So, a few days ago I finished a video about the idiotic rightwing lie that the Hells Angels were going to Aurora, Colorado to fight a Venezuelan street gang. Sorry I just need a moment to accept that that’s a sentence a person can say in the year of our lord 2024. When I finished it, I decided I had no desire to address the various other rightwing lies about immigrants currently floating around. And then this happened.
Look, on the one hand, this is great. If you didn’t watch the US presidential debate, Kamala Harris successfully baited Trump into a giant meltdown, which resulted in this explosion. For people who are not terminally online, this looks completely batshit. Surveys the next day showed that this tactic worked very well, and most people agreed that Harris won the debate and Trump is a raving lunatic.
On the other hand, a former US president just stood on a stage in front of 60 million viewers and shouted Nazi propaganda. And it’s still a close race.
From the moment the lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio hit social media, everyone who works in the area of radicalization and hate groups immediately recognized it as a Nazi talking point. The classic BIG LIE used by bigots to stir up hatred against a marginalized group is blood libel, which is the idea that Jewish people ritually murder Christian children to take their blood and use it to make matzos for Passover. There have been many variations on this throughout the past two millennia, but the gist is always that the Jewish people are evil, predatory, savage, and even subhuman, and most importantly a dangerous threat to civilized society. That’s why it’s so powerful and has directly led to the persecution of Jews throughout history.
That’s why the experts immediately clocked this new lie as a Nazi invention: a persecuted group, in this case Haitian immigrants, are said to be so evil, predatory, savage, and subhuman as to come to our wholesome towns and EAT OUR BELOVED PETS. They are clearly a dangerous threat that must be countered, huh?
While I agreed with the experts that this was obviously a Nazi talking point, I didn’t realize at first quite how right they were. I knew that the lie started because of an upsetting video of police body cam footage, showing a woman experiencing a serious mental breakdown and trying to eat a cat. The woman was not Haitian, not a recent immigrant (or possibly even an immigrant at all), and not in Springfield, Ohio.
So how did that video end up being used as “proof” that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are eating people’s pets? Hold on to your monocle: a Nazi started it.
Just a few weeks ago, a man spoke at the Springfield City Commission meeting. Here’s what he had to say.
Now, the journalist who posted that said he’s Nathaniel Higgers from “Blood Pride,” which isn’t quite right. First of all, that’s not his real name, that’s an anti-Black slur that stupid bigots think is clever. His real name is Drake R. Berentz, a well known white supremacist who is the 2nd in command of a neo-Nazi group called Blood TRIBE. He was with them when they marched through Nashville, Tennessee back in February of this year, where he appeared on camera assaulting someone. Anti-fascists have fully cataloged everything this disgusting chud has done, including taking note of his Nazi hand tattoos, so he’s pretty easy to recognize.
So yeah, this lie was actually dreamt up and spread by literal Nazis, before Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance picked up the story and posted it to his Nazi-adjacent fans on Xitter, where it racked up more than a hundred thousand likes. After the town of Springfield went on the record to say the entire thing was a dangerous lie, Vance posted an even more disgusting follow-up:
“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 possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.
Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”
He goes on, but I want to pause here, because this is another lie that was also repeated by Donald Trump at the debate with Harris. And somehow it manages to actually be even worse than the pet-eating lie, and until I read that I didn’t think that was even possible. Here’s why: not only does this lie also stoke hatred against Haitian immigrants, but it does so by exploiting a dead child and his grieving family.
In 2023, a man accidentally crashed his car into a school bus, tipping it over. Many children were injured and one, 11-year old Aiden Clark, was killed. The man responsible was a Haitian immigrant, and the incident is largely what kicked off a heated debate over Springfield’s policies on welcoming immigrants to save a dying industry town.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to not only lose a child, but to then be thrust into the middle of a political debate and to see your son used by bigots to further a hateful agenda. So I can’t describe it, but Aiden’s dad, who is actually named Nathan, gave this incredible speech about it.
Friends, I SOBBED the first time I watched that. I should admit that it hits a bit close to home, as I lost a kid I used to babysit when a drunk driver hit his school bus. But even without that connection, you’d have to be a monster to use this tragedy for scoring political points in a debate, much less for using it to sow fear and hatred against a group of marginalized people who are trying to make a better life for themselves against tremendous odds.
So yeah, you know, I laughed during the debate when Trump went on his unhinged rant about immigrants eating cats and dogs, but I can’t laugh about it anymore. The man in serious contention to once again become the President of the United States just mindlessly repeated TWO actual Nazi lies on the world stage. We have a moral obligation to make sure these disgusting losers never gain power again.
