Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeated an ugly conspiracy theory on Tuesday with a claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Vance then encouraged his supporters to repeat these disgusting lies and to join him in dehumanizing legal immigrants.
On Monday, both Vance and billionaire Elon Musk amplified false claims first made on Facebook about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets and animals from local parks. In addition, Vance accused the immigrants of “generally causing chaos” all over the small midwestern city and blamed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Local police and city officials made it clear that the claims made by Vance and Musk were absolutely false. The police department expressed regret that “people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear.”
But rather than apologizing for his gross mistake, Vance is continuing to make things worse.
On Tuesday, Vance posted a claim on Musk’s social media platform that “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who've said their neighbors' pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. “
It’s safe to say that anyone who has lost a pet does not respond by calling their senator. And it’s telling that the claim is never that their pets had gone missing, but that their neighbor’s pets were lost. Vance is either lying about these calls or knows that the people making them are lying. He just doesn’t care.
Vance then elaborated on his claims of pet consumption by insisting that Haitian immigrants were responsible for spreading diseases, that local schools were being ruined because immigrants didn’t speak English, and that immigrants had overwhelmed local health care systems. He also claimed that a Haitian immigrant was responsible for the unspecified murder of a child.
These claims are shameless adaptations of Nazi blood libel against Jews. That they are being directed against Black immigrants by a ticket that baked white fears into its foundation is no coincidence. Neither is how they are being pushed by an overtly racist billionaire who has used altered videos to promote Republican claims that Harris is a “DEI candidate.”
And it’s no coincidence that this came on the same day that Trump was bragging that his mass deportation of immigrants would become a “bloody story.” In that speech, Trump falsely claimed that most immigrants were violent criminals and spread lies that they had “taken over” parts of Colorado. Trump also continued to claim that immigrants were causing a crime wave in the country, which is explicitly false.
These claims, aimed at generating outrage among an overwhelmingly white base, are the heart of the Trump-Vance campaign.
Spreading this conspiracy theory has potential effects in other areas, like Miami-Dade, Florida, where the largest population of Haitian Americans live. That large population explains why Sen. Rick Scott, usually quick to defend Donald Trump or Vance on any issue, is shying away from joining this attack.
What Vance is saying about legal immigrants in Ohio is pure racism. And it’s the worst kind of racism. It’s meant to not just draw a line between a group of people and others who share their community, it’s meant to present immigrants as “other,” as lesser, as violent uncivilized outsiders with unacceptable customs. It’s meant to make them seem dangerous. And it’s meant to make people angry. The statements Vance is making represent a threat to the over 700,000 Haitian Americans across the country.
Vance followed up his post by encouraging Republicans to generate more noxious, racist claims in support of this conspiracy theory.
This propaganda isn’t just disgusting, it is dangerous. The conspiracy theory has been rapidly adopted by other Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and responses on social media are, as might be expected, full of violent threats and calls for mass deportations.
Sen. Mark Kelly, in a Monday night appearance on CNN, said that he found it “really unfortunate” that news outlets were having to spend time knocking down this conspiracy theory. “I think it highlights that JD Vance [and] the Trump campaign, they don't want to be talking about the issues that the American people care about."
But it’s worse than that. This is an illustration of exactly what Trump and Vance want to be talking about. It is all Trump’s claims about immigrant violence compressed into one small city and one giant lie.
This is a threatening, completely unwarranted racist attack on people who are in the country legally and who have come to Vance's state seeking to improve their lives.
If it doesn’t get someone hurt, it will only be because the citizens of Springfield, Ohio, are infinitely better than their racist asshole of a senator.
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