Republican vice-presidential candidate J. Divan Vance, having finally resolved his dilemma regarding which doughnut he should order, has moved on to amplifying odious bullshit about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, which, for the moment anyway, has replaced Aurora, Colorado, as the center of fraudulent conservative ooga booga about the otherwise difficult-to-discern alleged migrant takeover of the United States. The latest rube bait concerns a completely made-up allegation that the members of Springfield’s Haitian community have taken to eating household pets. From The Hill:
Vance added a reference to a now-debunked social media post. “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he wrote. Those reports are largely based on social media postings that were picked up by national figures including Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk over the weekend.
And may I just say...weird.
(It was also picked up by Tailgunner Ted Cruz, who posted a “funny” meme on this topic to Xwitter, another landmark on his accelerating slide into becoming the kindergartner with whom nobody plays.)
This is the kind of lie that is as old as xenophobia itself. Jewish immigrants will steal Christian babies and poison the wells in Memphis with yellow fever. The Irish in Boston are simian drunkards whose convents hold lewd and lascivious rituals. (Burn them!) The Germans in Milwaukee were prima facie disloyal. And that’s not even to mention the many lies told about native-born Black people down through the centuries, and the perpetual notion that the actual Indigenous people of the continent were “savages.” But it’s still grimly fascinating to study what people in this country actually will believe in service of their prejudices. Lord, as a Texas poet once said, you’d have thought there’s less fools in this world.
