Pet-Eating and Politics
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 16, 2024
Can’t we all agree that the unending flap over immigrants reportedly eating pets is out of control?
Quite apart from the outlandishness of a conspiracy fueled by nothing, what was this doing amidst the presidential debate in a supposedly serious contest over the direction for our country?
What exactly about disagreement — no, citizen anger — over immigration policies or over a belief that migrants are taking our tax money or jobs is supposed to justify bomb threats to the Springfield, Ohio city hall and shutting down the city’s schools? Have we lost our minds even about needing evidence — and even in distinguishing “illegal” immigration from a population of Haitians that is fully legal and subject to a national protective order status that allows and encourages them to be in this country?
The election aside, do we have any hope for still believing in fact, however uncomfortable, rather than the easy answers of conspiracies? Don’t we find it troubling just how thin the line between consternation over complicated policy and threats of violence?
And, with politics in mind, just how does fanning a non-existent fire over migrant hatred help Donald Trump and JD Vance win an election in which a right contest demands that they reach out for more votes not fewer? Regardless of what label or psychological needs are being assigned here, do people really want to vote for systemic hate against target groups rather than prosecuting individuals for individual misdeeds, if they exist? How are we as citizens and voters resisting the urge to smack back at candidates who encourage racism and scapegoating in the name of border security or our own security? How far have we slipped down the humanity scale?
How can we not see that this episode of is a national embarrassment, not some kind of nostalgic fantasy calls for happier times that didn’t exist even then?
Why Springfield?
What we can agree is that this now conflagration started with little to nothing about what is happening in Springfield, a blue-collar town of 60,000 people in western Ohio, that has become home to upwards of 15,000 Haitians who fled violence at home for the promise of work. Joe Biden included Haitians in a Temporary Protection Order, making their presence and migrants from 15 others in this country legal for a couple of years, and eligible to work.
Haitian immigrants have been trickling into Springfield, a once-thriving manufacturing area, to work in local produce packaging and machining factories since 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Immigrant workers have been in high demand at Dole Fresh Vegetables — where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce — and at automotive machining plants whose owners seeking to fill labor shortages.
After losing population, Springfield has been rebounding. New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened in once abandoned neighborhoods, there is a popular Haitian radio station, and every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day at a local park.
But Trump, Vance, Elon Musk and Republicans have been spreading false rumors that immigrants are eating pet dogs and cats. Trump’s seeming meltdown moment in the debate last week came as he insisted, based on a “television” report of a social media post that, “They’re eating the cats,” an assertion countered by one of the moderators who noted the city says it has no evidence of such a problem.
Working backwards, reports suggest there were social media posts last month amplified on platforms by far-right extremists and by Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi hate group. NBC News reported that the woman who wrote the first post had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and now regrets posting it. A friend forwarded me a Facebook link showing a police body cam in Canton, Ohio, not Springfield, where a woman with no known connection to Haiti, faced arrest for stomping a cat. He offered it to suggest that Trump had not invented the issue but was repeating it.
Somehow, in the Trump-Vance campaign, that became all immigrants, all Haitians, taking pets from Ohioans and geese from a park lake, to devour. In a post-debate press conference, Trump repeated it again. He vowed that if elected, he would start his nationwide deportations in Springfield — in apparent violation of the nationwide protection order — weirdly, sending them “back” to a third country. “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re going to get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” Trump said.
The threats of violence in the city have followed.
Despite all the protests, threats of violence — and real violence — are now ever-present dangers, as we saw yesterday in a new assassination attempts against Trump on his Florida golf course.
Ugly Scapegoating
It is true that the new arrivals have stretched medical and school services in the area. It is true that an 11-year-old boy was thrown from a school bus and died in an accident involving a Haitian immigrant who lacked an Ohio driver’s license. It is true that public comments at Springfield city meetings have gotten stronger and more pointed, even giving voice to whether Springfield had become ground zero for the baseless “great replacement theory” pursued by the political Right.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, armed members of Blood Tribe — a hardcore white supremacist group flew swastika flags and marched through a prominent downtown street last month, with shouts for people to go back to Africa — apparently misplacing Haiti. Last year, a Springfield man was sentenced to 20 years in federal jail for hate crimes after attacking eight Haitians earlier in 2023. A Haitian church was broken into and damaged twice, and there have been reports of verbal abuse.
JD Vance regularly has claimed that “illegal immigrants” are “generally causing chaos all across Springfield.”
As son of a Holocaust survivor, I grew up understanding and recognizing scapegoating as an ugly reality — the need to find and define some group to blame, whether Jews, Muslims, Haitians, migrants or liberals.
It’s too easy to blame Trump-Vance for their espoused beliefs and rubbing up against conspiracists. It’s the responsibility of voters to judge, and their silence speaks poorly for our values.
The question is not whether some people hate, but how we allow our presidential campaign to raise hate as an undenounced, seemingly legitimate substitute for any intelligent discussion of what we need to do about our border policies. It is certainly true that border security and the reform of an overly complicated immigration system is way overdue, but the solution should not center on encouraging hate.
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