#Springfield Cat Eating Hoax

[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

[meret118]

Someone official finally used the term!

According to the report, Erika Lee, a resident of Springfield, posted to Facebook commenting on a neighbor's cat who had gone missing — and mentioned that the neighbor had been suspicious the cat might have been attacked by Haitians who lived in the neighborhood.

There was no evidence to support the claim. Moreover, cats often go missing for various reasons, especially those allowed to wander outside.

Lee, for her part, feels terrible that her post exploded into a xenophobic panic against the Haitian community, and for the confusion and fear the post caused.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” she told NBC News.

------

But she still posted the racist shit that started this.

[nedsecondline]

'It just exploded': Woman who sparked Trump's migrant pet-eating hoax comes forward - Raw Story

According to the report, Erika Lee, a resident of Springfield, posted to Facebook commenting on a neighbor’s cat who had gone missing — and mentioned that the neighbor had been suspicious the cat might have been attacked by Haitians who lived in the neighborhood. There was no evidence to support the claim. Moreover, cats often go missing for various reasons, especially those allowed to wander…

[sovchron]

Tennesseans speak out in defense of cat eating tradition

Rel Gumson ate a cat and skinned her dog SPRINGFIELD — National media reports have citizens worried that Haitian migrants are prowling the streets, kidnapping family pets and grilling them in voodoo rituals. Local police are yet to file any charges, and have made an official statement that the story is a hoax. However, some Americans are now emboldened to speak out about the benefits to eating…

[novumtimes]

Ohios RINO Gov. Mike DeWine Confirms All 30 Anti-Haitian Bomb Threats Were a Hoax Most Came From Overseas (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit

Mike DeWine Press Conference Ohio’s RINO Governor Mike DeWine has confirmed that all the alleged “bomb threats” against schools across the state have turned out to be a hoax. The reports of bomb threats have been aggressively shared by Democrats and left-wing activists following outrage over reports that Haitian migrants have been eating people’s animals and pets in the state. Ohio Resident Horrified After Spotting Missing Cat ‘Hanging from a Branch, Being Carved Up for Food’ by Haitian Migrants: Report Addressing a press conference on Monday, DeWine added that many of the supposed threats appear to have come from overseas: There have been at least 33 separate bomb threats, each one of which has been responded to, and each one of whom has been found as a hoax. So, 33 threats, 33 hoaxes. I want to make that very, very clear. None of these had any validity at all. We know that people are very, very concerned, and we have taken some actions, and in a moment I’ll let Andy Wilson go into more detail. But we’ve moved resources into Springfield. So I want to say to the parents in Springfield, these hoaxes, these threats have all been hoaxes. None of them have panned out. We have people, unfortunately, overseas who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is, you know, one more opportunity to mess with the United States, and they’re continuing to do that. So we cannot let the bad guys win. Our schools must remain open. It is not clear which country DeWine was referring to. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says there were 33 bomb threats against Springfield schools that all turned out to be hoaxes and originated from “overseas.” Where do President Trump and JD Vance go to get their apology from the media who claimed they incited them? pic.twitter.com/NKyhUJZwrz — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 16, 2024 DeWine’s statements will come as a disappointment to left-wing activists, many of whom were jumping on the bomb threats and trying to blame them on Donald Trump. We have zero examples of Haitians eating cats but 7-8 bomb threats and one threatened mass shooting by right-wingers who think Haitians are eating cats At this point a Haitian could eat 20 cats tomorrow and the right would still be the most barbaric party in this controversy — Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) September 15, 2024 Yet like so many Democratic Party narratives, they all turned out to be a hoax. Source link via The Novum Times

[justiceheartwatcher]

Let’s do a REAL fact-check on Trump. Are Haitians killing, eating animals in Springfield, Ohio?

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris and the ABC “moderators” put the “bait” into “debate,” ganging up on Trump to bait him into losing his cool. Unfortunately, too often, he went for it, allowing himself to get distracted, angry and defensive and missing many opportunities to turn the focus back where it belonged, on issues of most concern to voters like the economy. 

Meanwhile, Harris was thoroughly prepped and rehearsed for Tuesday’s debate, by a partner in one of the top Democrat law firms no less, and the long hours of preparation showed.  What we’re saying is, she had been carefully coached to lie.

In fact, just as President Biden had done in his debate with former President Donald Trump, she lied throughout the evening, building a straw man out of views Trump doesn’t even hold so she could set fire to it, and furthering the most outrageous and conclusively debunked hoaxes against him.  Project 2025, a national abortion ban, the “bloodbath” hoax, even the Charlottesville “fine people hoax” --- really??  Some of these lies are so long-debunked that they actually have names with the word “hoax” in them. How ignorant must one have to be to find this impressive? Well, at least we know the Democrats’ target audience.

Biden at least had senility as an excuse for repeating all that slander; Kamala must own the label of serial liar.  Last night, there was a whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on. Democrats do this because, as Harry Reid once gloated, it works. Feeling guilty for repeating known lies that get you votes from the gullible is apparently for “suckers and losers.”

Recall that when Kamala was called out once before for lying in a previous debate, she ended up tacitly admitting it, offering the justification that “it was just a debate.”  So, she went onstage last night already on record as believing it’s fine to lie in a debate if that’s how you can win.  She showed us she still believes that.

ABC NEWS, rather than pin her down on issues and call out her many lies, actively helped her get away with her deceptions, never once correcting her while frequently interjecting “fact”-checks on Trump (seven by one media count), many of which turned out to be wrong.  The debate really did turn out to be three-against-one, just as we’d anticipated it would.  (NOTE:  Still, that’s all the more reason for the scattershot Trump we saw last night to have been more focused and better prepared and rested, instead of winging it.  He had to know they’d all be aligned against him.)

Numerous instances of ABC’s shameful behavior are detailed elsewhere in today’s newsletter, but here we’d like to focus on Trump’s allegation that Haitian immigrants had overwhelmed the small town of Springfield, Ohio, to such an extent that they were stealing residents’ pets and tame ducks in the park to use as food.

“In Springfield,” Trump said, “they’re eating the dogs --- the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.  They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”  (Kamala is laughing at this.)  “And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

https://rumble.com/v5egx2r-donald-trump-in-springfield-theyre-eating-the-dogs-the-people-that-came-in.html

The debate threatened to go off the rails when Trump brought this up.  The moderators’ (and Kamala’s) over-the-top reaction suggested that only a crackpot would actually “go there.”  Why, the story is so wild, it couldn’t possibly be true!

But, sadly, life in 2024 is so increasingly bizarre that this is not at all hard to believe.  When moderator David Muir --- whose own “ABC World News Tonight” news stories on Trump run 93 percent negative --- jumped in quickly to “fact”-check President Trump on this, it didn’t go well.  “...You bring up Springfield, Ohio,” Muir said to Trump.  “And ABC NEWS did reach out to the city manager there.  He told us, ‘There have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”  Trump said he’d seen people on television claiming their pets had been taken and used for food.  (And, yes, they have claimed this.)

“So, maybe [the city manager] said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager,” Trump responded.  This makes sense, as what city manager would WANT to admit such a horrifying thing about his town?

“I’m not taking this from television,” Muir said.  “I’m taking it from the city manager.”  But Trump remained insistent.  Kamala, in the split screen, was wearing an amused, faux-bewildered face intended to communicate that Trump must be nuts.

https://rumble.com/v5egwhd-moderator-tries-to-fact-check-trump-and-it-instantly-blows-up-in-his-face.html?e9s=src_v1_upp

Side note:  the one who really might be crazy is California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had already tried to make fun of this story and ended up just looking stupid.

https://rumble.com/v5efb9h-eric-swalwell-has-a-full-blown-meltdown-about-cat-memes...what-in-the-hell-.html

And as long as we’re having a little fun, here’s an example of that great American entrepreneurial spirit…

https://shop.thelibertydaily.com/products/make-cats-safe-again-t-shirt

Springfield, Ohio, is a “bedroom community,” quite blue politically, of 60,000 inhabitants located on the outskirts of Dayton and Columbus.  For the past few years, it has done its best to absorb about 20,000 Haitian immigrants and somehow handle the resulting chaos.  Police and city leaders have denied the recent wild stories coming out of Springfield, notably the reports that immigrants are catching and killing pets and tame ducks for food.  But from THE FEDERALIST, here’s a two-week-old police report with audio from a witness saying, “They all had geese in their hands.”

https://thefederalist.com/2024/09/10/exclusive-police-audio-report-confirm-haitian-goose-hunting-in-ohio-they-all-had-geese-in-their-hands/

There were two men and two women, each carrying a single goose.  As Tristan Justice writes, “Testimonies from Springfield residents at a recent city commission meeting record neighbors reporting shocking details of migrant behavior, from outright harassment to allegedly gruesome executions of local wildlife in public spaces.”  A Springfield resident named Anthony Harris complained to city officials that “they’re in the park, grabbing up ducks by the neck, and cutting their head off and walking off with them.  They’re eating them.”

The local police have said it’s incorrect to claim Haitians are “catching, killing, and eating house pets.”  But it’s hard to believe them when they’re also denying emphatic reports from residents of immigrants engaging in other illegal activities on their property such as squatting and littering.  Springfield Deputy Director of Public Safety and Operations Jason Via told NPR, “I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear.”  Sounds like a reason to deny the scary truth.

Trump running mate Sen. J. D. Vance, who grew up about 50 miles away from Springfield, says he posted on X that Haitians in the town were eating pets after “a high volume of complaints” from residents came to his office.  Oh, and PJ MEDIA has a picture posted on X of an alleged Haitian immigrant walking down a Springfield residential street, holding a big dead goose.  That might not be enough evidence for ABC NEWS debate moderators, but it seems pretty persuasive to us.

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/09/10/haitians-are-not-killing-pets-in-springfield-ohio-its-what-else-theyre-doing-thats-the-problem-n4932390

Of course, lost in this discussion during the debate was the real issue: the impact this influx of immigrants is having on the people who live in Springfield and the enormous strain on city services, a problem cities across America are suffering because of the Biden-Harris open border.  People are confronted with threatening behavior on their own property, they see and hear about what’s happening to the geese in the park, perhaps their dogs and cats go missing, and they feel just as unsafe as the animals are.  Some are quite frightened. 

“Look at me,” said one fragile, 95-pound woman who was complaining of daily threats and harassment by Haitian men squatting on her own property.  “I couldn’t defend myself if I had to.  I don’t understand what you expect of us as citizens.  Who’s protecting us if we’re protecting them?  Who’s protecting me?”

The phone call about the geese was placed on August 26, which was before Springfield suddenly became nationally known as a center of the immigration crisis.

As Becca Lower at REDSTATE put it, both Kamala and the ABC moderators “tried to wave it away as unserious and unconfirmed information.”  But “it’s happening and very real,” Lower said, “for people in Springfield and across the country placed in danger by this administration’s dangerous border policies.”

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2024/09/11/the-federalist-report-man-in-springfield-oh-calls-police-dispatcher-about-4-haitians-carrying-geese-n2179171

Kamala can laugh about people’s pets being killed if she thinks that will help her win, but her time as Border Czar has been cat-astrophic.  Not to sound dog-matic...

https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1833674943491395712

Here’s some must-read background if you’re wondering how Springfield got into this mess.  The Haitians were flown in by the federal government, but it’s what the city asked for...

https://instapundit.com/671649/

https://theothermccain.com/2024/09/10/springfield-gets-what-it-deserves/

Mike Huckabee

[thesiouxzy]

Dummy!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

Anti-immigrant lies and rhetoric spewed by Donald Trump and his party have caused real and terrifying results. On Thursday, several city, county, and school buildings in Springfield, Ohio, were targeted by a bomb threat. On Friday, a Springfield middle school was closed and two elementary schools were evacuated. ABC News originally reported that there was no direct connection made between the threats and the GOP's repeated racist lies about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets. Additionally, ABC reported it was not “immediately clear if Friday's evacuations were from a new threat or linked to bomb threats sent via email Thursday morning.” But in an interview with The Washington Post, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said that Thursday’s bomb threat “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.”

During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Trump erroneously claimed, “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there.” This lie has also been pushed by his running mate Sen. JD Vance a number of times. And Trump continued to perpetuate the lie, adding geese this time, in a campaign rally Thursday in Arizona.

The Haitian Times reported that some of Springfield’s Haitian community has felt so threatened during this barrage of right-wing hate-propaganda that they chose to keep their children home from school following the debate. “We’re all victims this morning,” one woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told the outlet. “They’re attacking us in every way.”  The same kind of racist rhetoric has also besieged Venezuelan immigrants in Colorado. Trump has repeatedly pushed bullshit crime numbers (which he did once again during the debate), targeting Venezuelan communities in the Centennial State as filled with “gangs,” and saying they were “taking over” Colorado cities. 

[...] This is sadly par for the course during a time of fascistic and hateful rhetoric. We saw it with Asian hate crimes rising during COVID-19 pandemic, when Trump and others would frequently use derogatory terms for the coronavirus such as “Kung Flu,” and the “Chinese Virus.” We've seen it in the rise of antisemitism connected to the rise of MAGA extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theory as well as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The consequences of the Republican Party’s need to target, isolate, and divide various groups of people, are that innocent, hardworking people suffer. At the same time, without any meaningful policies, the fear and economic uncertainty that the GOP repeats remains the same.  Trump said Tuesday during the debate that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield were “destroying” the residents’ “entire way of life.” That divisiveness, despite the fact that these Haitian Americans are part of that community, is the Trump way. And in a country made up almost entirely of immigrants, there’s always someone to blame.

Aurora, CO and Springfield, OH are two communities in the news recently as a result of right-wing hate mobs targeting the cities to push their anti-immigrant BS.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chloe Simon and Reed McMaster at MMFA:

On September 9, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance claimed that Haitian migrants had “abducted and eaten” pets in Springfield, Ohio, seemingly referencing debunked social media rumors.  Though local officials explained that there was no truth to the claim, right-wing media immediately jumped on the bandwagon, amplifying Vance’s allegations and pushing racist narratives about Haitian immigrants.  Some right-wing figures accused Haitian migrants of consuming “cats and ducks” and comparing them to “zombies” and “locusts.” 

JD Vance falsely alleged Haitian migrants are kidnapping and eating people’s pets, continuing long-standing right-wing media attacks on Haitians

JD Vance wrote on X that he had previously raised concerns about “Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio” and “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” While Vance did admit in a subsequent post that “it's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he doubled down by telling by telling his “fellow patriots” not to “let the crybabies in the media dissuade you” and encouraged them to continue making “cat memes.” [Twitter/X, 9/9/24, 9/10/24, 9/10/24]

The claim Haitian migrants are eating cats seemingly originated from a commentator at a local meeting, Facebook rumors, and a video of a woman accused of eating an animal. The video used as evidence took place in Canton, Ohio, not Springfield, Ohio, and The Guardian reported that the woman did not appear to be a Haitian immigrant. [The Guardian, 9/9/24]

Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck says there is no truth to the story. In a statement to ABC News, Heck said that “in response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” (Vance had previously cited Heck in a Senate Banking committee meeting about issues Springfield has had with housing for Haitian migrants.) [ABC News, 9/9/24]

The debunked attack on Haitian people is the latest in years’ worth of racist right-wing media tirades against the country. In the aftermath of the deadly 2010 Haiti earthquake, right-wing media said that the “Haitian pact with the devil is historical fact” and that the country was “so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” Then in 2018, when Trump had labeled Haiti a “shithole country,” Infowars’ Alex Jones backed him up, saying it is a “literal craphole” and a “hellhole.” [Media Matters, 1/14/10, 1/20/10, 1/21/10, 1/12/18; NBC News, 1/11/18] 

Right-wing media gin up anti-Haitian racism with the false "Haitian migrants are eating pets" BS.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Jarman at The Downballot:

Just how many Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield, Ohio, in recent years? It's a question at the center of the new national discussion about the city's resurgence and ensuing struggles to accommodate its new growth. There's no definitive answer, but we can say this: Almost every estimate you've seen is wrong—and too high. In particular, the oft-quoted figure that 20,000 new residents from Haiti have settled in Springfield is not accurate. The real number is likely around half that amount. Here's how we know. After shrinking dramatically over the last half-century, Springfield has worked hard to revitalize emptying neighborhoods by attracting new residents and workers. By all accounts, this civic revival is succeeding. Springfield's population peaked at more than 80,000 in 1960 but then began a continuous decline, falling to under 60,000 in 2020. But that decline appears to be leveling off as the city experiences what the local newspaper called in 2022 a "resurgence."

Newcomers from Haiti have played a critical role in this transformation, and their actual number is likely more in line with official estimates in the low five figures. But even these assessments may be too large: New data from the Census Bureau shows only a tiny increase in Springfield's Haitian population, though it, too, has sources of error, and comes to us already a year out of date. As Haitians in Springfield experience an outpouring of hatred fomented by the far right, it's reasonable to ask why we might be concerned with precise population counts. Accurate data, however, is at the heart of responsive democratic governance. Cities, counties, states, and the federal government all need detailed information about their inhabitants if they're to meet the needs of longtime residents and new arrivals alike. Conversely, repression of the facts is a key page in the authoritarian's playbook. The absence of trustworthy data creates an information vacuum easily filled by propaganda. That gap is already being exploited. The Downballot's goal is to close it.

The Media vs. City Officials

A critical problem is that some of the most frequently cited figures of the Haitian population in Springfield are thinly sourced and are at odds with official sources. For instance, many media reports, including an in-depth profile of the city in the New York Times, have said that as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to the city in recent years. Fox News, meanwhile, went as high as 30,000, a claim attributed solely to a Springfield resident. The Times cited unnamed "city officials," but other officials who've gone on the record—including the city's Republican mayor—say the number, while still a substantial proportion of Springfield's total population, is considerably smaller. For instance, the local Springfield News-Sun reported this week that the actual number is "more around 12,000–15,000." That statistic was provided at a recent press conference by Mayor Rob Rue, who said it came from "the health department and other agencies." But the number may be smaller still. Rue was answering a reporter's question about the Haitian population in the "Springfield area," which extends beyond city limits. Data from the city indicates that Rue was indeed speaking of the wider region. On a page of "Immigration FAQs" on Springfield's official website, the city says that "the total immigrant population is estimated to be approximately 12,000–15,000 in Clark County," the county where Springfield is located. Since those numbers are identical to Rue's, it's likely he was referring to the same estimate provided on the city's website. Those figures, however, don't specify how many immigrants are Haitian. They also cover all of Clark County rather than just Springfield, which makes up about half the county. So even if most live in Springfield and most are Haitian, the number of Haitians in Springfield would be smaller than these overall figures.

David Jarman wrote in The Downballot (a site that recently became fully independent from Daily Kos and was previously known as Daily Kos Elections) the real numbers of Haitians who migrated to Springfield, Ohio, which are around 10,000-15,000.

See Also:

MMFA: False claims about Haitian migrants, pushed by the GOP ticket and right-wing media, have had real-world consequences

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Liz Dye at Public Notice:

Donald Trump spent much of Tuesday night lying. This is hardly news, since he fibs so compulsively that reporters barely cover it any more. But one particularly bizarre whopper about Haitian immigrants in Ohio killing and eating pets dominated the headlines. “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating — they're eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump babbled during the debate, thrown off by Harris’s transparent attempt to bait him with a dig at his crowd size. “And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.” Trump’s comments were so outrageous that moderator David Muir jumped in with a fact-check, and the whole exchange between Muir and Trump is worth reading. (The video is embedded below the transcript — pay attention to Harris’s facial expressions while Trump goes off the deep end.) [...]

According to the Springfield News-Sun, the racist meme started with a post to a Facebook group for residents of the Ohio town. The poster claimed that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend had discovered her cat butchered near a home lived in by Haitians, and further that the poster had “been told” that pet dogs as well as wild geese and ducks had been killed as well. But local police never received any reports of pets being killed. The Federalist did manage to dig up a police report that accused four Haitians of illegal goose hunting, but that’s hardly the stuff that rightwing memes are made of. If you want to foment racial hatred against minorities and immigrants, you can’t just accuse them of participating in the Real American™ hobby of hunting. So instead the wingnutosphere cooked up a ridiculous lie about a plague of brown-skinned invaders devouring family pets, then went pedal to the metal with it. Charlie Kirk, Kremlin-funded Benny Johnson, and even Elon Musk all tweeted about it on Monday. But things really got out of hand when Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, joined the fray.

The “Haitian immigrants are eating pets” hoax is nothing more than a fabricated racist attack against Haitians and refugees more broadly.

See Also:

HuffPost: Ohio Governor Says There's No Merit To Claims About Immigrants Eating Pets In Springfield

Vox: How the GOP became the party of racist memes against Haitian immigrants

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Does it even matter that the Haitian immigrants who have flocked to Springfield, Ohio, are in the country legally? Does it matter that Springfield, once a depressed post-industrial Rust belt town like so many others, has been economically revitalized by their arrival? Does it matter that the immigrants from Haiti fled violence and economic deprivation in their own country that are the outcome of American policy? Does it matter that none of the bizarre lies that have been peddled about them by Donald Trump, JD Vance and others on the right, telling lurid tales of the migrants capturing and killing local pets, are true? But even though the stories are made up, the threats now facing Springfield’s population of roughly 80,000 souls are very real. After last week’s presidential debate, when Trump railed about how Haitians in Springfield were “eating the dogs, eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there”, life has been transformed in Springfield. Ordinary life has yielded to a barrage of media attention, nationally broadcast lies and threats. Two elementary schools in Springfield had to be evacuated because of threats of violence. Think about that: someone contacted Springfield authorities and made threats against grade-school children that were credible enough that the buildings had to be evacuated for the sake of safety. Classes at Wittenberg University in Springfield had to be held online because multiple threats of violence targeting Haitian students and staff there – including a bomb threat and a mass shooting threat – were deemed credible. Two hospitals in the town, Kettering Health Springfield and Mercy Health, had to go into lockdown after receiving threats. Government buildings in the city also had to be closed. Haitian immigrants in Springfield told news outlets that they were afraid to leave their homes. There were reports of broken windows and acid thrown on cars. There is a word for this kind of large-scale, organized violence against a local ethnic enclave. That word is pogrom. [...] The episode is typical of Trump’s cynical cycle, one which the rightwing media and his many Republican imitators have almost perfected over the course of the past decade: an outrageous lie is told that provides cover for a racist resentment among Trump’s supporters – and, more importantly, gins up attention for Trump himself. Because the lie is fabricated and because it has no basis in reality, it can exist entirely at the level of fantasy and projection: lurid tales of pet-eating are not true, but because they can’t be proven or disproven, they can propel days’ worth of imaginings, condemnations, hoaxes and frantic factchecking by the media class. That this particular lie evokes longstanding racist imaginations of Black people as brutal and bestial – something more akin to coyotes than to hardworking small-town families – it reaffirms Trump’s particular appeal to the white Republican id.

Moira Donegan at The Guardian on the right-wing's racist anti-Haitian pogrom as a result of waging a hoax about "eating cats" in Springfield, Ohio (09.18.2024).

The Guardian's Moira Donegan wrote a column worth reading on the right-wing's racist anti-Haitian pogrom led by JD Vance, Donald Trump, and various conservative media talking heads who fueled the Springfield cat-eating hoax.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kelby Vera at HuffPost:

An Ohio woman whose police report was used to power racist rumors about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating neighborhood cats has admitted her pet was found in her home, just days after she reported her Haitian neighbors to local police. Baseless reports about missing pets in Springfield, Ohio gained national attention after Donald Trump parroted the rumor during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris last Tuesday. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”

Despite the former president receiving an instant fact-check from moderator David Muir, his unfounded anti-immigrant rhetoric continued to circulate online and in the media, backed by several of his campaign surrogates. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), doubled down on the misinformation during multiple media appearances this past weekend. But the day before the Trump-Harris debate, Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck had explicitly debunked the rumor to a Vance aide, according to a Thursday report from the Wall Street Journal. When the Journal approached Vance’s team about the cat-eating claim, a spokesperson provided a police report from a Springfield resident who accused her Haitian neighbors of being responsible for her cat going missing in late August.

But when the outlet contacted the person who filed the report, Anna Kilgore, she told the paper that her pet, Miss Sassy, was found in her basement days after she contacted the police. Kilgore, who was wearing a Trump shirt and hat when the Journal spoke with her, told reporters that she had since apologized to her Haitian neighbors. While Miss Sassy was not in any harm, the same now can’t be said about Springfield and the city’s Haitian community.

[...] Another Springfield resident, whose Facebook post began the pet-eating rumor that Kilgore’s police report ostensibly proved, has apologized for inciting a backlash against her city.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump supporter Anna Kilgore, the one who filed the report that blamed Haitian immigrants for causing her pet to go missing, revealed that her cat Miss Sassy was found in her basement a few days after she contacted the police.

Kilgore’s report was fuel for the right-wing media and the Trump/Vance ticket to amplify racist and xenophobic cat-eating hoaxes against Haitians and cause the city of Springfield, Ohio needless trauma.

See Also:

The Present Age: The Wall Street Journal Provides a Template for Covering the Right's Springfield Lies

MMFA: JD Vance, Springfield, and how MAGA media spun a racist lie out of control

Daily Kos: Vance knew Haitian immigrants weren't eating pets—and lied anyway

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chloe Simon at MMFA:

After a week of right-wing media spreading baseless smears about Haitian migrants abducting and eating pets, conservative activist Christopher Rufo posted a video allegedly showing a cat on a barbecue grill in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton police have issued a statement saying “there is no evidence to even remotely suggest” that any community is eating pets — but some in right-wing media ran with the story, claiming that Rufo’s video falsely “confirmed” the rumors about migrants and animals. 

Last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, promoted baseless and racist rumors about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. During the September 10 presidential debate, Trump claimed, “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Right-wing media also jumped on the narrative, calling Haitian migrants “locusts,” zombies,” and “weird Third World aliens.” [The Associated Press, 9/11/24; Media Matters, 9/10/24]

On September 14, Rufo posted a video purportedly showing a cat on a barbecue with the caption, “EXCLUSIVE: We have discovered that migrants are, in fact, eating cats in Ohio. We have verified, with multiple witnesses and visual cross-references, that African migrants in Dayton, the next city over from Springfield, barbecued these cats last summer.” Rufo did acknowledge in his Substack that “this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs.” However, he continued that the video “does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its ‘fact checkers’” and that “independent journalists are already on the hunt and could reveal more.” Prior to releasing the video, Rufo claimed he would “provide a $5,000 bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/24, 9/11/24; Substack, 9/14/24]

Rufo, a senior fellow at conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, is a conservative activist known for his right-wing crusades against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and higher education. Media Matters has described his career as a long attempt to “inject bigotry and incorrect information into mainstream discourses about gay and trans people, drag queens, and the academic discipline known as critical race theory.” [Vox, 9/10/23; Media Matters, 1/6/23, 7/27/23; The Guardian, 2/21/24]

Dayton police have categorically denied that any group has “engaged in eating pets.” In a statement, the department wrote, “We stand by our immigrant community and there is no evidence to even remotely suggest that any group, including our immigrant community, is engaged in eating pets. Seeing politicians or other individuals use outlandish information to appeal to their constituents is disheartening.” Rufo’s video has also received a lot of backlash online, with open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander writing that it was “clearly chicken you weirdo. Dude’s never seen chicken that wasn’t dino-nugget shaped.” In a further attempt to verify the video’s claims, CBS News reached out to veterinary experts who cited the image’s poor quality, while another “noted the legs looked ‘weirdly distended’ and in his opinion, did not look like cat legs.” [Twitter/X, 9/16/24, 9/14/24; The Independent, 9/15/24; CBS News, 9/16/24]

Right-wing disinformation purveyor Christopher Rufo posted a video purporting that cats were cooked on a barbecue grill in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton PD, however, shot down Rufo’s rumor-mongering by stating that there is no evidence of cats being grilled in Dayton.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Liz Skalka at HuffPost:

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Joe and Cheryl Backus have plenty of concerns over the influx of immigrants to this central Ohio city. “They’re giving up on our homeless here,” Joe Backus, a retired 80-year-old, said from a loveseat in his living room, referring to the general strain population growth is having on certain sectors of the local government. “They’re ignoring them.” But the spotlight Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio’s own junior U.S. Sen. JD Vance, have put on Springfield and its estimated 60,000 residents hasn’t helped matters — whipping up tensions here to a potentially dangerous degree after the former president baselessly suggested to a live debate audience of 67 million people last week that foreigners here were eating cats and dogs. It’s quickly upended life, leading to bomb threats and general threats of violence that closed schools and government offices.

“I think here in this town, we’re going to have a — well, you wouldn’t call it a civil war — but an uprising,” said Joe Backus, a Democrat who’s in the minority of this red county that went twice for Trump. “Because I think people are going to get tired.” From a recliner across the room, Cheryl Backus, 67, recoiled at the idea of people associating Springfield with the consumption of pets. “Eating the cats and dogs? No, no, no, no, no. We don’t need — no.” The GOP ticket has made this blue-collar city a Midwestern front in the party’s immigration wars, stoking fears about a reign of terror that includes reckless driving and pet-snatching — all as Republicans continue to blame Democrats for a glut of asylum seekers and illegal crossings at the southern border in an election year when Republicans tanked their own border security bill to help Trump.

At the center of it all are people like Steven Pierre, a 32-year-old who emigrated to Springfield from Haiti at age 12. Now he’s a married father of four and works for Amazon. He has a dog, Baba. “It’s sad, because I gotta hear this, and my kids gotta ask questions about it,” said Pierre, who was building a chicken coop in the back of a pristine white home as Baba looked on. “And it’s like, what do I tell them?” “They’re not here to bother anybody,” Pierre said of the Haitians. “They’re here for a goal and to get on with their life. We’re just regular people. We want to be left alone.” Vance, who grew up an hour south of Springfield in a challenged town he popularized in his memoir, acknowledged last week there was no basis for the viral pet smears. But Vance still told his followers to keep sharing the cat memes these rumors helped spawn.

The vice presidential nominee took it a step further Sunday, suggesting he spread the hoax for the greater good of the country. “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,” he said on CNN. Trump also vowed to begin his planned mass deportation of immigrants in Springfield, where the Haitian population is mostly here legally, and claimed to know nothing about the bomb threats he helped stoke. “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened,” Trump said Saturday. The rhetoric is beginning to grate on members of even their own party.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who has a prickly relationship with Trump, went on TV this weekend to decry the drama surrounding Springfield as “unfortunate” and the pet rumors as “garbage.” He praised Springfield’s population of “hard-working” Haitians, who are able to work legally under a special immigration status afforded to immigrants from countries suffering from civil unrest or natural disasters. Springfield’s own GOP mayor, Rob Rue, said he was tired and angry, and wouldn’t reveal whether he’d vote for Trump in November. All the attention has turned Springfield into a tinderbox. Right-leaning content creators are prowling the streets, hunting down evidence of pet-eating for a $5,000 bounty. Elementary and middle schools were closed or evacuated for two consecutive days last week due to threats. City Hall also closed due to security concerns, as several city commissioners found themselves targeted with threats.

[...] After decades of economic decline from factory off-shoring, the legal influx of Haitian immigrants seeking blue-collar work at factories and warehouses in Springfield struck a raw nerve in a community with a significant number of boarded-up buildings and homes, and longtime residents struggling to make ends meet. An estimated 20,000 Haitians have flocked to Springfield since the pandemic, stressing the city’s housing infrastructure, schools and hospitals. “The people who have lived here pay taxes and support Springfield all their life. They cannot get help, because it’s all about [the Haitians],” said Carol Lawson, 65, who lives a block over from Pierre. Lawson, who said she does not work and collects disability, repeated an oft-cited complaint about the Haitians: That they drive nicer cars than everyone else and appear to be the beneficiaries of generous government support — even though Temporary Protected Status, while it affords a pathway to getting a Social Security card and eventual citizenship, does not automatically confer public benefits like food stamps.

Over the last week or so, the residents of Springfield, Ohio have been unwillingly thrusted into the spotlight thanks to JD Vance, Donald Trump, and the right-wing media’s amplification of the false and racist insinuation that Haitian migrants are eating pets.

Tensions have risen in the town as a result of the debunked and unsubstantiated rumor.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alicia Victoria Lozano at NBC:

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday. Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.  Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment. Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would spiral into the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post. 

Other posts have also contributed to the false allegations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose that was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was spread by some online as evidence of the claims about Springfield. Graphic video of a woman who allegedly killed and tried to eat a cat was also found not to have originated in Springfield but in Canton, Ohio, and does not have any connection to the Haitian community. Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield, but that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country and igniting a national frenzy that landed on the presidential debate stage this week. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was born less than an hour away from Springfield, have repeated the baseless allegations. Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

Erika Lee, the Facebook poster from Springfield, Ohio who kicked off the bat guano cat-eating hoax that JD Vance, Donald Trump, and the right-wing media ate up, regretted her role in creating the viral racist anti-Haitian attack.