A false smear about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio killing pets made its way from a fourth-hand Facebook rumor to Donald Trump’s lips during his televised debate with Kamala Harris. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for this claim and local authorities have explicitly denied that it’s true, Republicans have enthusiastically promoted the libel in order to demonize Haitians who are legally living and working in the town. This promotion includes AI generated images of anthropomorphic cats in tactical gear.
We discuss how this false claim spread, the background of recent anti-immigrant sentiment in JD Vance’s home state, a historical example of how American anti-immigrant conspiracy theories inspired deadly violence, and how the current smears are leading to innocent people being threatened right now.
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.SOURCES
Bloody Mondayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Monday
Harper, Leslie Ann. "Lethal Language: The Rhetoric of George Prentice and Louisville’s Bloody Monday." Ohio Valley History 11, no. 3 (2011): 24-43.
The Louisville Journal Thu, Jul 26, 1855https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-courier-journal/47743585/
Orozco, Jessica. County: No evidence of August claim that Haitians took geese at Springfield park, Springfield News-Sun.https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/county-no-evidence-of-august-claim-that-haitians-took-geese-at-springfield-park/NFRGJNURHREGHB32HBC6UKZJWQ/
Jordan, Miriam. How an Ohio town landed in the middle of the immigration debate, The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/us/springfield-ohio-school-bus-crash-haiti-immigrants.html
Thalen, Mikael. Redditor dragged into migrant pet-eating fears thanks to photo of a man with a goose lashes out at JD Vance, The Daily Dot.https://www.dailydot.com/debug/redditor-migrant-pet-eating-fears-goose-photo-jd-vance/
D’Angelo, Alec. The origins of Trump’s Ohio Pets Conspiracy, New Lines Magazine.https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-origins-of-trumps-ohio-pets-conspiracy/Caputo, M.A. ‘Trump blew it’: Cat scratch fever on the debate stage, The Bulwark.https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-blew-it-cat-scratch-fever-on
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, Episode 294, Racist Migrant Voodoo Panic.
As always, we are your hosts, Julian Fields, Liv Aker, and Travis View.
On September 10th, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met for a presidential candidate debate moderated and broadcast by ABC News.
During the debate, Trump said something that may have sounded odd to members of the audience that were not familiar with online right-wing rhetoric.
He claimed falsely that immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio were eating cats and dogs.
And worse than that, Trump said, they weren't just eating stray animals, they were eating people's pets.
In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
And this is what's happening in our country.
They're eating the dogs.
They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets.
Yeah.
It's like a very racist Dr. Seuss poem.
There's no way to satirize this country anymore.
I mean, it is beyond a joke.
So the first thing I feel like I need to get out of the way is that there's no evidence this is true.
And the police department of Springfield issued a statement which explicitly denied that is true.
In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.
God, it's like we really are just... nothing's changed.
Yeah, it's like Der Schirmer level, like absurd racism.
Absolutely the dregs.
But now we have AI to generate pictures of the little imaginary pets that are being eaten by these demonized immigrants who, it's like, what a fucking nightmare.
What a fucking nightmare we live in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So on this episode, I'm going to unpack how this false claim went from a Facebook rumor to millions of television screens via Donald Trump's lips.
But before I do that, I want to acknowledge that part of the function of these falsehoods is to stimulate more discourse about immigration generally.
This is subject matter that the right believes that they have an advantage on.
So they would rather talk about this than other issues like, for example, abortion rights.
No, if they approach issues related to immigration on a purely policy or factual level, then far fewer people would be talking about it.
We wouldn't be talking about it on this episode.
So I guess we're taking the bait.
But, you know, since the bait in this instance is a kind of smear that can lead to mob violence against innocent people, I guess, you know, I don't think I have much of a choice given the general subject matter of this podcast.
Yeah, we lose and also let's go.
Let's do this.
Yeah.
I also want to talk about a significant event in the history of American anti-immigrant rhetoric from the 19th century.
Because while I find like debunkings or like tracing the route of these kinds of rumors, you know, that's valuable.
That also kind of misses the point because people who are saying that Haitian migrants are eating cats aren't really attempting to communicate Factual information as much as they're trying to convey a particular sense of hatred and fear or rejection of the migrants.
There's a long history of conspiracy theories about immigration, which I think help put these kinds of recent events into context.
The charge that immigrants introduce an undesirable criminal element to communities, corrupt elections, and have weird religious beliefs is an enduring trope of American political rhetoric.
You can see this kind of rhetoric in the 19th century with the rise of the Nativist American Party in the 1840s and 1850s.
So they were more popularly known as the Know-Nothing Party because they adopted the practices of a secret society and when asked specifics about the party they said that they know nothing.
That's great.
That's just great.
The tension between the Know Nothings and the immigrants from Ireland and Germany came to a head most violently on an election day.
That was August 6, 1855 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Well, this is just so great because it's nice to go back to a time where everybody agreed that people of color were some sort of inferior, animalistic type of human, but they were so racist that they were, you know, turning on fellow whites.
How quaint.
The people of color in this context being Germans.
Yeah, no, I mean, they all agreed.
Them, the Germans, you know, the Irish, they all agreed.
Oh yeah, no, blacks, but they're so racist that they're actually attacking a level above, even.
And it's great that this sort of politics have come back with J.D.
Vance talking about the negative impact of, like, the Germans and the Irish in American society.
Yeah, no, we need new forms of racism.
Like, we're all agreeing on the basic form of racism, which is immigrants, bad, secure the border.
Now we must graduate to more ancient and refined forms.
Yeah, pre-Civil War racism is what they're reaching for.
On this day, Know Nothings formed mobs which intended to prevent immigrants from voting, including naturalized citizens who had the right to vote.
It ended with an event known as Bloody Monday, widespread riots which killed dozens.
The Know Nothings were convinced that immigrants pose a serious threat to the country and American institutions.
These worries were especially pronounced in Louisville, where foreigners made up 36% of the city's population.
And these foreigners weren't, you know, according to the Know Nothings, good American Protestants.
They were Catholics with uncertain loyalties.
In particular, the Know Nothings were convinced that Catholic immigrants were part of a foreign papal conspiracy to infiltrate America.
Right.
A local newspaper, the Louisville Journal, acted as the voice of the Know Nothing cause.
Louisville Journal editor George T. Prentiss stoked this anti-Catholic sentiment, accusing them of being primarily loyal to the Pope and uniformly voting for the Democrats.
The indefatigable perseverance with which Rome works out her dark schemes and furtherance of papal supremacy indicates with almost unquestionable certainty that the secret influence of that mysterious power that sits enthroned at Rome from whence it sends its mandates to willing subjects scattered all over the world We must refer this unity of political action by foreigners in this country.
We must refer this unity?
Yes, that's the exact phrasing in the quote.
I guess it's maybe some strange 19th century phrasing, but it says we must refer.
It means we must discuss why they're so unified, basically.
The German and the Irish socially hate each other.
They cannot live peaceably in the same neighborhood.
But, if they are Catholics, they always vote alike.
We ask, then, whether it is their nationality, their personal feeling, or their Catholicism that causes them to coalesce at the polls.
The conclusion is irresistible that those otherwise antagonistic interests are united in a common effort to accomplish some purpose that is regarded as essential to the cause of that form of religion which they all profess.
That is an interesting conspiracy theory.
That, like, all the Catholics are going to the same area at the same time to do the same thing.
Like, what are they up to?
They're all voting!
In the same area as the polling booth?
What the hell?
The Journal claimed that the Irish and German immigrants were stocking up on firearms and hiding them in the city's Catholic churches as part of a secret plot to take over the United States.
Prentice exhorted citizens to prepare themselves to defend American democracy.
On election day, members of the Know Nothing Party armed and organized gathered at the city's polling stations before sunrise with the intent to block immigrants from casting their votes.
They distributed yellow tickets to fellow Know Nothings and approved supporters, allowing them easy access to the polls.
The idea is that they had these special tickets and they would put them like in their hats or their lapels to kind of like as a free pass survey out who not to harass in the city streets on election day.
Oh, that's great.
Back when you couldn't rely on just skin color.
To ask someone their opinions about the Pope before you know.
In contrast, many naturalized immigrants and those who just appeared or sounded foreign were stopped and forced to present their naturalization documents.
by Know Nothing members stationed outside of the voting areas.
Some were simply driven away and assaulted.
The widespread unlawful intimidation significantly reduced voter turnout and led to considerable delays in the election process.
So it's just basically like poll watchers.
Yeah, just basic poll watchers.
Just show me your papers and...
And even then it's just they if they didn't didn't seem too foreign, they were sort of pushed away.
Soon a mob of 500 know nothing writers rampage through the city targeting foreigners.
When they reached the German and Irish neighborhoods, they set homes ablaze and vandalized German-owned businesses.
Convinced that the Catholics were stockpiling weapons in the city's two Catholic churches, the mob headed for the Cathedral of the Assumption and St. Martin's Church with plans to burn them down.
The mayor intervened, searching the churches and finding no hidden weapons, which finally caused the mob to disperse.
However, the mayor's intervention came too late to prevent a Catholic priest from being stoned to death.
Jesus.
By mid-afternoon, around 3 or 4 o'clock, a mob armed with muskets and bayonets marched up Main Street, dragging a cannon along with them.
They stormed an establishment called Arm Brewster's Brewery, looting apple and peach brandy before setting the building on fire and killing 10 people.
Those attempting to flee the Irish tenements on an area called Quinn's Row, owned by an Irish-American named Patrick Quinn, were shot.
Patrick Quinn himself was brutally beaten and shot as the mob set homes ablaze.
While the exact death toll is unknown, estimates range between 22 to 100, most of them Irish and German Catholics.
Countless others were injured.
After the smoke cleared, the Louisville Journal blamed the immigrants for instigating the violence.
Though the Know Nothing Party was short-lived, in this instance, they ultimately got their way.
In the aftermath, hundreds of Catholics fled Louisville, never to return.
It's interesting how a lot of this, like the anti-Catholic sentiment in this period, just feels like, you know, like a, I-can't-believe-it's-not-anti-Semitism sort of thing.
Like, it's just, we'll take that and then copy-paste it.
Yeah, you know, there weren't really enough Jews to hate in Louisville.
You had to find someone.
Yeah.
So, I mean, here we have an example of, like, how this kind of paranoia and conspiracy theories about migrants can serve as a pretext for violence.
And, you know, I think it's worth keeping in mind when discussing the most recent rhetoric about Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio.
Right, because this was mainly around the rumor that they had guns in the church, right?
Which was just like completely made up by some insane guy.
Yeah, yeah.
It was based on nothing.
The idea that basically they thought that the Catholic churches were basically satellites of papal interests as part of a grand Catholic conspiracy to take over the country.
Right.
Earlier this month, the New York Times published an interesting investigation into why the town of Springfield, Ohio became so central to immigration discourse right now, and I think that's worth summarizing in order to provide some background.
The story of how Haitians settled in Springfield starts with an effort to revitalize the dying town.
The city started to decline economically after the car factories closed and other industries pulled out.
The population fell from 80,000 in 1960 to 60,000 in 2014.
In that same year, city leaders crafted a plan to start attracting new businesses and started to work in 2017 when a Japanese auto parts manufacturer set up a new plant there.
Several other businesses followed suit, bringing thousands of jobs.
But that led to the problem of how to fill them.
There weren't enough local residents interested in those positions.
Haitians who are in the country legally with work permits heard about this town with a lot of good-paying entry-level jobs and a low cost of living, and so they started pouring into Springfield to fill those positions.
In just a few years, 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants moved into this community of about 60,000.
This breathed new life into the once dying town but also put pressure on some local resources.
Medical facilities and schools had to hire Creole-Haitian translators to accommodate patients and students who didn't speak English well, which strained their budgets.
The rapid increase in population also led to a housing crisis that increased the price of rent.
Now, you could chalk that up to the kind of growing pains that any rapidly expanding town might experience, but people did not.
Bubbling tensions overflowed after a school bus crash caused by a Haitian immigrant veering into the wrong lane killed 11-year-old Aiden Clark on August 22nd of last year.
Another 20 students were injured.
Police officers found no evidence of drug or alcohol consumption involved in the accident, but Joseph was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and could serve nine years in prison.
This incident inflamed the suspicions of longtime residents who crowded city commission meetings and spoke of the Haitian population in terms of an invasion.
The Haitians were accused, without evidence, of being responsible for drug trafficking, retail theft, and disease.
Among those who spoke at a City Commission meeting was Drake R. Behrens, the second-in-command of the neo-Nazi organization Blood Tribe.
On August 7th, members of Blood Tribe marched around Springfield while carrying guns and black flags bearing a white swastika.
We are the ones who do automobile manslaughter.
If anybody, if we even have one tiny funny little anecdotal story of any immigrant doing anything accidentally, not accidentally, wrong in our society.
We will use this as an excuse to run a little pogrom.
And this is normal.
This is normal behavior.
This is just how America works.
We're doing great.
During an August 26th city commission meeting, Behrens was removed from the hearing after stating that Haitians brought, quote, crime and savagery to the city.
And this local issue was turned into a national issue when it was highlighted by programs like Fox and Friends.
And it was, of course, a talking point for the senator from Ohio, Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance.
Vance.
Which leads us to today, where Haitian migrants are being targeted with false smears about eating cats and geese plucked from a park.
The false claims about these threats to pets started as a post in a Facebook group dedicated to local crime in Springfield.
Which is always, like, the most, like, fascist.
Yeah, these are the most insane.
I mean, Next Door, all these apps, Sicko Mode.
Absolute fucking demented people on that shit.
Like, if the Fourth Reich happens in America, these Facebook groups are just going to be the ones where it's like, you know, like, I saw my neighbor listening to, like, media privately that was, like, anti-white.
Then the Gestapo comes in.
Yeah, no, it's amazing.
It's a private capitalist version of, you know, turning in your neighbor for lack of dedication to the revolution.
You know, it's everything that they think.
Like, the Soviet reign did wrong, but, like, recreated organically out of free will and individualism.
It's so cool.
Yeah.
Because they need that level of force to maintain their quote-unquote way of life.
They're like, that's fine, that's actually the most free you can be.
It's like, I see a black person in my neighborhood and I make a post about it.
Yeah.
Because, oh, what's going on there?
They shouldn't be allowed to be in my neighborhood.
Listen, I don't want to kill them myself, but I'd love to get them killed.
Yeah.
I'm just talking.
So this Facebook post, which was first amplified on Twitter by the account EndWokeness, claimed that the author's neighbor's daughter's friend said it happened to her cat.
I shit you not.
Spaceballs.
Exactly.
This is like fourth hand Facebook rumor.
This is how this got kicked off.
Warning to all about our beloved pets and those around us.
My neighbor informed me that her daughter's friend had lost her cat.
She checked pages, kennels, asked around, etc.
One day she came home from work.
As soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbor's house where Haitians live, and saw her cat hanging from a branch like you'd do a deer for butchering.
And they were carving it up to eat.
I've been told they are doing this to dogs.
They have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese, as I was told that last bit by rangers and police.
Please keep a close eye on these animals.
One of the interesting things here, too, is, like, they're eating ducks.
Like, what savages?
Like, how could you eat a d... It's like, I don't... People do that.
Like, I don't... There's a really weird line people draw, a very arbitrary line between, like, pigs, which it's, like, very nonchalant, couchable, fine to eat, which are, like, very intelligent, social animals, and then animals that are, like, generally are pets.
When my husband Jed brings back a deer and he does field dressing in the backyard, that's fine.
But these people are doing it to ducks in the park.
The claim was further spread on Charlie Kirk's podcast, who added the detail that local ponds were being picked clean of ducks.
Now, Kirk, when he's talking about, well, telling the story, he made sure to make very liberal use of the word allegedly.
I'd love to take a cheese grater and just... You know what's... yeah.
You all know.
You don't need me to... I don't need to get beat.
You can just fill in the blanks.
Here he is.
Allegedly, Haitians are going around and taking people's pets.
and eating them.
The duck pond in a local park is being picked clean.
So, allegedly, you have Haitians in this town of Springfield, Ohio that are going by and eating ducks.
Mmm, I'd like to take a nice heavy monkey wrench and, well, you know.
Fix his plumbing.
Yeah.
No.
I'd like to take care of this problem.
Okay, no evidence as of this recording that this is the case.
No fucking shit!
Why do Americans need this shit fucking debunked?
You fucking racist idiots!
I hate you!
Sorry.
In that same segment, shortly after he said this, Kirk dropped the alleged lease to claim that the presence of the Haitian migrants is part of a high-level plot to kill and replace longtime residents.
This is essentially the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, which has already motivated multiple mass shootings.
They started with the ducks, but soon they're going to eat us.
Every time an American dies at the hands of an illegal immigrant, they're spiking the football in the Oval Office and in the Kamala Harris re-election campaign.
One step closer to the Great Replacement.
Oh, my man is just saying it.
They're just saying it outright.
It's the Great Replacement.
They're absolutely just fascist.
And, oh God.
Oh, the things.
I'm speechless.
My mind is filled to the brim with violence.
As this baseless claim of cat eating started to circulate, people started promoting the story of 27-year-old Alexis Tellia Farrell.
So, this is a woman who was charged with cruelty to animals and other charges when, according to the Canton Police Department, on August 11th, she stomped on a cat's head and ate it, quote, in a residential area in front of multiple people.
Now, Farrell has had multiple encounters with the law.
Her convictions include possession of drugs, theft, endangering children, and receiving stolen property.
This is her first animal abuse case.
Authorities told the outlet TMZ that she may suffer from mental health issues, which is unsurprising.
No shit.
So, a very strange story, but the woman in question, not as The suspect in this case is not a Haitian immigrant.
She is a lifelong Canton resident.
Yes, but I think we need to get to the bottom of this because is she black?
which is a 170-mile drive from Springfield.
The spokesperson for the police department said this.
The suspect in this case is not a Haitian immigrant.
She is a lifelong Canton resident.
Yes, but I think we need to get to the bottom of this because is she black?
That's what I want to know.
So no substance to that at all, the idea that Haitians are eating cats, But this was paired with the claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating geese.
Now, you make a good point, Liv.
Like, killing and eating geese itself is not strange behavior.
Every year, about 15,000 Ohio hunters attempt to bag waterfowl.
Yes, but they do it widely.
When I googled the phrase Goose Farm Ohio, I even found a few places where one could purchase a live goose if they were so inclined.
But I assume the accusation against these hypothetical Haitian goose hunters is that they kill these geese outside of hunting season or without a permit or at the Snyder Park, which is, you know, a public park for families and like not a hunting ground.
And they therefore would be guilty of misdemeanor poaching.
In Ohio, intentionally killing migratory geese is punishable by up to a $250 fine or 30 days in jail per bird.
I think there's an idea that like these animals are kind of like white property and that like it's annoying, it's like not allowed when a non-white person kills them or a non-American person.
It's like there were scandals in Australia about specifically like Indonesian factory farmers.
Doing animal abuse, but not the factory farm abuse happening in Australia.
It's like, oh, like that's like it's a white white property for us to slaughter.
They're not allowed to do it.
Like when we do it, we do it in a civilized, controlled way in a factory farm that's industrial.
But when they do it, it's because of some revealing some like animal animality or like cruelty inherent in them.
Yeah.
Again, the real problem here is that there's no evidence that any Haitian illegally killed and ate even a single goose.
Right.
No, of course not.
Not to mention the fact that Haiti is a wreck because ranging back to the beginning of the 1900s, American interventionism was rampant.
They did multiple fucking coups.
They killed the president.
I mean, I hate, I hate this.
I hate it all.
Yeah.
Now, some people tried to bolster the claim of this goose poaching by pointing to a phone call made to the Clark County Police Department from a man who claimed that he saw four Haitians with geese.
And this is part of that call, which was released by the online conservative magazine, The Federalist.
I'm riding on the trail going to my orientation for my job today and I see a group of Haitian people.
There was about four of them.
They all had geese in their hand.
They got away.
I couldn't make out the first three on the license plate, but I got the numbers.
The last number was 9-8-9-8, and it was a gray Toyota Tacoma that took off on.
There was about four of them.
There was two men, two women, I couldn't tell the age because I'm in a hurry going to this orientation, so I don't want to be late.
He's calling like he saw them fucking kill someone.
Like it was like a hit and run and he knows the license plate.
Well, I mean, I mean, the first thing that actually jumps out to me is that the caller didn't even claim that he witnessed this people kill the geese that they allegedly possessed.
And as far as I'm aware, it's not illegal to simply have geese.
So at no point did this caller actually describe anyone doing anything illegal.
But put that aside, but there's also the issue that the caller somehow was able to clock the nationality of these individuals while hurrying to a work event in his vehicle and his sight of them, he caught sight of, it was so brief that he didn't even have time to note the entire license plate number.
Okay, but have you considered that I pressed down on the right side of the controller, and it did a little scan of the area, and then a little pop-up happened above the head of these people, and it said, Haitian immigrant.
And as such, I knew that in the game, I was allowed to get in the bushes and whistle, and when the Haitian immigrant comes towards the bushes, I stealth kill.
I do a takedown.
I went into my vats, and it activated.
I slowed down time, and that's how I got 98-98.
And then, of course, there's the main large issue, which is that no one has been able to substantiate the claim.
Clark County Commissioner Sasha Rittenhouse said during a regular meeting that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources was unable to find any merit to the claim.
No videos have surfaced, no pictures have surfaced, no dead geese have surfaced.
There's nothing to substantiate that it's happening.
Well, people continue to attempt to bolster their claims that this is happening despite that by posting a photograph of a man walking down the street with a dead goose in his right hand.
Some people who posted this photo even claimed falsely that the photo was taken in Springfield.
Mike Phelan at the Daily Dot tracked down the source of this photo.
It was originally posted on the Columbus subreddit by a Reddit user, isitmeyourlookingfor4x, and it was posted back on July 28th with the caption, the things you see while driving in Columbus.
But again, one issue with the photo is that it was taken in Columbus, which is 50 miles from Springfield, and there's no evidence at all that the person in this photograph is somehow connected to Haiti, and there's no evidence that the person in the photograph actually killed the goose.
This is a photo of a man blackly carrying geese.
You're missing the point, Travis.
The person who captured and posted this original photo told the Daily Dot this.
I think it's awful that right-wingers, including Ohio's Republican senator, will take a random picture from the internet and use it as a weapon to further their agenda.
The garbage they are spreading has been completely debunked, yet they continue to spread it.
So, like all the evidence that people have attempted to marshal in favor of the idea that Haitian migrants are killing and eating cats and geese is dog shit, it's just based on nothing.
Despite that, the online right proceeded to riff off of these smears by creating AI-generated images of Donald Trump with cats and geese, implying that Donald Trump will protect cats and geese from these invaders.
One of these images was posted by Donald Trump Jr.
It's an AI-generated image of Trump riding on the back of a large cat while holding a rifle and surrounded by kittens.
It's weird, like, he looks tiny.
Like, the AI didn't know whether to shrink Trump or to make the cat big, so it kind of did both.
Yeah, he's looking like a Funko Pop.
He looks like a Funko Pop Trump.
It's so grim.
That genuinely, like, modern-day dishjerma is just AI-generated.
Like, they don't even get, like, a comically racist, like, cartoonist to do the drawings.
It's like, chatGBT, give me racism.
Man, I wish them all nothing but the worst.
There was another posted by Trump himself on his platform, Truth Social, and this AI-generated photo shows a uniformed anthropomorphic cat holding a rifle and wearing a MAGA hat.
Yeah.
It's an operator.
It's an operator cab.
Looks like a scoped up version of an M4.
Obviously AI generated, so not correct.
And the hat, the ears appear to be somehow coming out the side of the hat.
Does not make sense.
It's all happening on X. It's all happening through Grok.
You know, it's like it is very strange because the thing about these photos is that they simultaneously are designed to be, you know, like menacing and threatening.
They're very frequently show people with like weapons, but there's also designed to be very cutesy and joking.
They have kittens in them.
So there's able to like obviously ride that line between a violent threat against migrants and like a jokey cutesy cat meme.
Yeah, uwu cutesy fascism.
Like, this is what we're protecting with incredible violence.
It's like my small hecking pupperinos.
It's like soy right stuff.
They're incredibly soy.
They're complaining about how they're going after all the cute hecking doggos.
It's pathetic.
Like, this is the thing that's undergirding the justification for the insane, unimaginable violence built into your system.
I mean, I guess, look, Killer was a dog person, so it's history repeating itself.
Yeah.
And then there's also a certain irony to, who is the potential Trump VP pick?
The lady who just openly killed her dog?
It was just like, yeah, he was misbehaving, so we just fucking put him down.
The dog, it was fine.
Yeah, what's a cat turd like backed up over his own dog killing it?
And then he posted like, if Kamala wins, like, you know, you guys, we're gonna have to protect our pets.
It's like from, from you.
Yeah, they don't even like that.
They're like posturing about pretending to think that the dogrinos are epic and cute.
Like they don't even like nothing.
They're like, yeah, we'll kill them if we want to.
But it's we get to kill them.
We appreciate how cute and epic they are.
But then when we're bored of the cats, we kill them.
It's not the other people.
I know my heart was in a good place when I backed up over my dog.
They backed up over the dog in a bad way that's rude, but I did it.
I was allowed to because it's my property.
It was my dog.
I did it with love.
They're taking our geese with their hearts full of hate.
But of course, you know, the facts of the matter don't really matter.
You know, when people start to spread these kinds of claims, like I said, they're just expressing an anti-immigrant sentiment or just outright racism that's like unconnected to any particular fact about reality itself.
And sometimes they even say this openly.
One tweet, which got over 10,000 retweets, expressed this idea this way.
They can say, technically, the lady who ate a cat on camera in Ohio wasn't a Haitian migrant.
They can say there are, quote, no police reports of missing pets in Springfield, Ohio.
They can say the photo of the guy carrying the goose by its neck, quote, wasn't a migrant and was in Columbus.
They can debunk it all.
Go ahead.
Call us racist bigots.
We're spreading misinformation.
Because none of that even matters.
It was never about the damn cat.
Yeah, no shit.
Yeah, of course.
We know, dude.
You're so smart.
They can say technically that I am no longer with my wife.
They can say officially that she has legal custody of the kids.
Yeah.
It's not about that.
It's about being irrationally, absurdly racist.
Yeah.
There's no, we know.
Go ahead.
Call us racist bigots.
We don't care.
We're going to be that and we're going to be proud.
We just know, we know, we know that the foreign other has infiltrated our ranks.
Vance has also, like, basically addressed the fact that there's no real substance to these claims.
He opened this tweet this way before, like, listing grievances related to immigration.
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.
Good.
That's good that you know that at least, you know, that's... But the fact that I thought it was real says a lot about society.
It does, because this stuff is kind of happening.
Not really, but like, you know, in a way, in a certain way that could get me an election.
One, maybe.
I always think of that Donnie O'Sullivan clip where he's like, some Trump supporter showing him a video of like Biden falling asleep during a meeting and like Donnie debunks it and he's like, but like it could have been true.
You know, like the way that it seems to depict some part of reality that I agree with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like this is how, honestly, a lot of people approach truth claims.
You know, it's just, it's really about expressing a kind of sentiment about how they feel about the world rather than any kind of the product of any kind of like rigorous epistemological analysis.
Even very smart people, a lot of the times, will look at a fact that agrees with their preconceived beliefs and spend a lot less effort checking whether it's true, as opposed to one that challenges them.
Yeah, there's a recent study, I'm going to bring it up in a future episode, that talked about how fact checkers are actually the least Well-liked kind of journalist, least trusted because they are responsible for essentially rude, sort of like throwing a wrench in a person's worldview, ruining people's fun, kind of like, you know, almost kind of rude, like correcting someone is very disagreeable behavior.
So as a consequence, they're not very well-liked.
Because the facts make my feelings feel good.
They're making me feel bad.
Well, even if I'm wrong, why are you going out of your way to point out that I'm just a jerk or something?
So this J.D.
Vance tweet went on to reference the fatal car crash and issues related to health care facilities and schools.
Vance then said this in the follow up tweet.
In short, don't let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots.
Keep the cat memes flowing.
It's so fucking soy.
Keep the hecking doggerinos going.
Upvotes to the left.
I mean, what's amazing to me is I think that Trump, he has kind of the bullshitter's gift of being able to absolutely embody and believe whatever claim is coming out of his mouth at any given moment.
So this is why it's always hard to figure out whether or not he's actually lying or he has a false idea in his head.
He has this, I don't know, it's a trait that good salespeople have.
The ability to say a thing that's beneficial to you, irrespective of truth or falsity, with perfect conviction.
Like when he was talking about, you know, in Springfield, they're eating dogs, they're eating cats.
He may have got himself to believe it in that moment, regardless of what is true.
But J.D.
Vance is different.
So J.D.
Vance, you know, he graduated from Yale Law School, where I assume they teach people how to make a distinction between what's verifiably true and what isn't.
So he is like 100% aware that there's nothing that could substantiate these claims.
I'm sure it's true that his office is getting calls about these kinds of things, but he knows that like, well, there's nothing I've received that could back up these claims, but he doesn't care.
This is why he's speaking to his audience.
He's saying, like, don't let anyone, like, shame you into not spreading these cat memes just because there's no actual evidence of any Haitian migrant killing any cat.
Just do it anyway, because it expresses this feeling that, you know, that is sort of beneficial to his campaign about the migrants.
Which is also why he's sauceless, is it's clear in the writing that he knows it's not true.
Like, if you want to look through it, you're able to see that he, like, is not, in that sense, a true believer.
He can't really get behind it.
So if you ask him to, like, really confidently repeat the lie, he's like, oh, well, you know, I mean, I guess there's maybe some reports, but, like, we don't know for sure, but, like, you know.
Which is, like, not... If you want to lead the base, you have to, like, repeat the lies with your chest completely.
Yeah, you have to be like Trump.
They're eating the pets.
You, sir, aren't even a believer.
I mean, yeah, it's pathetic.
This is an interesting problem with J.D.
Vance.
His appeal is supposed to be that he came from humble origins and is the author of the Hillbilly Elegy.
This is something that's supposed to teach well-to-do liberals what life in Appalachia is like.
But at the same time, he's ultimately a little too well-educated, you know, he's a little too well-connected, you know, with being funded and associated with, like, you know, Peter Thiel and stuff.
And so he doesn't quite have, honestly, the common touch that Trump has, even though Trump himself was born into wealth and, like, has never known, like, real hardship ever.
Yeah, it seems like in Vance's experiences with that, like he has contempt for these people.
He's like, they're fucking idiots and they'll believe this stupid wrong thing and it'll be to my advantage.
Trump is all in.
You know, I thought it was interesting.
I was like, I read this article in the Bulwark, which talked about how Trump's campaign advisors had like a plan of like how Trump Donald Trump had a plan for Tuesday night's presidential debate.
but Trump wasn't able to execute it.
And I'm just going to have Julian read this here.
Donald Trump had a plan for Tuesday night's presidential debate.
But then the cat, neither abducted nor consumed, got his tongue and talking points.
If the moderators hit him for spreading a baseless urban legend about Haitian immigrants eating cats in the small city of Springfield, Ohio, the ex-president was supposed to execute a classic rope-a-dope strategy.
He would dodge the punch and place the blame for the story on town locals.
Then he'd pivot to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris and the media over the toll of rampant immigration on housing, healthcare, and crime in Springfield.
It was all strategized in advance.
There was just one problem.
It required Trump to execute it.
But when the topic of immigration came up, the former president got sidetracked by taking umbrage with Harris' insistence that he had uninspiring rallies.
He then mentioned the possibility of World War III.
Only after that did he launch into the rumors of pet eating, and then without preparing viewers about the backstory.
The entire episode ended up being less of a rope-a-dope and more a dope who had hanged himself with some rope.
Okay, what the fuck is this writing?
Jesus Christ, guys.
This is, we're fucked.
We're fucked.
And Trump's team knew it.
Privately, Trump confidence sensed that the ex-president had missed a real opportunity.
Quote, the former president was supposed to pivot, but Trump blew it.
Side one campaign insider who had been told of the never-executed debate tactic, quote, he was supposed to make her own the Biden record.
That didn't really happen.
He can't help it.
He's like, he's like old man who sees something on the news and gets mad about it.
He couldn't, he's in that mode.
There's no, there's no 5G chess here.
No, and there doesn't really need to be.
We're in a state where this man is playing 5D chess.
He, he, this is, this, this may well work.
That's where we're at.
It was pretty disastrous, right?
Like most people, I mean, who knows how much the debates actually have an effect, but I think Kamala did like the best in like exit polls or whatever about the debate of like any Democrat in any modern debate.
Like, I mean, if, if, if debates do matter, then he definitely fucked it up.
Oh yeah, definitely.
I mean, it's hilarious to see people be like, oh man, he was really ganged up on this time.
And I mean, it's so crazy because what it does is it offers this opportunity for a Democratic party that couldn't be less left at this point.
A truly Republican, hard on crime, you know, take care of the borders, border issues, support Israel, all of these awful policies.
I mean, these are ruthless Republicans in anybody's book.
And yet they're allowed to come out looking sensible because the other guy is screaming about eating pets.
I mean, there couldn't be a better design for the Republican Party as an ideology to take over everything, that there no longer be even any semblance of contrast.
And it's the choice, the classic centrist choice of, hey, it's us or fascism.
It's us or the guy saying that immigrants are eating your pets.
That is the same thing that we saw in France with Macron.
He wanted that to be the choice, and he called the snap election.
And then, of course, the left took the lead in terms of representation, and he refused to name a prime minister that was from the left, which would have been the normal thing to do.
Instead, he named a guy who believed there should be no immigration.
Because that's what they want to do, is they want to stand next to the insane right-wing person so that they can find a quote-unquote sensible policy between what they're presenting and them.
And the result is that we're constantly sliding right into a more and more totalitarian police state, into, you know, kind of like arms deals and forever wars.
They just don't want anyone on stage.
They don't want anyone in the conversation that has any kind of actual, like, kind of moral anchor.
Because otherwise you would see how far we've come.
How far we've drifted.
Absolutely despicable stuff.
I hated to watch it.
But yeah, like, the Dem response to the Trump line about Haitians eating pets is like, oh, you know, that's crazy.
That's kooky.
That's weird.
They shouldn't be coming here as well.
You know, I agree.
Yeah, they're bad, obviously.
But not because they're eating pets, you know?
Certainly not.
Yeah.
And like, let's be clear, like, I am not soft on immigrant crime, which is just seeding.
It's like you're totally seeding all of the ground.
Like, forget it.
We're fucked.
We're absolutely cooked, you know?
So, yeah, it's really, it's really, it's really fucking sad to watch.
The Dem position is, leave it to the state to ruin these people's lives.
Like, let's not do pogroms of, like, citizens.
It should be the government that comes and deports them.
Fantastic stuff.
I mean, there are some articles as well that have been released since you covered this, Travis, about how Haitian families are, you know, already being harassed and afraid to send their kids to school.
Some are moving away because it's just Feels too dangerous at this point.
There's, you know, open white supremacist, like rallies and, and stuff like that in the area to, to protest, uh, you know, the idea that these people are living there.
Uh, very ugly stuff.
There were, there was also some bomb threats, uh, as reported by ABC news, multiple buildings in Springfield, Ohio received, um, bomb threats.
Uh, so, you know, this is, it's already just so great.
Like we just.
We just have these, these people in charge willing to, you know, basically incite a stochastic pogrom to win their election.
So, and, um, I, I don't know.
I just don't, I just don't find it enough just to laugh and be like, this guy, look at this crazy guy talking about pets.
Like we need to be, we need to be realistic about how we got here as well.
You know, how this conversation ended up having one side of it being they're eating pets.
Like that's, that's a conversation that we're currently having right now.
And, uh.
To help it all, we had Marianne Williamson step in and offer her cool take on this.
Liv, could you read the tweet?
I like to think she's saying that it is real.
of the quote eating cats issue will create blowback on November 5th.
Haitian voodoo is in fact real.
I like to think she's saying that it is real.
Like it's like you can't hex people.
Yeah, I think she does believe that.
Yeah, actually you're right.
You're right.
I think that's actually true.
And to dismiss this story out of hand rather than listen to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio confirms in the minds of many voters the stereotype of Democrats as smug elite jerks who think they're too smart to listen to anyone outside their own silo.
Oh, thank you very much, you fucking idiot.
Thank you for contributing this to the conversation.
Also for putting a period between Springfield and Ohio.
Like you can't even, you boomer ass idiot.
You fucking new age fascist.
I hate, I hate her so much.
Again, this is, yeah, I love this idea that it's like, well, it was like, well, geez, could you like substantiate this wild claim you're making about these people?
And then the, your actions like, oh my God, you out of touch elitists do not understand people from this town to even question my the things I'm saying proves that you are you know don't deserve to even be involved in this conversation.
I don't know I feel like I feel like I'm allowed to like ask what is the basis for the wild things you're saying that I don't think that's out of bounds.
We need to amplify rural voices.
Also just stating Haitian voodoo is in fact real.
Yeah.
No fucking footnotes.
No fucking further elaboration.
Thank you.
Yeah.
What do you mean by like real?
It's like, are you just like basically saying like, no, these people do have very strange, foreign, exotic religious practices and their right to be afraid.
The locals, the longtime residents are right to be afraid.
Is this, is this what she's saying?
I have no fucking clue.
Honestly, I imagine it's like, Haitian voodoo is real and that's fine, and they should be allowed to practice their weird voodoo ritual sacrifice religion.
But you know.
Honestly, I think that's her position.
And there should be concerns.
There should be concerns because as much as they should have the religious freedom to practice their Haitian voodoo, it shouldn't be right to get someone else's pet.
You should be doing it on animals you purchase legally.
We need to talk about this.
We need a dialogue from both sides about voodoo and pet owners.
I think that's her position.
Yeah, perhaps we could get the guy who called in and claimed that people were Haitian on site, that he could detect both nationality and race on site as he's on his way to something else.
We could get him at the table with like a voodoo priest and just have like a good two-sided debate about like beliefs, you know?
You can't just dismiss this out of hand.
God, I hope a crystal falls on her head and fucking shits her.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, this whole, I mean, this is, this is just really, really ugly stuff.
And I, you know, I'm not going to say it's going to get worse, but I'm going to hope it doesn't.
I'll guess I'll say that.
It's going to get worse.
This country is irredeemably racist.
We roundly rejected the idea that black lives even mattered.
Like, we have responded.
The country has spoken, Travis, and we are going back in time to ancient racism.
We are digging through all of the racism archives and the anti-Semitic archives, and we're supporting Israel against these feral terrorists, the Palestinian people.
We are bombing people into oblivion.
We are accusing local immigrants of eating our pets, and it's going to get worse.
Okay.
Yeah, this is a good time for you to maybe bring back your catchphrase.
Remember what that was?
What was it, Travis?
Say it, Travis.
Rhyme.
It's not ideal.
There we go!
The whole classroom points and claps.
Oh, man.
That's great.
Well, what an amazing episode.
It gives me true hope.
Someone said this on Twitter.
I can't remember who, but it was like, who could have predicted the October surprise would be pogroms?
Fuck.
I mean, I guess historians and stuff.
Yeah.
Dismal stuff.
Dismal, dismal stuff.
Grim stuff.
Yeah, truly, truly fucking grim, man.
There's no two ways about it, folks.
And the For You page on Twitter continues to be this kind of level of discourse for me.
It's like people straight up saying, like, blacks be like this and say, like, just crazy racist shit.
Or behind all of this is, and just posting the happy merchant meme.
So yeah.
Just like pro-Hitler stuff.
Yeah, pro-Hitler stuff.
It's good.
It's exactly what Elon Musk wanted, right?
It's a town square that makes him feel like he is a normal part of, you know, polite society as they delve into, like, the deepest recesses of the darkest forms of racism.
I mean, man, it just makes you fucking wish you could go back to Reconstruction and do things a little differently.
Yeah.
I'm gonna become fucking Bane over this shit.
Anyways, don't give up hope folks head to the polls.
Pokemon go to the polls We don't mean to be depressing either I mean, you know, it's just difficult covering this stuff sometimes mentally physically spiritually but Nothing can't be fixed.
You know, you can fix it by going to patreon.com slash QAA And for five bucks a month, clean your conscience, become a virtuous person, consume the right form of content by subscribing to our podcast and getting a second episode for every main one.
We're making Liv choke.
I'm dying.
And cough and die.
That's why you also need to save her life by going to liveagar.com and following all of the instructions.
Put up my newsletter.
You will follow the instructions.
Read the newsletter.
And for everything else, we've got a website, QApodcast.com.
Listener, until next week, may the pure white park geese bless you and keep you.
And we miss you.
We miss you so much, Jake.
Please come back.
We know you have COVID and we're praying for you.
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I.
I did a small post about this before, but people, you gotta understand, this Haitian stuff, they are not only taking the animals for food.
A lot of this stuff goes into Haitian Voodoo.
Haitian Voodoo is some of the strongest stuff you're going to find out there.
And it is absolutely terrifying stuff.
I'm not even going to talk about everything that I've found out.
I have a good friend who practices Haitian Voodoo.
He's a bokor, which means a dark priest, which means he basically works with one hand that serves the devil.
And that stuff, I'm telling you, look into it a little bit.
Look into the levels of animal sacrifice that go on in Haitian Voodoo.
It's a whole nother level of stuff that we don't know about.
It's a religion in Haiti.
They serve the Loa.
And the Loa are what they call gods.
And if the Loa commands them to get an animal and sacrifice it to them, you know that they are going to get that animal.
It can be a goat.
It can be a dog.
It can be a calf.
It can be a whole bunch of fucking animals.
But let me explain it to you.
And I won't even get into it all because I know Plenty of it, but I don't want to talk about it because I don't frankly want that heat.
I don't want those curses coming my way.
But this Haitian Voodoo stuff, the things they will sacrifice, y'all don't understand.
This is not something that we are familiar with in the United States of America.
This is not something that is practiced here.
There are very few Haitian Bokors in the United States of America.
Very few.
I think there's only like There's very few, okay?
And that's for a reason.
Because the way that they do things, you can't particularly do in the United States of America.
So when you hear all this, oh, they're eating the cats in Springfield.
Oh, if all they were doing was eating the cats?
That would be one level of scary.
This is another level of scary.
This is a level of scary that the mind, the American mind, without actually understanding this stuff can comprehend.
Look up Haitian voodoo animal sacrifice.
Look up Haitian voodoo bokor.
Spell it V-O-D-O-U.
And I don't want to be the one talking about it because I don't want that stuff.
I don't want that heat at me.
I got spiritual protection all day with Saint Benedict on my neck, but I don't even want to fuck with that community.
All I'm saying is just understand that these animal things is deeper than y'all think.
