#Haitian-American politicians

[germiyahu]

Republicans are absolutely 100% manufacturing consent for pogrom-like violence against immigrant communities, specifically Haitians. That is true. Haitians keeping their children home because of increased threats and harassment is a cause for alarm.

But seeing people already call it a pogrom... nobody has been chased out of their home, nobody has been murdered, nobody has been raped, nobody has posed with the bodies for grizzly photo-ops. I don't know, this all fits into the larger narrative of liberal~leftist apathy toward anti-Jewish violence, taking it and washing out its historic Judenhass connotations, and applying the term to anyone even when the conditions haven't been met yet. At the least, there's a lot about historic pogroms that the general American public just don't know about. They're not aware of just how brutal and swift they were. All it takes is a little education, but clearly it took me wanting to become a Jew to even try to learn more about Jewish history so I don't have a lot of faith in the vast majority of gentiles.

It's a complicated mix of emotions where like, it's appropriate to be nervous and scared for these communities, but I find myself annoyed that most of these accounts just don't care when entire Jewish communities are harassed and have libel spread against them. A lot of online leftists certainly didn't care, in fact celebrated, the October 7th pogrom!

Let's hope nothing escalates further, but it is not appropriate to just take terms from Jewish history, not understand the actual implications of these terms, and throw them at the nearest Republican politician. It's just like invoking Hitler. And when you also apply these terms to Jews, I know you are not operating in good faith.

[wilwheaton]

The two programs under which Haitians fleeing some of the worst political chaos and gang violence in the Western Hemisphere have been OK’d by the Biden administration to remain in the United States as protected refugees are perfectly legal, and if Vance thinks otherwise he should challenge the rulings in court, not by demagoguing it on the campaign trail. There’s considerable evidence that the 20,000 figure that Vance and other right-wingers have claimed is the number of Haitians who’ve moved to Springfield during the President Joe Biden years is a big exaggeration. And even local Republican politicians are calling out Vance’s lies, including a heartfelt essay by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, who’s from the Springfield area. [...] Three days after the debate, Vance tweeted: “In Springfield, Ohio, there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime." [...] The claim about a massive rise in communicable disease in Springfield or surrounding Clark County is just a flat-out lie. To the contrary, county officials say 2023 was actually the lowest overall for contagious illnesses in eight years. Vance’s false claim hinges on a yearly rise in two specific diseases — tuberculosis and HIV injections — yet local officials note these numbers are so small they tend to fluctuate from year to year, and there’s no evidence Haitian Americans played any role.

Will Bunch: JD Vance’s new lies about immigrants are worse than ‘eating dogs and cats’

Lies on top of lies, wrapped up in lies.

Because he has no record of his own, and Trump’s record is indefensible.

And they have no plan to help anyone but themselves and a handful of oligarchs. And, of course, Russia. 

We are not going back. Check your voter registration every week between now and your state’s deadline. Make a plan to vote, and vote as early as you can.

The sooner we don’t ever have to hear these clowns again, the better. Let’s do this.

[despazito]

Is Marianne Williamson honest to god fear mongering about Haitian vodou now?? Honest to god resurrecting 200 year old racism I hope every single american politician explodes I've had enough

[one-world-many-stories]

blog introduction + about me

In recent years, the dehumanization of refugees and immigrants has become impossible to ignore.

In the United States, families fleeing unimaginable horrors such as war or immense oppression have been met not with safety, but with completely cruelty. In a country that prides itself on being the "land of the free", nonetheless. Rather than being taken to shelter and safety, children are torn from their parents at the border, locked in cages, and referred to as “unaccompanied alien minors,” as if their humanity was secondary to their immigration status. Political leaders have continuously fed into the hatred, calling immigrants “animals” and describing them as a “national security threat.” In recent months, President elect Donald Trump described Haitian refugees as "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs." These words, repeated again and again, have justified policies that treated these families as less than human, as though their suffering didn’t matter.

In Europe, it is no different. Refugees escaping war and persecution find themselves trapped in refugee camps like Moria, where the conditions were so poor that one humanitarian aid worker called it “a place of sheer hopelessness.” Politicians didn’t hold back their disdain. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, called refugees “Muslim invaders,” while others described their boats as carrying “human meat.” When we hear words like that, it’s no surprise that so many people turned a blind eye to what was happening. Refugees were left to drown in the Mediterranean or sit for years in squalid camps, waiting for help that never comes.

What makes all of this even more devastating is how refugees and immigrants are so often reduced to numbers, and thus dehumanized even further. The stories of who they are—what they’ve endured, what they’ve lost—are rarely told. Instead, we hear statistics: thousands detained, hundreds drowned, millions displaced. But behind each number is a human being. A mother clutching her child as they cross a river in the dead of night. A teenager leaving behind everything they know for a chance to live without fear. A father who would do anything to provide a better life for his family. Their stories matter, but we rarely hear them. After all, it's easier to ignore suffering when it doesn’t have a face.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

It is this reason that has inspired me to create a Tumblr blog that addresses this problem. Through seeing and learning about these people that we've so often reduced into numbers, we can fully understand their troubles. And by welcoming them with empathy and kindness rather than cruelty and oppression, we can treat them as the humans that they are.

My goal for blog posts is to do a mix of informative readings, as well as present the stories of real life refugees and immigrants through interviews. As I begin to post, I encourage others to submit their own stories and photos.

For a little bit about me: my name is Dania and I am a student at the University of Indianapolis, studying International Relations. While I was blessed with being born an American citizen, I am Iraqi and my parents are refugees who fled the country following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I have seen first hand how countries and livelihoods are destroyed, so people face no choice but to flee, even if their home is beautiful and beloved to them. I hope to one day use my degree for a career in International Development and transform third-world countries into beautiful, livable places. Because, in the words of the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire, "Nobody leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark."

[fatehbaz]

"Abolition forgery":

So, observers and historians have, for a long time, since the first abolition campaigns, talked and written a lot about how Britain and the United States sought to improve their image and optics in the early nineteenth century by endorsing the formal legal abolition of chattel slavery, while the British and US states and their businesses/corporations meanwhile used this legal abolition as a cloak to receive credit for being nice, benevolent liberal democracies while they actually replaced the lost “productivity” of slave laborers by expanding the use of indentured laborers and prison laborers, achieved by passing laws to criminalize poverty, vagabondage, loitering, etc., to capture and imprison laborers. Like, this was explicit; we can read about these plans in the journals and letters of statesmen and politicians from that time. Many "abolitionist" politicians were extremely anxious about how to replace the lost labor. This use of indentured labor and prison labor has been extensively explored in study/discussion fields (discourse on Revolutionary Atlantic, the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean, the American South, prisons, etc.), Basic stuff at this point. Both slavery-based plantation operations and contemporary prisons are concerned with mobility and immobility, how to control and restrict the movement of people, especially Black people. After the “official” abolition of slavery, Europe and the United States then disguised their continued use of forced labor with the language of freedom, liberation, etc. And this isn't merely historical revisionism; critics and observers from that time (during the Haitian Revolution around 1800 or in the 1830s in London, for example) were conscious of how governments were actively trying to replicate this system of servitude..

And recently I came across this term that I liked, from scholar Ndubueze Mbah.

He calls this “abolition forgery.”

Mbah uses this term to describe how Europe and the US disguised ongoing forced labor, how these states “fake” liberation, making a “forgery” of justice.

But Mbah then also uses “abolition forgery” in a dramatically different, ironic counterpoint: to describe how the dispossessed, the poor, found ways to confront the ongoing state violence by forging documents, faking paperwork, piracy, evasion, etc. They find ways to remain mobile, to avoid surveillance.

And this reminds me quite a bit of Sylvia Wynter’s now-famous kinda double-meaning and definition of “plot” when discussing the plantation environment. If you’re unfamiliar:

Wynter uses “plot” to describe the literal plantation plots, where slaves were forced to work in these enclosed industrialized spaces of hyper-efficient agriculture, as in plots of crops, soil, and enclosed private land. However, then Wynter expands the use of the term “plot” to show the agency of the enslaved and imprisoned, by highlighting how the victims of forced labor “plot” against the prison, the plantation overseer, the state. They make subversive “plots” and plan escapes and subterfuge, and in doing so, they build lives for themselves despite the violence. And in this way, they also extend the “plot” of their own stories, their own narratives. So by promoting the plot of their own narratives, in opposition to the “official” narratives and “official” discourses of imperial states which try to determine what counts as “legitimate” and try to define the course of history, people instead create counter-histories, liberated narratives. This allows an “escape”. Not just a literal escape from the physical confines of the plantation or the carceral state, an escape from the walls and the fences, but also an escape from the official narratives endorsed by empires, creating different futures.

(National borders also function in this way, to prevent mobility and therefore compel people to subject themselves to local work environments.)

Katherine McKittrick also expands on Wynter's ideas about plots and plantations, describing how contemporary cities restrict mobility of laborers.

So Mbah seems to be playing in this space with two different definitions of “abolition forgery.”

Mbah authored a paper titled ‘“Where There is Freedom, There Is No State”: Abolition as a Forgery’. He discussed the paper at American Historical Association’s “Mobility and Labor in the Post-Abolition Atlantic World” symposium held on 6 January 2023. Here’s an abstract published online at AHA’s site: This paper outlines the geography and networks of indentured labor recruitment, conditions of plantation and lumbering labor, and property repatriation practices of Nigerian British-subjects inveigled into “unfree” migrant “wage-labor” in Spanish Fernando Po and French Gabon in the first half of the twentieth century. [...] Their agencies and experiences clarify how abolitionism expanded forced labor and unfreedom, and broaden our understanding of global Black unfreedom after the end of trans-Atlantic slavery. Because monopolies and forced labor [...] underpinned European imperialism in post-abolition West Africa, Africans interfaced with colonial states through forgery and illicit mobilities [...] to survive and thrive.

---

Also. Here’s a look at another talk he gave in April 2023.

[Excerpt:]

Ndubueze L. Mbah, an associate professor of history and global gender studies at the University at Buffalo, discussed the theory and implications of “abolition forgery” in a seminar [...]. In the lecture, Mbah — a West African Atlantic historian — defined his core concept of “abolition forgery” as a combination of two interwoven processes. He first discussed the usage of abolition forgery as “the use of free labor discourse to disguise forced labor” in European imperialism in Africa throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Later in the lecture, Mbah provided a counterpoint to this definition of abolition forgery, using the term to describe the ways Africans trapped in a system of forced labor faked documents to promote their mobility across the continent. [...]

Mbah began the webinar by discussing the story of Jampawo, an African British subject who petitioned the British colonial governor in 1900. In his appeal, Jampawo cited the physical punishment he and nine African men endured when they refused to sign a Spanish labor contract that differed significantly from the English language contract they signed at recruitment and constituted terms they deemed to be akin to slavery. Because of the men’s consent in the initial English language contract, however, the governor determined that “they were not victims of forced labor, but willful beneficiaries of free labor,” Mbah said.

Mbah transitioned from this anecdote describing an instance of coerced contract labor to a discussion of different modes of resistance employed by Africans who experienced similar conditions under British imperialism. “Africans like Jampawo resisted by voting with their feet, walking away or running away, or by calling out abolition as a hoax,” Mbah said.

Mbah introduced the concept of African hypermobility, through which “coerced migrants challenged the capacity of colonial borders and contracts to keep them within sites of exploitation,” he said.] [...] Mbah also discussed how the stipulations of forced labor contracts imposed constricting gender hierarchies [...]. To conclude, Mbah gestured toward how the system of forced labor persists in Africa today, yet it “continues to be masked by neoliberal discourses of democracy and of development.” [...] “The so-called greening of Africa [...] continues to rely on forced labor that remains invisible.” [End of excerpt.]

---

This text excerpt from: Emily R. Willrich and Nicole Y. Lu. “Harvard Radcliffe Fellow Discusses Theory of ‘Abolition Forgery’ in Webinar.” The Harvard Crimson. 13 April 2023. [Published online. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[adarinas]

(WIP) Resources Masterlist

*Note: a lot of these are geared toward American and/or English-speaking populations, my apologies, but plenty of them are global!

GENERAL

End Global Genocides Master Document | Another Master Doc | Tumblr Post - Links to Informational Articles/Websites

Donations: Fundraisers - Gaza, Sudan, Congo, and more | Doctors Without Borders | Care.org | World Central Kitchen | Operation Olive Branch | Islamic Relief USA

Discord: Global Strikes Against Genocide Discord Server

SUDAN

Eyes on Sudan | Sudan Solidarity Collective | Linktree - Sudanese Diaspora Network

Info: 500 days of war... | Sudan War Explained - Interview

Petitions/Letters: Stop Sudan War | Justice for Human Rights Abuse Victims in Chad and Sudan | Stop Arming Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stop the Sudan genocide

Donations: Sudan Funds | Tumblr Masterpost - Sudan Orgs/Fundraisers | Water for South Sudan

ROHINGYA

Free Rohingya Coalition

Info: CNN - Hundreds of Rohingya face drone strikes / ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

Spotify - Rohingya Culture Interview

Petitions:

Donations: Mutual Emergency Aid 4 Rohingya | Emergency Aid for Rohingya Orphans and Disabled Families

TIGRAY

Tigray Action Committee

Info: Omna Tigray - What's happening in Tigray? | Tghat News | UN Article from Sept 2023

Petitions/Letters: Petition - Demand Aid to Tigray | Stop the Tigray Genocide

Donations: Places to Donate for Tigray Tumblr Post | Ahwatna Relief

DRC

Friends of the Congo | Focus Congo | Congo Resources Tumblr Post

Info: DRC: Inside the world's forgotten war | Congo Genocide Explained - Interview

Petitions: No Tax Dollars to Fund Congo Genocide | Halt the Ongoing Genocide in Congo

Donations: SOS Congo (organized by Goma Actif) | IRC in Congo | Action Kivu

KASHMIR

Stand with Kashmir | Kashmir Masterlist Tumblr Post

Info: Kashmir - Paradise Lost (BBC)

Petitions/Letters: Stop Arming Indian Occupation of Kashmir

Donations: KASHMER

EAST TURKESTAN

Campaign for Uyghurs | Uyghur Truth Project | Camp Album Project

Info: Persecution of Uyghurs in China - Wikipedia

Petitions/Letters: Change.org - Uyghur Muslims

PALESTINE

Jewish Voice for Peace | USPCR Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit

Info: Wizard Bisan, a Palestinian journalist

Petitions/Letters: Not Another Bomb | Amnesty - Demand a Ceasefire | Tumblr Post with Petitions | Ceasefire Now | (JVP) Tell Congress - Arms Embargo Now

Donations: Gaza Funds | Low on Funds Palestinians Fundraisers | Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraisers | Arab.org Daily Click | Middle East Children's Alliance

ARMENIA

Learn for Artsakh | Help Armenians Carrd | Artsakh Genocide Action Toolkit

Info: Denying Your History - Armenian Genocide

Petitions/Letters: Petition - Stop Erasing Armenian Culture | International Recognition of Artsakh

Donations: Fund for Armenian Relief | Armenia Fund | CARITAS Armenia | ARS of Eastern USA inc.

INDIGENOUS AMERICANS

MMIWG2S | Indigenous Action | NDN Collective

Petitions/Letters: Stop sterilizing Indigenous women without consent | Free Leonard Peltier

HAWAII

Info: Tourism's Negative Impact on Native Hawaiians | Noho Hewa Film (2008)

Donations: Hawaii Community Foundation

HAITI

Haiti Liberation Google Doc

Donations: Hands Together for Haitians | Haiti Outreach | Hope for Haiti | Twitter Thread of GoFundMes/Donation Links

WEST PAPUA

Free West Papua Website | West Papua Resources/Info Tumblr Post | We Need to Talk about Papua Carrd (last updated 2021 but has good info)

Info: United Nations - Indonesia: Shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans | Twitter Thread of Helpful Articles

Petitions/Letters:

ALSO:

The Kurdish Project

KEEP BOYCOTTING, PROTESTING, AND DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN! FREE ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORLD!

If you can't donate, share!

If you have any concerns with the links I've posted, please share! I tried my best to verify everything but please let me know if you are doubtful of something! Also, please please share other resources from people who are directly impacted by these genocides!!

LAST UPDATED SEPTEMBER 16 2024.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich:: GOP strategy in its totality

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 18, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 19, 2024

Today, at a White House reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Joe Biden said: "We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong."

Biden’s celebration of the country’s heritage might have doubled as a celebration of the success of his approach to piloting the economy out of the ravages of the pandemic. Today the Fed cut interest rates a half a point, a dramatic cut indicating that it considers inflation to be under control. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that it would be possible to slow inflation without causing a recession—a so-called soft landing—and she appears to have been vindicated.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said: “The labor market is in solid condition, and our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there. You can say that about the whole economy: The US economy is in good shape. It’s growing at a solid pace, inflation is coming down. The labor market is at a strong pace. We want to keep it there. That’s what we’re doing.”

Powell, whom Trump first appointed to his position, said, “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing. It’s just maximum employment and price stability on behalf of all Americans.”

Powell was anticipating accusations from Trump that his cutting of rates was an attempt to benefit Harris before the election. Indeed, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump advisor Steven Moore called the move “jaw-dropping. There's no reason they couldn't do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?” Moore added, "I'm not saying [the] reduction isn't justified—it may well be and they have more data than I do. But i just think, 'why now?’” Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called the cut “shamelessly political.” 

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted that “Trump has been begging officials worldwide not to do the right thing for years to help rig the election for him—no deal in Gaza, no defense of Ukraine, no Kremlin hostages release, no border deal, no continuing resolution, no interest rate cuts etc—just sabotage & subterfuge.”

That impulse to focus on regaining power rather than serving the country was at least part of what was behind Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That story has gotten even darker as it turns out Vance and Trump received definitive assurances on September 9 that the rumor was false, but Trump ran with it in the presidential debate of September 10 anyway. Now, although it has been made very clear—including by Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine—that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, Vance told a reporter today that he personally considers the programs under which they came illegal, so he is still “going to call [a Haitian migrant] an illegal alien.”

The lies about those immigrants have so derailed the Springfield community with bomb threats and public safety concerns that when the Trump campaign suggested Trump was planning a visit there, the city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, backed by DeWine, threw cold water on the idea. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Rue said. Nonetheless, tonight, Trump told a crowd in Long Island, New York, that he will go to Springfield within the next two weeks. 

The false allegation against Haitian immigrants has sparked outrage, but it has accomplished one thing for the campaign, anyway: it has gotten Trump at least to speak about immigration—which was the issue they planned to campaign on—rather than Hannibal Lecter, electric boats, and sharks, although he continues to insist that “everyone is agreeing that I won the Debate with Kamala.” Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers are now talking more about policies.

In the presidential debate of September 10, Trump admitted that after nine years of promising he would release a new and better healthcare plan than the Affordable Care Act in just a few weeks, all he really had were “concepts of a plan.” Vance has begun to explain to audiences that he intends to separate people into different insurance pools according to their health conditions and risk levels. That business model meant that insurers could refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, and overturning it was a key driver of the ACA.

Senate and House Republicans told Peter Sullivan of Axios that if they regain control of the government, they will work to get rid of the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Negotiations on the first ten drugs, completed in August, will lower the cost of those drugs enough to save taxpayers $6 billion a year, while those enrolled in Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses. 

Yesterday Trump promised New Yorkers that he would restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that he himself capped at $10,000 in his 2017 tax cuts. In part, the cap was designed to punish Democratic states that had high taxes and higher government services, but now he wants to appeal to voters in those same states. On CNBC, host Joe Kernan pointed out that this would blow up the deficit, but House speaker Mike Johnson said that the party would nonetheless consider such a measure because it would continue to stand behind less regulation and lower taxes.

In a conversation with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, Trump delivered another stream of consciousness commentary in which he appeared to suggest that he would lower food prices by cutting imports. Economics professor Justin Wolfers noted: “I'm exhausted even saying it, but blocking supply won't reduce prices, and it's not even close.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark added, “Tell me more about why you have to vote for Trump because of his ‘policies.’”

Trump has said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as have a number of Republican lawmakers, but today, 44 Republican senators once again blocked the Senate from passing a measure protecting it. The procedure is in danger from state laws establishing “fetal personhood,” which give a fertilized egg all the rights of a human being as established by the Fourteenth Amendment. That concept is in the 2024 Republican Party platform.

Trump has also demanded that Republicans in Congress shut down the government unless a continuing resolution to fund the government contains the so-called SAVE Act requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Johnson brought the continuing resolution bill with the SAVE Act up for a vote today. It failed by a vote of 202 to 220. If the House and then the Senate don’t pass a funding bill, the government will shut down on October 1.

Republican endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket continue to pile up. On Monday, six-term representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) told the Charleston City Paper that “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic” and said he would vote for Harris. “If Donald Trump loses, that would be a good thing for the Republican Party,” Inglis said. “Because then we could have a Republican rethink and get a correction.” 

George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

Yesterday, singer-songwriters Billie Eilish, who has 119 million followers on Instagram, and Finneas, who has 4.2 million, asked people to register and to vote for Harris and Walz. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Eilish said, “because it does.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[poorrichardjr]

Just How Much?

I know a lot of people aren't as familiar as I am about how some politicians try to use othering to get ahead. They aren't as familiar with how this eventually goes to an extreme that is used to demonize a group of people who aren't the primary group to any political sphere. The best known instance of this was just before WWII by the Germans, though they were playing into long believed hatreds and stereotypes.

The reason I bring this up is because we have seen this repeated time and time again in history, and today we are witnessing a constant stream of it in our own nation. Just listen to major republican politicians and you will hear denigration of "illegal" aliens. But they are far from the only target. Listen to Donald Trump and you will constantly be inundated with hate for "illegals, liberals, Haitians, foreigners (especially Chinese)", and anyone else who doesn't subscribe to their version of history or America.

The rhetoric is going through the roof. Haitians are eating your pets. Illegals are taking over buildings in Colorado. Liberals are forcing sex changes on students in school or trying to make them gay. Take your pick of othering in politics. The whole point is to make you think these people are less human than you. It is designed to make you fear these "people" enough that you will agree to vote for the person who is spewing constant lies.

The more they can make you believe these individuals are undeserving and less than you, the more likely they will willingly take action if you are foolish enough to put them in power. The Jews of Europe aren't the only people who have this used against them. Armenians in Turkey, The ethnic minorities of Cambodia, and the Tutsi's of Rwanda can all tell you how politicians used charged words to make citizens hate their fellow countrymen.

Ask yourself when you hear these people talk about all the evil people here in America, how far are they willing to go? How much further are they going to take this? If this person comes to power, will he send the police into American homes to root out all these people he seems to hate? Will they use those militarized police forces to force other groups in this country to conform to their ideals? When will it end, or would it?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Parker Molloy at The Present Age:

It’s not every day that a political figure openly admits to fabricating stories to get media attention. But that’s precisely what Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance did during a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. Vance acknowledged that he “create[d] stories” about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, supposedly stealing and eating people’s pets. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said. This isn’t just reckless political theater. It’s a dangerous tactic that bears the hallmarks of fascist propaganda. Vance isn’t simply stretching the truth or engaging in hyperbole to score points with voters. He’s admitting, proudly, that he’s willing to lie in ways that actively harm immigrant communities and incite fear and violence. And we’ve seen the effects already. Since Vance’s story began circulating, Springfield has become ground zero for a wave of hate-fueled chaos. Bomb threats have been called into local schools, city hall, and hospitals, and the Ku Klux Klan is reportedly distributing flyers demanding that immigrants leave town. [...]

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter that Vance’s claims were quickly debunked. Springfield’s police department confirmed that there have been zero reports of pets being stolen or eaten. It doesn’t matter. The lie is already out there, and it’s doing its intended damage. This is a textbook example of how misinformation spreads and leads to real-world harm. Vance’s fabrication is part of a broader pattern of right-wing politicians using misinformation as a political weapon. Just two years ago, Republicans were circulating the bizarre, completely false claim that schools were installing litter boxes in bathrooms for students who identified as cats. That lie, too, spread like wildfire, despite being thoroughly debunked. These kinds of stories aren’t just silly or outlandish — they’re dangerous. They target specific communities, stoke fear and hatred, and lead to real-world violence. As we saw with the false claims about trans youth being subjected to surgeries without parental consent, these lies serve a political purpose, even after they’ve been debunked. They plant seeds of doubt, stir up fear, and shift the conversation away from real issues.

Appearing on CNN’s State Of The Union and NBC’s Meet The Press today, Trump VP pick and Ohio Senator JD Vance admitted that he created fake stories such as the Springfield Cat-Eating Hoax just “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”

This clown is unfit to be the nation’s No. #2 in charge (aka 101st Senator).

See Also:

HuffPost: JD Vance Justifies Spreading Debunked Conspiracy Against Haitians In Ohio

The Guardian: JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention

[simply-ivanka]

I hate defending any Politician but here’s some facts.

I spent time in Haiti with a medical team in the jungle. To get to the jungle you drive through towns. They point out how much Americans are hated , graffiti everywhere wishing death to our President and people. I had to pitch many items of clothing because I had flags and our colors . I was told I would not be safe wearing them, I had to remove my cross because it was a sign common to the voodoo.

I watched Haitian eat raw birds right out of the nest. When I inquired I was told “yes they eat animals they see no value in cats dogs moles etc. 🤮. I chased a chicken one day being funny because I live to eat chicken and we didn’t get any in Haiti. Chickens are valuable there due to their eggs.

Haiti did not send their finest here as illegal immigrants they sent from their prisons ( they hate us remember).

What benefits would there possibly be to make up a lie that these animals are being eaten. NONE!

It’s a culture. Pull your heads out of the sand and realize we now have cultures of all types there is good and bad in all cultures.

Ohio Troopers have been sent to Springfield Ohio along with $2.5 million because $15000-$20000 Haitians have been sent there .

I’d go back to Haiti in a hot minute to serve I loved those in the jungle. Those on the outside live as they wish , urinating and deficating on the street in the open. Culture doesn’t change just because they entered America illegally and if you had an honest bone in your body if $15000-20000 illegals were brought to your town using up your resources and you no longer had them available to aide your needs you wouldn’t be making fun and laughing. Live it understand it or shut up.

I said it , I’m done with stupidity and taking a break from both sides. Trump is not my favorite but to see people praise Harris who helped make this mess and thinks it’s a joke makes my skin crawl.

I’m in the community I know what’s happening sitting at home playing “I’m so woke “ and you know nothing outside your capsule of safety.

Did you know , Mahoning County is #1 in child trafficking. Mainly because the parents sell their kids for sex for cash to buy drugs.

Franklin County #4 with the highest rate due to immigrants selling children for sex and labor.

Cleveland and many other cities just refuse to report as required.

These FACTS were right out of the mouth of the head of human trafficking to my class.

Love people but don’t be stupid.

This is from a friend of mine. - Connie Our Country is in trouble and you make jokes.

I was woke as a child in my parents home we didn’t boast nor post, we lived it period .

The new woke creates division and hate , you spit on Christians and make up in your heads who they are and what they feel or believe while boasting of your so called love of all , you say you love all people but if they dare see things differently you spew hate. Some of you laughed and posted disgusting memes after an assassination attempt are you kidding a man died , shame on you . turning a blind eye to what others suffer out of your site. It’s not if this stuff will hit your community it’s when.

Vote for who you want, we have little to choose from in the mean time be adults, your kids / grandkids are watching and listening. You bully they will bully, you judge they will judge.

Realize the news is no longer independent nor are the so called fact checkers. Politicians are corrupt . Your opinion is an opinion nothing more . Care about your country both sides.

[mariacallous]

The dinner table unites and divides, especially the question of what we eat and how we eat it. It is therefore not surprising that politicians frequently use food as a wedge issue to push their ideological agendas and define who belongs in a group and who doesn’t.

The recent political firestorm ignited by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim during a presidential debate that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” has upended life in the small Ohio town—especially for its Haitian migrant population. The newly arrived refugees have been accused of eating their neighbors’ pets, leading to bomb threats to local schools and the suspension of in-person classes at nearby universities.

The repercussions of the event have been felt far beyond Springfield. On Sunday, vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance seemed to double down on the rumors he helped launch—telling CNN’s Dana Bash that “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

The baseless rumor Haitians immigrants eating pets in Springfield was promptly and summarily debunked by the town authorities. The soundbite was obviously meant to generate anxiety among voters who consider immigration a fundamental threat to the survival of the United States as we know it.

Whether it is truth or fiction does not matter. The Republican candidates’ divisive strategy has succeeded because of the symbolic meanings Americans—or any people—tend to attribute to certain foods that are seen to reflect and embody their identity as a community. These, in turn, generate strong emotional connections. Such reactions can easily bypass rational reflection. They feed instead off gut feelings. That’s why evidence negating Trump’s narrative may not actually change people’s knee-jerk reaction of revulsion.

The United States, due to its social and cultural diversity, is the perfect laboratory to test this kind of gastronativist messaging. Gastronativism can be activated not only via political affiliation, but also by class, religion, age, nationality, language and, of course, race and ethnicity. Throughout U.S. history, new immigrants have been accused of strange and disgusting culinary habits as a strategy to denigrate them and keep them at the margins of society.

German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century were identified with excessive consumption of beer and whisky, a habit that was considered with contempt in a society where anti-alcohol currents were strong and would, over time, originate legal arrangements such as prohibitionism.

The Chinese that settled on the West Coast to work in mining and in railway construction were frequently scorned for their consumption of rice as a main staple, which was considered a sign of their lack of civilization. As most of them were men, at least at first, rice was also interpreted as the explanation for their assumed lack of virility. They were also accused of eating rats, as well serving cats and dogs in their restaurants.

When new waves of migrations from Southern and Eastern Europe invested in the United States, it was the time for garlic and its smell to be derided as an inevitable trait of Italians. This time, well intentioned social workers tried their best to wean the newcomers from their excessive use of vegetables and spices and to convince them to increase their consumption of dairy and meat, which the nutritional theories of the time considered as indispensable to provide the necessary strength for those engaged in physical labor. As new populations arrived, it was their turn to see their food and culinary traditions disparaged as clear marks of their cultural and social inferiority.

The real issue, of course, was always who the “real Americans” were. And the specter of Black migrants eating pets has proved to be even more potent than old scare stories about the Chinese, Italians, and Irish.

Springfield, Ohio, has in recent years experienced a massive influx of refugees escaping political instability in Haiti. The new arrivals, who are there legally, have eased the local businesses’ need for workers, from agriculture to industrial plants. However, they have also have strained the city’s financial and welfare resources, eliciting strong reactions among locals.

While Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, acknowledging the inevitable growing pains that come with a sudden population increase, has pointed out the role of Haitians in the economic resurgence of Springfield, his fellow Republican, Vance, has ignored the migrants’ contribution to the town’s comeback in favor of spreading wild and incendiary rumors. The fact that Trump and Vance doubled down on a lie points to its usefulness in stirring apprehension among their supporters, with the goal of bringing them to the polls.

Haitian refugees have escaped a country devastated by gang violence and political disarray. Many of them are likely to have experienced food insecurity, an issue that has plagued the island of Haiti for decades and has intensified due to the recent instability. Moreover, Haitians are Black, which itself constitutes a threat for certain segments of the white electorate who feel that their way of life and their privileges are being unfairly usurped by non-white newcomers.

It is easy to project on foreigners who come from a poor country a readiness to feed themselves in any way possible, including consuming animals that better-off people would not consider food.

Haitians, in particular, are often portrayed as practitioners of voodoo, an Afro-Caribbean religion that syncretizes Catholic saints with West African deities. Born out of the culture of enslaved Africans in the New World as a form of resistance and transmission of their original culture, voodoo is connected with practices that include spiritual possession and, on occasion, animal sacrifices. American popular culture has played a central role in making these customs visible and, in many cases, terrifying—partly due to the connection between voodoo and zombie lore in films and horror literature.

The apprehension about the supposed religious practices of Haitians has deep roots in American culture. The anxiety about the mysterious habits of people of African descent has been a longstanding historical phenomenon in the United States since the colonial period. Such fears were intensified by the fact that enslaved people grew and cooked the food that their owners consumed.

Black women at times were tasked with breastfeeding white children and, in many cases, raising them. Against this background, tales about Black magic and juju abounded, indicating a clear ambivalence between the need for products and meals that came from Black hands and the awareness that those exploited in fields and kitchens may hold a grudge.

Given this history, the fake news regarding Haitians in Springfield is far from unexpected. It is through food that we distinguish “us” from “them.” And of course, “we” are inherently better than “them.”

Although Trump also mentioned wild geese being hunted, the fears about Haitian newcomers focused on pets, and in particular dogs. This particular phobia has a long lineage. Some native populations in North American did consume dog meat, causing disconcertment among European settlers. A 2018 regulation, the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act, was included in the Farm Bill, prohibiting the slaughtering of cats and dogs for human consumption, with the exception of native ceremonies.

Dog eating, however, was also a custom in China, South Korea, and the Philippines, among other countries, all of which have seen substantial migration toward the United States. The rapidly growing numbers of Asians in the United States intensified existing anti-Asian sentiments and racial intolerance, which increased during the coronavirus pandemic, attributed by many politicians to China. To emphasize its foreignness and blame Asians for it, Trump referred to the coronavirus as “kung flu.” The stereotype of the “dog-eating Asian” had a temporary resurgence, together with slurs and taunts that were often dug out from the past.

While dog eating is still legally practiced in some areas of China, it is in decline (Shenzhen became in 2020 the first city to outlaw it), and dog slaughtering as livestock has been banned in the Philippines since 1998, with an exception for rituals in indigenous communities and despite the persistence of some residual illegal consumption. In 2024, South Korea passed a law against the breeding and slaughter of dogs.

But reality does not seem to affect the circulation of food-related conspiracy theories, whose effectiveness is predicated on their capacity to strike emotional chords. The power of gastronativist fantasies grows precisely out of the centrality of eating in defining our identity and belonging. Facts end up losing relevance.

The incidents supposedly taking place in Springfield echo preexisting narratives with a long history, making the rumors feel familiar enough that lies begin to sound like truth. The emerging storyline of pet-eating Haitians responds to the needs of the politicians who peddle it while reflecting the ideological worldview of their followers. The victims—in this case a migrant community from a beleaguered country—are the collateral, calculated damage.

[crane-song]

I don't want to get too political on this blog but it is about my life and I wanted to share how the current state of things in Springfield, Ohio have impacted me.

I attend one of the two universities based in Springfield (Which I won't name for privacy and personal safety reasons) and we are currently on remote learning thanks to the shooting and bomb threats leveled against us and other schools in the city. These threats were made out of the xenophobic hatred for the Haitians in our community. Thanks to lies spread by Republican politicians schools are going under lockdowns, being evacuated or going remote to protect students, mostly children. These include elementary schools, one of which was evacuated today.

Even though I don't live on campus my parents made me come home (they don't live in Springfield) for my own safety. I'm lucky to have the privilege of that option but many people in Springfield and many of my fellow university students don't have the option to flee. Let me be clear--The politicians promoting racist and false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets don't care about anyone in Springfield. They are doing it for their own political gain and don't care about the consequences these lies have on the average person. They have given motivation to, let's be honest, domestic terrorists who are willing to scare and hurt Haitians and everyone else caught in the crossfire just to fulfill their xenophobic and racist desire to 'protect' an idealized white America. But people won't call them terrorists because they're white Americans.

As someone who spends about eight months out of the year living in Springfield I have never heard of a Haitian stealing and eating people's pets. They are not a threat to the security of our community. That would be the KKK, who are currently handing out fliers in town by the way, and the white nationalists threatening people.

[arguablysomaya]

oh yeah guys go read my new op-ed

[readingsquotes]

The recent ProPublica report on American Patriots’ Three Percent “friendly sheriff's list,” along with their success in infiltrating police departments, brings this point home. Within it, we see their leader lamenting, “Our country is being invaded at the Southern border,” using the same rhetoric as Trump, Abbott, and other conservative politicians when he continues with “Haitians, Middle Easterners, South American invaders that are coming in.” This shows one explicit point of connection in thinking between the right, law enforcement, and armed right-wing groups.7 Another is in a shared antipathy with left-wing protesters, also discussed in Part I. On both perceived “threats” to their vision of the country, the police have not only been lenient in allowing armed groups to menace and even kill protesters, but we’ve also seen law enforcement and paramilitary organizations work directly together through the reporting on AP3 mentioned above with the piece providing extensive evidence of law enforcement on the border working in collaboration with the militia as well as police asking them to infiltrate Black Lives Matter protests in Oklahoma City for surveillance purposes.

In addition to this recent reporting, last year, the supervisor of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department surveillance branch was indicted for providing information directly to the Proud Boys.8 This pattern of police and paramilitary cooperation is growing, not slowing. The police in Los Angeles allowing counterprotesters to attack students calling for a ceasefire in Palestine was highly predictable given what we know, and with the continued protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza happening, it’s only a matter of time before we see this combination lead to violence again.9

[julie-h]

List of gods and godesses to pray for Luigi Mangione

• Sekhmet. Egyptian godess of revenge, war, protection and healing

• Isis. Egyptian godess of magic protection

• Tyr. Scandinavian god of justice

• Loki. Scandinavian god of magic, strategy, rébellion, fire, chaos and renewal

• Sigyn. A Norse goddess associated with warlike victory, she is also a protective and loving goddess who devotedly supported and protected her husband Loki when he was subjected to punishment for the murder of Baldr.

• Athena. Greek godess of strategy, protection and wisdom

• Themis. Greek godess of justice and balance

• Nemesis. Greek godess of revenge justice. Her help will be very useful in condemning the crimes of pride and corruption of the high representatives of American private health insurance

• Aradia. Italian godess of witchcraft, protection of the lost and rebellion who, on orders on her mother the godess Diana, taught magic to the oppressed poor to help them fight the rich exploiters.

• Diana. Italian godess of moon and hunt, Aradia's mother. Associated with witchcraft, she protects the outlaws, the oppressed, the rebellious souls, the unfortunate but the thieves and the murderers too.

• Hecate. Greek goddess of witchcraft and mystic protection

• Shiva. Hindu god of regenerative destruction, cosmic order and justice

• God/Yahve/Allah for forgivness, justice, protection and education

• Jesus for protection, love, healing and education

• Maat. Egyptian godess of truth, cosmic harmony, rectitude (or moral conduct), order and balance of the world, equity, peace and justice

• Thot. Egyptian god of divine intelligence, speech and magic

• Seth. Egyptian god of chaos and war but also protection (he defended the boat of the sun god Ra against the serpent Apophis)

• Metis. In Greek mythology, she is the personification of wisdom and cunning

• Ares/Mars. Greco roman gods of war, vengeance, violence and oaths, protectors of youth, warriors and fighters

• Amaterasu. Japanese goddess of the sun, she is also often depicted with a mirror, a symbol of her role as guardian of order and justice

• Odin. Scandinavian god associated with victory, magic and runes.

• Angita: Roman goddess of Healing and Witchcraft

• Ares/Mars. Greco roman gods of war, vengeance, violence and oaths, protectors of youth, warriors and fighters

• Erzulie Dantò. Vaudoo godess of justice, ferocious strenght and protection, she is depicted with a knife

• Ogou. Powerful warrior loa in voodoo embodying the fighting and fierce spirit, protection and war

• Met Kafou. Fearsome loa master of black magic and witchcraft, of will, determination and discipline in Haitian voodoo. To be invoked with great caution!

• Kali. Hindu goddess of preservation, transformation, destruction and creation

• Aphrodite. Greek goddess of love, beauty, attraction and seduction, her power is however broader. She is indeed also the patron saint of politicians and magistrates, which gives her a political and judicial role. She is also associated with war, protection, chaos leading to creation, victory, freedom, magic and purification. Her roman equivalent is Venus.

• Durga. Hindu goddess who grants victory over enemies, in disputes and trials and soothes suffering. Her multiple weapons indicate that to overcome evil impulses, man must develop different qualities, depending on the situations and circumstances: detachment against selfishness, self-knowledge against anger, generosity against greed or resentment, discernment against harm (theft, murder, etc.), etc.

• Rama. Seventh avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism. People worship Rama not for the success of his life, but for the grace with which he passed through the most difficult times. That is what is valued. That is the highest value in life. It is not about how much you have, what you have done, what has happened or what has not happened.

• Vishnu. Hindu god, preserver and guardian of men, he protects the order of things (dharma) and he appears on earth in various incarnations (avatars) to fiaht demons. Accordina to Hindu doctrine. Vishnu is a benevolent divinity who does not hesitate to grant his protection to anyone who asks him.

• Brahma. Hindu ordering god who transforms the inarticulate (anrita) into the articulate (rita) state. He is the Prajapati, or lord and father of all creatures, and first and foremost of the Rishis or Prajapatis. He is the father of Manu from whom all human beings are descended, which is why in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, he is often referred to as the ancestor of all human beings.

[misfitwashere]

Fantasy-Impotence-Fascism

The Trump-Vance Political Theory

TIMOTHY SNYDER

SEP 22

A lady in Springfield, Ohio lost her cat and found it, and Trump and Vance have made this the centerpiece of their campaign. This might seem mysterious or just stupid.  But Trump and Vance are intelligent and talented politicians, and their actions make sense within their political theory.

Though alien to most Americans, the worldview is important to understand, because it forecasts how America would be ruled should these men come to power.  It has three elements: fantasy, impotence, and fascism.

A cat finds itself.

1.  Fantasy. There is no true and false.  There is no such thing as lying.  There are just “stories,” as Vance says.  So in one world (let’s call it the real world, for old-time’s sake), a cat disappeared for a moment, as cats will, and then reappeared, as cats will, in the basement.  In another world, the Trump-Vance fantasy world, that cat was eaten by Haitians, as part of a general trend of pet consumption, one which justifies their deportation and our outrage etc.

What does a story like this bring to the Trump-Vance campaign?  It clearly brings something: let’s remember 2016, the last time Trump ran from outside the White House.  Halloween-season fantasies of a similar kind, generally originating in Russia, saved his campaign.  But how does this work?  To answer, we need to consider the other two parts of the political theory.

2.  Impotence.  Central to the Trump-Vance campaign is a politics of impotence.  The government cannot actually do anything for the average citizen.  (In the background, of course, a smaller, dysfunctional government creates a void filled by the oligarchs, which is the practical implication of this theory).  In elaborating the cats-and-dogs fantasy about his home state, Vance is revealing to us his theory of federal power.

Here it is: the power of the the federal government is to be used to find a cat which is not in fact lost.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  That is what the average citizen can expect from a Trump-Vance regime.  Project 2025 expels the civil servants who know what to do, nothing works anymore except for oligarchs and pals of the president, and the rest of us get Schrödinger’s Cat.

A person holding a position of authority and responsibility in the federal government has no other role than to talk about things that are not true and pass on responsibility for the untruth to the media, as Vance does.  Remember: Vance is a United States Senator representing Ohio.  If there were some actual problem in Ohio he could propose to address it with legislation.  But he cannot and will not do so, not only because there is no actual problem, but because he must personify impotent government.

3.  Fascism. In the Trump-Vance political theory, government acts not in the normal way, by laws, but as an instrument of the fury of the people.  There is no legal basis, or indeed any basis at all, to call for the Haitian population of Springfield, Ohio to be deported.  The people in question are here legally, as Trump and Vance know, and did nothing, as Trump and Vance also know.

In fascism, the government becomes the will of the people, or rather the race, as embodied in a single person.  A fantasy of evil done by others is deliberately invoked to create a sense of us and them. Government exercises power by taking revenge on groups, for example by deporting them (the first large-scale action of Hitler’s SS, by the way, was deporting immigrants).

Such a mass deportation would be complicated and bloody, would require collaboration from citizens, and would set Americans against one another.  We see a foretaste of this in Springfield, Ohio, with all the bomb threats.

Us-and-them then becomes the normal form of politics, with us becoming complicit in ever more terrible actions, which incidentally make traditional government harder and our expectations of government lower.  The government becomes impotent in the sense of protecting or supporting citizens, with politics now transferred to the battles on the streets.

And then the people in power think up the the next fantasy.  And the government becomes more impotent, leaving space for the oligarchs and generating more reasons for Americans to fight one another.

That’s the political theory.  Fantasy-Impotence-Fascism.  And it can become, as we are seeing, political practice.