Trump is not targeting Haitians for nothing

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say, and just like English, Haitian Kreyòl is rich in proverbs and idioms about our four-legged friends. The one I’ve been thinking about this month, as Donald Trump and his toady JD Vance have weaponized horrific disinformation against the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, translates as: “If you want to kill a dog, tell him it has rabies.”

The idea goes some way to explaining the Republicans’ strategy this election season: if you want to deport innocents en masse, which they are doing, say those innocents wanted to be out of reach of civilization. Claim that they spread contagious diseases, take away jobs and benefits meant for legitimate residents, drive down wages, and generally push our small towns across the US into poverty and shame. Call them illegal aliens invading the country, casting fraudulent ballots and poisoning the blood. When all that doesn’t work, they say they can’t tell pets from food.

None of this is true, of course. The vast majority of Haitians in Springfield, whose numbers range from 12,000 to 15,000, are there legally. They have fled political violence and state collapse that, ironically, is at least partly the result of American interference and undermining of their own democracy. The United States intervened in the crucial 2010 elections after the Haiti earthquake, virtually handing the presidency to Michel Martelly; and then looked away as he and his clique in the Parti Haitien Tet Kale (PHTK) spent the next decade looting the treasuries and arming gangs to crush those who objected. In April 2024, the US sanctioned Martelly for facilitating drug trafficking and sponsoring gangs.

In Ohio, Haitians work, pay rent and file taxes. According to local reports, most arrived over the past three years as beneficiaries of President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole programs, and predictably, the city has experienced growing pains and strained social services.

However, claims that Haitians eat pets have been thoroughly debunked. The 35-year-old Springfield resident who started the rumor on Facebook has said she regretted lying and tried to retract it, but it was too late. The cat was not eaten but was already out of the bag.

It turns out that when it comes to Haiti and/or migration, facts are often irrelevant. Vance, who has leveled slander after slander against Springfield’s Haitians, tried to “create stories” about immigrants on national television to draw attention to “the suffering of the American people.” What a hero, willing to torture the truth for such a noble cause! Too bad his fiction, along with his boss’s, did that causes suffering in Springfield. The parents of an 11-year-old who died last year in a car crash involving a Haitian driver have seen their child’s death politicized in a way they find reprehensible and intolerable. “Don’t twist this into hate,” the child’s father pleaded during a city commission meeting on the Republican-created mess.

Since the Republican ticket spread these lies, bomb threats and shooting threats have closed schools, universities, supermarkets and hospitals. A “beloved” annual cultural festival in the city was canceled “in light of recent threats and security concerns.” A local debate for county and state offices ahead of the November elections – also canceled. It’s as if the entire city has been numbed and their private information exposed to abuse by America’s worst trolls. Speaking of doxxed, on September 16 the editor-in-chief of the Haitian times – a venerable immigrant newspaper based in the US – was “struck” when someone falsely reported a murder in her home, sending a half-dozen armed police officers to her door. This is likely in retaliation for covering the threats and intimidation that Haitians in Ohio have experienced in the wake of the Republican smears.

Moreover, Trump is threatening to visit the besieged city in the coming weeks, something Mayor Rob Rue would very much like not to do. At a rally on September 18, Trump managed to cram four lies — about the number, legal status and growth rate of Springfield’s Haitian population, and about the city’s crime rate — into just 25 words.

It’s not Haitian migrants who threaten Springfield or American democracy. It’s the Republican-led, lie-filled uproar over Haitians.

The misinformation about the pets is disgusting, but perhaps even more dangerous is Republicans’ repeated assertion of the falsehood that the Haitians in Springfield are “illegal.” They lay the rhetorical foundation for a mass deportation of immigrants. According to the latest polls, 54 percent of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Many Americans do not realize that many recent arrivals to the United States have full permission to stay here under humanitarian protection programs. And that’s just the way Trump and Vance like it.

The residents of Springfield know better. On September 19, Vivek Ramaswamy – the similarly run Trump surrogate and perhaps the smartest man in America – convened a town hall in the besieged city, along with the far-right organization Moms for Liberty. One participant, who identified herself as a Trump voter, noted, “Most, if not almost, all of the immigrants here are here legally, so the idea of ​​deporting them all and everything will be fine is not rooted in reality. ” The implicit question that followed: why is Trump threatening (or promising, depending on where you stand) to deport them?

Mass deportations of illegal immigrants would be economically disastrous for the US, experts say. Deporting people who have received Temporary Protected Status or Humanitarian Parole, or who are seeking asylum, would be even more disastrous – and also illegal. If you want to circumvent a law, say the law is unconscionable. The Republicans’ goal is to delegitimize immigrants, in rhetoric if not in reality. Again, reality is not what counts here. “If Kamala Harris illegally waves the magic wand and says these people are now here legally, I still call them an illegal alien,” Vance said at a rally in Raleigh, NC, on September 18.

Mass deportations are irrelevant for the time being. The point is to make Americans salivate over the idea of ​​mass deportations – to stoke fear, anger and dispossession and turn them into votes. Solidarity through sadism.

Last week I was asked why Trump is fixated on Haiti. Racism is part of the answer — more specifically, Trump’s decades-long willingness to capitalize on latent racism for personal gain. Trump is said to have discriminated against black tenants in his properties in the 1970s; pulled out a full-page ad calling for the lynching of innocent black teenagers, the Central Park Five, in 1989; and in the 2010s, lies were leveled against the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama.

But Trump also seems to have a particular obsession with Haiti, at the top of his list of “shithole countries,” and with Haitians, at the top of the list of deportees. Why?

My suspicion is that Haiti is a lazy fanatic’s punchline. It doesn’t take imagination or intellect to bully Haiti; and in fact, the less an American knows about Haiti, the easier it is to make a bogeyman out of it. For more than 200 years, Haiti has served the US as an inexhaustible symbol, a screen onto which we project our fears and insecurities. It has given us our ultimate Other – and has done so since the birth of the two countries, only thirty years apart. The first and second republics in the Western Hemisphere – the United States and Haiti – are like siblings separated or estranged at birth. Slave owner Thomas Jefferson was US president when Haiti’s first leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, abolished slavery and declared all Haitians black, regardless of skin color. The United States would not abolish slavery for another sixty years. “Haiti is black and we have never forgiven Haiti for being black,” said Frederick Douglass in 1893, and often this is still true.

But today’s anti-Haitian dog whistle has frequencies that go beyond racism. It has a lot to do with the fear of American decline – economic, democratic and spiritual – and the search for an easy culprit. “We are now at the stage where we are being put down and called racist, not only in the newspaper but also to our faces during city committee meetings,” said one woman at the Ramaswamy meeting, who felt smeared by her resistance against Haitian migrants in Springveld.

And yet the dog whistle seems to resonate louder outside Springfield, far from real Haitians, than inside the city. There are certainly tensions in Springfield, but there is also an outpouring of support for Haitians: peace rallies, vigil singing, donations. A local law firm has helped a national organization, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, file criminal charges against Trump and Vance for their role in the chaos. And since September 10, when the lie about Haitians’ dietary habits became popular, lines at the Rose Goute Creole restaurant in Springfield have reportedly been halfway out the door.