As roughly 42 million Americans face the loss of food stamps this weekend, far-right influencers, extremists, and conspiracy theorists are using the crisis to push racist disinformation about who receives these benefits.
As a result of the government shutdown, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will not be funded as of November 1, according to a message on the website of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the program. While this loss of benefits could be catastrophic for millions, that hasn’t stopped the rush of disinformation. A number of conspiracy theorists and right-wing influencers are claiming that immigrants are the main recipients of food stamps, while AI-generated videos on TikTok push racist stereotypes of Black people demanding more benefits.
These claims simply do not align with reality, given that the majority of people who receive SNAP benefits are white Americans, according to data collected by the USDA. The data also shows that deep red states like Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana are among the states with the highest percentage of those in receipt of food stamps.
“These narratives are being circulated to suggest that undeserving groups are getting the bulk of SNAP benefits and therefore to make the suspension of SNAP benefits seem like less of a crisis,” says Tracy Roof, a political scientist at the University of Richmond. “The reality is that the overwhelming majority of recipients of SNAP are people born in the US and many are in families with children or are elderly or disabled. Of those able to work, most do.”
A chart posted by an influential far-right X account with the screen name “The General” has boosted this conspiracy theory, suggesting that the vast majority of people in receipt of benefits are non-white immigrants, with Afghan, Somali, and Iraqi US residents making up the top three supposed recipients. This chart, which was initially published in June on a website called the Personal Finance Wizards, according to PolitiFact, is entirely fabricated. The USDA does not collect the ethnicity of SNAP recipients beyond broad categories like White, African American, and Hispanic.
USDA data shows that almost 90 percent of SNAP recipients are American-born citizens. 1.1 percent of recipients are refugees and 3.3 percent are other noncitizens.
The General’s post has been seen 6.3 million times and has been widely shared by other people, including influential right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh, who quoted the post on X and wrote: “We import the third world and force working class Americans to feed and house them at gunpoint. Civilizational suicide.” Other posts that also shared the chart were shared hundreds of thousands of times. X did not respond to a request for comment.
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