KHive was filled with a bunch of white women cosplaying as Black and why Joe Biden is doing worse with the black vote than any Democrat in the modern era?” It was accompanied by a video of Harris saying she would not only do things for Black people.
The #KHive beatback can be vicious, as Ice Cube well knows.
#KHive members have also attacked Black Trump supporters calling them “house slaves.” When a Sen. Elizabeth Warren supporter, who identifies as gay, said something viewed as anti-Harris, #KHive attacked. He said he was told that all “Warren gays should be chemically castrated,” after he was the target of a harassment campaign kicked off by a KHive member, The Huffington Post reported.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
One #KHive poster not only canceled Cube but also called him “ignorant” for allegedly saying Black people didn’t die for the right to vote. 2RawTooReal, @2RawTooReal, tweeted on Sept. 8, “Ice cube is cancelled bye wig!!! #BidenHarris2020 You not stoping my Black Azz from voting & that’s on PERIODT #KHive” 2RawTooReal included a video in which he not only cursed out Cube but listed the names of Black people who died trying to vote.
