As I think about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s reckless lies about Haitians eating cats in Ohio, I come back to a question: What distinguishes this from what they say about immigrants?
Trump blames crime on immigrants, after all, the bedrock of his political identity: his 2016 campaign Started by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists”. During his presidency, he referred to Haiti as a “Land of SheetalFrom which America should not admit immigrants. Just last year, he warned about immigrants “The blood of our country is poisonous“
Yet something about the way she and Vance talk about Springfield, Ohio feels Even this is like an increase above the wicked baseline. A major part of this sentiment comes from the truly vicious antecedents of their rhetoric, which in some strangely specific ways parallels Nazi propaganda about the Jews. And the reasons behind their willingness to “go there” say a lot about the deeper identity of Americans right now.
In a recent piece about Springfield, my colleague Eric Levitz pointed out that the specificity of the charges here makes them more dangerous. “Trump and his running mate are spreading hatred for a separate group of 15,000 people in one place. This dramatically increases the risk that their campaign of dehumanization will lead to violence,” he wrote. Just note the evidence that is happening.
I think that is a key part of it. But another part is the greedy fascism of grievances.
The idea that Haitians in Springfield are kidnapping people’s pets and eating them is not just a simple lie, as Trump has long accused immigrants of selling drugs and committing street crimes. The idea of barbecuing the neighbor’s beloved pet is such a transgression, so alien in nature that it renders the purported goals beyond the scope of what we recognize as human behavior. It is an attack on Haitians not only as individuals, but as a whole group. It’s a form of dehumanization that has historically led to deadly violence against targeted groups — often by design.
Two New York Times columnists, Lydia Polgreen And Jamel BowieFor this reason rhetoric has characterized eating animals as “blood slanderers”.
The term originated in medieval Europe, specifically to describe the lie that Jews kidnapped Christian children and used their blood to make matzah (an unleavened bread we eat during the Passover holiday). Slander, which Continued through the Nazi eraIt was clearly designed to throw Jews out of acceptable society — to associate Judaism as a religion and identity with barbarism and barbarism. It was, as Buie notes, often employed to whip up violence against the Jewish community.
You don’t need to be a historian to see the obvious connection between accusations of Jews eating children and Haitians eating pets. And since the Haitian Revolution, Americans have often used Haitians as the embodiment of the dreaded ethnic “other” in the same way that Europeans transferred their fear and resentment to the Jews. Crank presidential candidate Marian Williamson helpfully paraphrased the subtext in a tweet, saying Democrats who dismiss Trump’s lies at their peril because “Haitian voodoo is real.”
The same is true of another Vance lie about Springfield: Haitians are responsible for the rise in infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. I say this is a lie because there is no public evidence to support it and ground authorities contradict it.
“A common myth I’ve heard is that we see all our infectious diseases going through skyscrapers and roofs. And really, when you look at the data, it’s not supported,” Chris Kuhn, a county health commissioner, said. to say Local ABC approved.
Again, this lie has a deeply troubling history. Immigrants have long been falsely accused of bringing disease to keep them out; The Nazis did the same to the Jews.
In particular, Nazi propaganda will Jews were regularly accused of spreading typhusA louse-borne disease that killed millions in early 20th-century Europe. Much like HIV, typhus was a stigmatizing disease associated with the moral defects or impurity of its victims. Nazi doctors wrote Pseudo-scientific papers Accusing Jews of spreading typhus because of our alleged “low cultural level” and “uncleanliness” is part of the justification for locking up Jews in Polish ghettos before sending my ancestors and their co-religionists to death camps.
In the past, attention to such blatant Nazi parallels might have seemed enough to shame the Trump campaign into at least toning down his rhetoric. But now, those ideological rails no longer hold.
On the right, there is a widespread perception today that any accusation of fascism, authoritarianism or racism is a bad-faith smear made to legitimize conservative policies and politicians. It’s a tactic used by American defenders of Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary, but one often used as an excuse for bad behavior at home. It can also be used to whitewash flirtations with open fascism among young right-wingers these days, like the inclusion of Nazi symbols in videos pushed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ primary campaign.
I’m sure it’s frustrating for the president to be constantly accused of supporting a fascist when you don’t really see yourself in that light. But at the same time, it gives the green light to ignore an awfully dangerous behavior.
In January, during Trump’s campaign stop, a supporter shouted “12 years of Trump!” “It’s very interesting,” the former president said, before turning it into a joke.
“Don’t even say it … out loud, they’ll start saying, ‘He wants more, he’s a fascist!'” he added. “You know, they like to call me a fascist.”
Indeed.
