2 weeks Ago
We’ve seen this xenophobic rodeo before. The blood libel accused Jews of using the blood of Christians in religious rituals, especially in the preparation of Passover bread. On Aug.
27, approximately 70 minutes into a City Commission meeting in Springfield, Ohio, a local resident, Anthony Harris, a self-proclaimed “social media influencer,” asserted as a fact without ready video or photo proof that Haitian migrants “are in the park grabbing up ducks by the neck and cutting their head off and walking off with them and eating them.” The first question that comes to mind in the digital age is “where’s the video or photo?” Further, Mr. Harris did not say the Haitians were present in the United States illegally.
Haitians are black. Would Mr. Harris have commanded even a crumb of credibility if he had accused Danish immigrants of killing and eating ducks? On Sept.
5, a Facebook post by Erika Lee, a member of a Springfield, Ohio, residents group, appeared on X, where she maintained, based on unreliable double hearsay and without video or photo proof: “Warning to all about our beloved pets & those around us!! My neighbor informed me that his daughter's friend lost her cat ...
. One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbors house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it up to eat.” Springfield is a town in Ohio with a population of 58,000.
Since the election of President Joe Biden, approximately 15,000 legal Haitian migrants have moved there. No evidence has surfaced that the migrants have spiked the crime or unemployment rate or overwhelmed public schools, that they are disproportionately on the public dole or draining Springfield’s coffers, or that they have cast even one illegal vote. Then came the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
It would be superfluous to quote the “eating dogs and cats” falsehood of candidate Trump; it has become a social media meme. The xenophobia found further expression in maligning Haitians as savages, penurious and practitioners of voodoo featuring the consumption of ducks and cats as illustrative of their barbarism. The deceit continued to mount online.
One photo was an image of an Ohio Division of Wildlife employee transporting two dead geese down the street after they were killed in a car accident. On Sunday, vice presidential nominee JD Vance said it’s fine for him to “create stories” about Haitian migrants stealing and eating pets — which police in Springfield, Ohio, say were followed by threatening calls and bomb threats. As to a hammer everything looks like a nail, to racist xenophobes all evil looks like an illegal Haitian immigrant.
Republicans, including Donald Trump, have been disseminating AI-generated images depicting the presidential nominee rescuing cats and ducks, as well as anthropomorphic cats and ducks displaying Trump-Vance signs. What next? Allegations of cannibalism? Illegal immigration is a problem. It is not new.
It has been an issue for more than 50 years. There are no simple answers. Most migrants flock to the United States to work and escape from gang murders or rape.
American business welcomes their industry and willingness to work for spartan wages. But it is obtuse to permit migrants who violate the law to jump the queue ahead of migrants who follow the rules and wait year after year for an immigrant visa. Finding an Aristotelian means between too exacting and too lax immigration laws and enforcement is elusive.
But that goal is hampered by blood libel-type epithets coursing through social media without vetting. AI mixed with proliferating Laura Loomer lunacies will aggravate the problem that Mark Twain identified more than a century ago: “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots.” Armstrong Williams lives in Marion and Washington and is manager and owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II broadcast television stations.
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