Washington, DC — In a remarkable set of interviews over the weekend, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) admitted that his Party and campaign “created” stories about immigrants stealing and eating family pets as a way of getting the news media to focus on immigrants. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention…then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash.
As America’s Voice has demonstrated for years, the downstream consequences of such falsehoods that demonize and dehumanize immigrants is violence, and recent events in Ohio are proving us right. Unchecked disinformation and violent political rhetoric against ethnic groups in America have a long and ugly history in this country and around the world that just reared its ugly head again. Black people and Haitians have often been the target of lies and fear-mongering, but our history recounts numerous chapters where such rhetoric and the resulting violence has been pointed at Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, Jews, Catholics, and many others.
This weekend, the Haitian-American community in Springfield, OH and around the country continued to reel from the dehumanizing, debunked and racist conspiracies that remain the focus of Donald Trump and allies. Rob Rue, the Republican Mayor of Springfield, Ohio, had this to say:
“Any political leader that takes the national stage and has the national spotlight needs to understand the gravity of the words that they have … we’ve had bomb threats … because the national stage is swirling this up. Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control … We have a big-hearted community, and we’re being smeared in a way we don’t deserve.”
Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine added, during an interview with ABC:
“Look, there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all…There are hate groups coming into Springfield. We don’t need these hate groups. I saw a piece of literature yesterday that the mayor told me about from purportedly the KKK…This idea that we have hate groups coming in, this discussion just has to stop. We need to focus on moving forward and not dogs and cats being eaten. It’s just ridiculous.”
Unfortunately, the smears and lies keep spiraling and the larger political climate continues to feature violence and threats of violence.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The political moment we are in is spinning out of control as a result of elected officials and candidates who are deliberately elevating lies and inciting fears and grievances. The predictable outcome is political violence. After Charlottesville, after El Paso, after the Tree of Life shooting, after Buffalo, and yes, after Butler, Pennsylvania, we should all have a national consensus that rhetoric that stokes violence, fuels division, and sows fear needs to be excised from our politics.
Yet it keeps spiraling in the opposite direction. The hate fueled-rhetoric once again led to potential violence against Donald Trump. Thankfully, the man with an automatic weapon was apprehended by a Secret Service detail. But Trump is using the incident to further the threat of political violence, telling his supporters that ‘the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!’
That is no solace to the Haitian families in Springfield, Ohio and beyond who are still the target of violence by people who should know better.
The people in Ohio and elsewhere remain threatened and living in fear. Just this weekend, they had to watch the Proud Boys march in their town, to hear Donald Trump threaten to deport Haitians to Venezuela despite their legal immigration status and had to listen to J.D. Vance – their Senator – openly admit on national television that he and his allies are fabricating conspiracies to keep the focus on immigration issues they believe help the campaign. They feel they have to keep up the rhetoric and lies in order to justify their extreme and violent policies at the heart of the campaign. Rallying people to the proposed mass roundup and mass detention and deportation of millions that Trump predicts will be ‘bloody’ requires a fever pitch of outrage, even if the stories used to manufacture that outrage are fictional. (For more, read this deep-dive in HuffPost highlighted Trump and Stephen Miller’s plans for “mass deportation camps,” including chilling new details for a potential second Trump term).
The majority of Americans who reject this dark and violent vision and who want a brand of politics that doesn’t rely on lies or court violence must come together to denounce this and chart a new and responsible course that moves the country forward together.”
