Was Kamala Harris a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the Communist Party of Russia in 1984? No, that's not true: The "membership card" in a social media post is fake. A Russian prank-generating website offers this Communist Party card in a template: All a user needs to do is upload a photo and add a name and year of birth and the website makes an image of the fake Communist Party document. A reverse image search with the Russian search engine Yandex shows scores of versions of this prank document with the identical ID number and party membership payment details.
The claim was posted on X (archived here) on August 27, 2024. The post was captioned:
BOOM #Breaking: Communist Party of Russia - Membership Card of the HARRIS Kamala, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Voronezh). It is evident from the attachment that she diligently paid the membership fee from June to December 1984.
This is how the post appeared on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 15:59:12 2024 UTC)
The image in this post is composed of two elements. One appears to be a report printed on paper that is slightly wrinkled and dirty. On the lower portion of the page is an image or attachment of the purported Communist Party Membership document, appearing as a small booklet like a passport. The report states:
On August 19, the official Telegram channel of the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) published the CPSU party card of US presidential candidate Camille Harris, which she received during her first visit to the USSR in 1984.
It turned out that the American politician at the age of 16 joined the Communist Party of the USA and in the mid-1980s she came to Moscow and Voronezh at least three times through the All-Union Komsomol Organization. 'To dispel all the controversy surrounding Comrade Harris, today we will publish a unique document from our archival fund - her party card, which was personally presented by the second secretary of the Komsomol in June 1984,' senior researcher at GARF Matvey Streltsov told reporters
Harris herself refused to comment, but according to The New York Times, her campaign headquarters will not demand a refutation - the US presidential candidate was indeed a member of the CPSU and paid party dues until 1991.
The Communist Party membership document is a computer-generated prank, and the narrative of the origin of the document -- which misspells Vice President Kamala Harris' name as "Camille" -- was fabricated. A reverse image search with the Russian search engine Yandex produced many nearly identical documents (pictured below). The booklet's right-side page with handwritten membership payment notes are all identical, but on the left-side page are different names and photos -- with the same member ID number in red letters -- "No. 04094064." Several of the photos are clearly candid jokes not appropriate for use in official identification. A TinEye search shows that a prank document generator has been making these since at least 2014.
(Source: Yandex screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 16:27:01 2024 UTC)
The website offering the prank document will store the generated image on their server so that a user can embed the results in another webpage. Most of the images in the Yandex results direct back to the hosting site stalinanavas.net, where Lead Stories found the template (pictured below).
(Source: stalinanavas.net screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 17:04:15 2024 UTC)
The fake document features a real photo of Harris, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, dating back to her time at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she graduated in 1986. The original color photo can be seen in a March 19, 2019, article in the Los Angeles Times (archived here).
(Source: latimes.com screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 17:18:47 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Kamala Harris or the 2024 election can be found here and here.
