By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly Sept 13, 2024.
In his debate with Kamala Harris this week, Donald Trump spouted out an utterly bizarre racist rant against Haitian immigrants in Ohio, claiming they were scouring the city of Springfield to gather up and eat pet dogs and cats.
The claim could be dismissed outright as deranged racist fantasy. But it's better, we think, to present its deconstruction here, which is even worse than deranged fantasy..
So let us begin. The city manager of the city of Springfield, as the moderators told Trump, denied such a thing took place. Trump argued with them, claiming he had ‘seen it on TV.’
Where did this madness come from? Even from a mind as warped with racism as Trump’s, this is not something likely made up on the spot.
It is indeed an interesting story. It begins with an odd but unrelated fact. Back on August 16, 2024, the police department of Canton, Ohio, on the other side of the state from Springfield, arrested a 27-year-old named Allexis Ferrell. The young woman, apparently suffering from a mental disorder, using her foot, had crushed the head of a cat on her sidewalk. Then, in view of her neighbors, proceeded to start eating the cat, fur and all. The police charged her with animal cruelty and related violations.
We must note that Ferrell was an American citizen, not a recent immigrant of any sort. She was born in Ohio and graduated from Canton McKinley High School in 2015. One could simply consider this event strange, leave it at that, and hope this woman got some help.
But here is where the plot thickens. Last month a man turns up to speak at a Springfield, Ohio town hall. He claims his name is Nate Higgers, and he states he’s with a group called ‘Blood Tribes,’ a neo-Nazi outfit. (The name is fake, and if you transpose a few letters, you can see why). He’s there to stoke up hatred from a recent accidental car crash with a school bus and a minivan, where a young student was killed. The minivan driver was a Haitian immigrant with a Mexican driver's license. While the boy’s father grieved the loss of his son, he went out of his way to oppose turning this terrible accident into a wave of hatred against immigrants, despite the Nazi's agitation.
How did the small industrial town of Springfield become the home of about 20,000 Haitian immigrants? Were they forced there by Biden-Harris policies? No, it turned out government policy had little to do with it. A Haitian leader at a community center explained to a reporter that it was largely ‘word of mouth.’ When a few Haitians first settled there, finding the town in need of workers of all sorts, and with affordable housing, they passed the word to relatives and friends. When these Haitians also settled in the town, they also spread the word, and so on.
The new Haitian immigrants, far from being a drain on the city, helped it toward an economic revival. They filled needed job slots and started new small businesses. There was some friction when the Haitians grew to comprise about 20% or more of the population, but not much. The bus accident, however, provided the trigger the Nazis were seeking. ‘Higgers’ wasn’t even from Springfield.
But one Springfield woman, hearing on the internet what happened in Canton and the woman eating a dead cat, told Charlie Kirk of the right-wing Turning Point USA, “I thought, I better watch my dogs!” She has since apologized for the remark. But that posting on the rightwing mediasphere then went viral, and soon hundreds of Springfield residents were fearful of losing their pets. It was unfounded. There was not a single case in the city of anyone, let alone Haitians, doing any such thing.
No matter. Within days, dozens YouTubers and right-wing influencers descended on Springfield, all hoping to find smoking-gun evidence of pet eating, all in order to give proof to the racist lie they’ve helped launch. Even Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty gets on CNN and pours fuel on the flame, falsely asserting, “There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening. I’ve heard conflicting reports.”
A longtime fan of dark rightwing sites, Trump picks it up from there. But far from seeking the truth, he enhances the lie, blaming 20,000 Haitians for the wonton slaughter of pets for their suppers, and adding ducks from a city pond in for good measure. And since Trump never makes mistakes, he refuses to be corrected by ABC during the debate with its millions of viewers. Instead, after the debate, Trump calls on the government to put ABC out of business.
Sadly, we all expect Trump to do these things, despite the racialized damage. Simply stating the truth is hardly enough. But now J.D. Vance jumps into the fray. He is, after all, Ohio’s Senator. “Do you know what’s confirmed?” he tweeted Tuesday. “That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.” First, the child wasn’t murdered, but died in a traffic accident. Second, the Haitian immigrant, with legal status, had every right to be a resident of Springfield, and he was being held accountable for his role in the accident.
So there we have it. The Trump-Vance team, working in tandem with Charlie Kirk and a neo Nazi, spread vile racial hatred to 60 million or more people watching the debate. And after ABC’s fact-checking call out, they double down with more lies.
One reason might be Trump’s new primary sidekick on the campaign trail, Laura Loomer. Loomer is the fascist internet provocateur and spreader of hatred so vile that even Marjorie Taylor Green is denouncing her for discrediting the campaign. Loomer, however, knows the secret of handling Trump: stroke his ego, feed him more fascist garbage for his fascist mindset, and then convince him everyone is wrong but him.
We can’t say we didn’t know about this and other stories about Team Trump. We do know we have to defeat Trump in November. But deconstructing the MAGA fascist bloc is a longer and more dangerous effort. We have to prepare for it, too.
Carl,
I went to Haiti three times under President Aristide to act as an adviser on labor relations and later to assist an effort to create a agricultural university in the Haitian Highlands that shortly after was the epicenter of the horrible earthquake. There are no people more oppressed by American and French imperialism than Haiti. There are no people who are harder working.
What is going on in Ohio is chain migration - the very same phenomenon that grouped Italians in Bloomfield or Ukrainians in McKees Rocks. When Haiti won its independence (and Incidentally caused Napoleon to sell the US the Louisiana Purchase without the slightest concern for the indigenous peoples), they tore the white bar from the French flag and affixed the motto: L'Unite fait la Force. "Our Union makes us Strong."
If interested: google <"Haiti Matters" Monthly Review> to read my account of being present at Haiti's bicentennial shortly before Aristide was deposed by American agents and exiled.