“These kind of anti-Black propaganda narratives that the ‘savages are coming to destroy and eat your family’ are really part of the same playbook that goes back hundreds of years. They try to create division and hate and get the political power that is up for grabs. It’s really heartbreaking and tragic.” — Erik Crew of the Haitian Bridge Alliance
It was a stunning moment, even by the standards of the MAGA era.
Outrageous, inflammatory lies about immigrants of color to incite rage among his aggrieved supporters have been Donald Trump’s stock-in-trade for nearly a decade.
But even seasoned debate watchers were taken aback Tuesday night to hear his panicked bellow, “They’re eating the dogs! … They’re eating the cats!”
The day before the debate, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, amplified a false smear about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s pets. He has also misrepresented a tragic school bus accident as “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.” Trump’s unhinged rant during the debate triggered an outpouring of mocking internet memes and jokes.
But for the immigrants who bear the brunt, these vicious lies and racist stereotypes are no laughing matter. Trump and Vance have unleashed a firestorm of racial hatred and violent threats. Two days after the debate, bomb threats forced the evacuation of Springfield City Hall, two schools and a state motor vehicle facility.
Politicians have long sought to dehumanize and demonize minority cultures via their real or imagined culinary customs. Presidential candidate Grover Cleveland printed trading cards for his 1888 campaign that depicted Chinese immigrants eating rats. Just this week, “pro-white nationalism,” Trump ally Laura Loomer targeted his opponent’s south Asian heritage with a social media post referencing curry.
The influx of 12,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants, most of whom are in the United States legally, has strained schools and other services in Springfield, a city of about 60,000. Racial tensions were further strained after tragic accident involving a Haitian driver last August claimed the life of an 11-year-old boy. Vance further fanned the flames of racial hatred by mischaracterizing the accident as a murder “by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.” The driver, like most Haitian immigrants, holds temporary protected status and was in the United States legally.
In amplifying malicious racist lies and stereotypes, Vance and Trump have aligned themselves with Nazi sympathizers, some of them armed, who waved swastika flags as they marched in Springfield last month. The hateful display evoked the fatal 2017 “Unite the Right” rally by white supremacists whom Trump referenced as “very fine people.”
The anti-immigrant “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that motivated the Unite the Right marchers also inspired the slaughter of 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, and 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022.
The deaths of dozens of innocent people have not deterred Vance and Trump from continuing to smear immigrants with racist lies. As Kathleen Belew, a historian of white supremacist movements, wrote on social media, “The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they’re doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time.”
Morial is president/CEO of the National Urban League.