(Cont’d)
“…
One of the first prominent right-wing influencers to interact with the theme retweeted a post Saturday afternoon linking the claim to Vice President Kamala Harris’s supposed policies. Soon a second influencer, Andrew Torba, a Christian nationalist who is the founder and CEO of the far-right social network Gab, posted the link to the Springfield Facebook post. Other influencers began posting about it Sunday, and the first influencer retweeted a post by an account whose social media feed is full of racial slurs. By Monday afternoon before the debate, some 159 right-wing influencers — and 23 Republican politicians, candidates or party officials — had discussed the meme online.
The allegation that Haitians in Springfield were killing waterfowl was spread by the conservative Federalist website, which on Tuesday published a report from the Clark County sheriff’s office showing that a local resident told a police dispatcher in a call that he had witnessed four Haitian migrants, each carrying a goose.
… Long before messages circulated on social media, Springfield city manager Bryan Heck wrote a letter to Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and
Tim Scott (R.-S.C.). “Springfield, Ohio is facing a significant housing crisis in our community,” Heck wrote, an issue he attributed to what he said was an influx of up to 20,000 Haitians into “a community of just under 60,000 previous residents.” [JD Vance was copied on the letter]
… Republican elected officials at the highest levels of government embraced the memes. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)
posted his version, as did Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), and Arizona’s conservative firebrand and Senate candidate Kari Lake.
… Over the summer, the white-supremacist neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe marched through Springfield carrying swastika flags to protest the Haitian population in town. A member of that group attended a city meeting in late August to warn that “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in,” he said.
…
But on Tuesday evening, just hours before the debate, Nathan Clark, the father of the 11-year-old boy whose death last summer heightened anti-immigrant tensions in Springfield, approached the podium at another city meeting to deliver a very different message.
“I wish that my son Aidan Clark was killed by a 60-year-old White man,” he said, noting how “blunt” his words must seem.
“If that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.” Clark, a Democrat, added that “the last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further.”
… Asked for details about the concerns of Vance’s Ohio constituents that the senator had cited, his spokesperson Luke Schroeder responded with a statement demanding Harris apologize for border policies that he said were responsible for the deaths of innocent people.
… Seemingly overnight, the same forums that days ago were preoccupied with an imagined Venezuelan takeover of Colorado shifted to fearmongering about Haitians in Ohio. In these forums, the racism is overt, such as memes of Trump in a suit
carrying kittens to safety while being pursued by a mob of shirtless Black men.
… The debunked claims about Haitian refugees aren’t “just nonsense,” Belew warned: “The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they’re doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time.”
There were panics about refugees eating rats in the 1980s. These were quickly followed by hate crimes against refugees, spearheaded by white power activists but employing local communities incited by that rhetoric, she said.
… By Tuesday, the Arizona GOP had erected billboards around the Phoenix area: “EAT LESS KITTENS. Vote Republican!”“