Springfield, Ohio, Gets Bomb Threats Trump's Fake Made-Up Pet-Eating Story Demanded
A great day for stochastic terrorism.
The latest completely invented rightwing panic over nothing at all — in this case, the outrageous racist lie claiming that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — is following a fairly predictable course toward potential violence, in this case, bomb threats. Springfield city officials in on Thursday evacuated City Hall and closed it for the rest of the day, also closing several other city buildings, including an elementary school.
The city announced the closures in a post on Facebook, saying they were in response to a bomb threat sent by email at 8:24 a.m., and that the email was “sent to multiple agencies and media outlets.”
Reuters reports that Mayor Rob Rue “told local media the threat came from someone who claimed to be a local resident and mentioned frustration with immigration.” So far, no information on a possible suspect, if there even is one, has been released.
It’s not likely the bomb threats will lead to any reduction in fearmongering in rightwing media or from Donald Trump and his human butt-hair sockpuppet, JD Vance, because they never called on anyone to threaten the city or its legal Haitian community of about 15,000, now did they? Trump continued to post funny memes Thursday about how if you don’t vote for him, Haitians will eat your pets, ha ha.
Dayton TV station WDTN reported that Fulton Elementary School was shut down and that “staff transported the students to Springfield High School.” The report notes that “District officials did not specify a threat to the school, but said they made the decision based on ‘information received from the State Fire Marshal.’” If you’re an America-loving patriot who wants to keep white people safe from scary Haitian immigrants, what better way than to terrorize little kids and their families?
In an interview with the New York Times (gift link), Mayor Rue confirmed that the threats were a “hateful response to immigration in our town” and said that the “negative response and threats are very sad and hard to handle.” The Times underlined the fact that most of the Haitians who have come to Springfield “are in the United States legally and many have filled jobs in local industry.”
The Haitians have filled jobs in manufacturing, distribution and other sectors and been welcomed by many employers. But the volume and pace of arrivals has put pressure on housing, health care and schools in the city, which is between Columbus and Dayton and had nearly 60,000 residents in 2020, according to census figures that year.
Estimates of the number of Haitians who have arrived range from 12,000 to 20,000.
“We can’t deny that adding 25 to 30 percent to our population in a three-year period would overwhelm services,” Mr. Rue said.
What the city isn’t seeing is any epidemic of pet-snatching. The mayor rued the response from national Republicans, which hasn’t helped with the city’s real challenges at all, telling the Times, “It’s frustrating when national politicians, on the national stage, mischaracterize what is actually going on and misrepresent our community.”
As far as actual help for something real goes, the Times notes that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine this week announced that
the state would provide Springfield with $2.5 million to ease strains on primary health care, and would deploy members of the state highway patrol to improve road safety. The mayor said that he was still hoping to receive federal assistance.
But then, none of that is as sensational as racist tropes that inspire terrible people to make violent threats, so what good is it?
The Times also provides a depressing update on the far-right reaction to Nathan Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who died in a school bus crash caused by a Haitian immigrant, who this week condemned Vance and others who have exploited his son’s death to win political points with racists. When the story of Clark’s speech to the City Council spread in rightwing media, racist creeps seized on the line where he said it would have been better if the bus crash that killed his son had been caused “by a 60-year-old white man” because if that had been the case, “the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”
That prompted one such hate-spewing group, the “National Justice Party,” to post on Telegram that “These parents should be executed.” You know, because these creeps care so much about the boy’s death.
In the meantime, as NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor reported yesterday, Haitians in Springfield are definitely feeling threatened by the sudden national attention, because they are actual human beings, not AI-generated cartoons.
Viles Dorsainvil, the president of the nonprofit Haitian Community Help and Support Center, told Alcindor that the rightwing hate frenzy has many Haitians in the community “scared for their lives,” which probably made some terrible people say “good.” Several of the people Alcidor spoke to did so only if they were not named or shown on camera, as if they were political dissidents in a dictatorship facing deadly consequences for speaking out.
And in an update on how the pet-stealing rumor originated, Reuters did some very basic reporting to make clear exactly what a vaporous story it is, not that anyone spreading the lies will be ashamed for treating them as real:
The rumor appears to have first surfaced in social media posts that said immigrants were eating missing household pets. The author of the post, Erika Lee, told Reuters she wrote it after hearing from a neighbor.
That neighbor, Kimberly Newton, told Reuters she had heard it from a friend, who heard it from another friend, who heard it from an acquaintance. It was unclear whether that person had witnessed the alleged incident directly.
And that, plus the outrage over the poor kid who dies in a school bus crash, is the foundation of an entire political party’s current racist panic campaign, which was amplified by a literal neo-Nazi before it caught fire on social media and was eventually spread by the Republican nominees for president and vice president.
We are reminded of what Saint Molly Ivins once wrote of Jesse Helms, that consummate practitioner of hatemongering: “That poisonous old hate sow, suckling all the little hate pigs — if ignorance is bliss, that man must be ecstatic.”
If we’re really lucky, the hate fever will burn itself out before the threats turn into actual assaults or murders, but our great country doesn’t exactly have a stellar record in that area.
UPDATE: Spectrum News Ohio is reporting that the Springfield City School District closed two more elementary schools today (Friday) and is arranging for the children to be picked up at a safe location by their parents, and that one middle school closed before the school day began, per city police. So yes, the patriots are doing a great job again.
PREVIOUSLY.
[Reuters / WaPo (gift link) / NYT (gift link) NBC News / WCMH-TV / Mother Jones / Medium]
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Updated with a note on three additional Springfield school closures due to threats. Two elementary schools closed early and the kids will be reunited with their parents at a separate safe location, and a middle school didn't open at all.
Don't rush to judgement and blame Trumpers for the ongoing threats. It was probably antifa, right? Or PETA.
Holy shit our country is stupid.
Kids are being massacred at school basically every day but the best we can do is thoughts and prayers.
Trump tells a lie about pets being eaten and suddenly there are bomb threats?