GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeated an ugly conspiracy theory this week with a claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Vance then encouraged his supporters to repeat these disgusting lies and to join him in dehumanizing legal immigrants.
Both Vance and idiot billionaire Elon Musk amplified false claims first made on Facebook about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets and animals from local parks. In addition, Vance accused the immigrants of “generally causing chaos” all over the small midwestern city and blamed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Vance posted
a claim on Musk’s social media platform that “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. “ It’s safe to say that anyone who has lost a pet does not
respond by calling their senator. And it’s a bit strange that the claim is
never that their pets had gone missing, but that their neighbor’s pets were lost.
Local police and city officials made it clear that the claims made by Vance and Musk were absolutely false. The police department expressed regret that “people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear.”
But rather than apologizing for his gross mistake, Vance is continuing to make things worse. Vance elaborated on his claims of pet consumption by insisting that Haitian immigrants were responsible for spreading diseases, that local schools were being ruined because immigrants didn’t speak English, and that immigrants had overwhelmed local health care systems. He also claimed that a Haitian immigrant was responsible for the unspecified murder of a child.
What Vance is saying about legal immigrants in Ohio is pure racism. And it’s the worst kind of racism. It’s meant to not just draw a line between a group of people and others who share their community, it’s meant to present immigrants as “other,” as lesser, as violent uncivilized outsiders with unacceptable customs. It’s meant to make them seem dangerous. And it’s meant to make people angry.
it’s no coincidence that this came on the same day that Trump was bragging that his mass deportation of immigrants would become a “bloody story.” In that speech, Trump falsely claimed that most immigrants were violent criminals and spread lies that they had “taken over” parts of Colorado. Trump also continued to claim that immigrants were causing a crime wave in the country, which is explicitly false. These claims, aimed at generating outrage among an overwhelmingly white base, are the heart of the Trump-Vance campaign.
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