More than a week ago, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance’s staff was told by Springfield officials that a racially charged rumor Vance had been amplifying was false, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Despite a wave of death and bomb threats directed at the community, Vance, a U.S. senator representing the city, hasn’t backed off.
Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has said that he’s trying to highlight what he claims are failures by his political opponents to enforce immigration laws. But the multitude of falsehoods about Black immigrants told by Vance and his running mate, former President Donald Trump, have an ugly history and could fuel racist violence, an expert said.
“Spreading these racist lies on a national stage has seriously disrupted civic life in the Springfield community,” said Lindsay Schubiner, program director of Western States Strategies, a nonpartisan advocacy group which seeks to counter white nationalist and paramilitary organizations, among other aims. “It’s not surprising to hear that (Vance) knew these stories were false and continued to spread them with enormously dangerous consequences.”
A Vance staffer didn’t respond Wednesday when asked whether the senator was concerned about the consequences of knowingly repeating false statements about Springfield.
On Sept. 9, after Vance had already promoted claims that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating neighbors’ pets as well as poaching local wildlife, a Vance staffer called Springfield City Hall to ask if there was any truth to the rumors.
“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” City Manager Bryan Heck told The Wall Street Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
The following morning, Vance, undeterred, again fanned the flames.
“In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants,” he posted on X at 9:58 a.m. “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Six minutes later, he followed up.
“In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots,” the man who would be second in line to the presidency wrote. “Keep the cat memes flowing.”
During that evening’s presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris taunted Trump by saying that during many of his rallies, the audience starts to stream out long before he finishes speaking. Trump took the bait and went on a disjointed tirade that ended with him echoing Vance’s false claims.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
A barrage of threats started the next morning — death threats against Springfield city officials and at least 36 bomb threats so far against schools, government buildings and health care facilities.
Some of them explicitly cited the presence of so many Haitians in the community. Racist fliers, which were attributed to a Kentucky Ku Klux Klan group, also have been circulated, per multiple media reports.
Racist lies about immigrants eating pets are not new. Forbes on Sunday reported that 40 years ago, it was Asian refugees who were blamed for supposedly eating dogs. A neo Nazi group pushed the latest version involving Haitians in Springfield before Trump did.
Despite the threats, over the days following the debate, Trump, Vance and Ohio Republicans such as Attorney General Dave Yost and U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno continued to promote the rumors.
And amid the threats — and amid Springfield Republican Mayor Rob Rue’s plea for elected officials to stop repeating debunked conspiracy theories — Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted made a joke about the situation.
In April, Trump called undocumented immigrants “animals.” On Friday, he said he’d deport the Haitians who are in Springfield.
Despite what Trump said, the vast majority of the Haitians in Springfield are there legally. Even so, Moreno echoed the call for deportation.
All the rhetoric is scaring people of Haitian descent around the country, the New York Times reported Friday. Painting Haitian immigrants as pet-eating monsters recalls earlier Trump falsehoods, such as when in 2017, he told White House staff that Haitians “all have AIDS,” the story said.
In addition to eating pets, Vance also has been claiming that Haitians brought disease to Springfield. But the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that according to the Clark County Health Department, cases of infectious disease are at their lowest point in nearly a decade.
Such targeting of a minority group has contributed to several racist massacres in the United States.
“J.D. Vance has elevated racist conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants with no basis in fact,” Schubiner of Western States Strategies said. “This is a tactic we see anti-democracy actors use again and again: bigoted fear mongering to build political power.”
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