Why Can't We All Just Get Along? What If There Were No Trumps? No JD Vances? No Traitor Greenes?

Yesterday, when Lydia Polgreen wrote about her family arriving to Minnesota from Kenya when she was in grade school, she noted that her classmates’ cruelty succeeded in making her “feel like an alien, an unwelcome stranger.” Things have only gotten worse for immigrants since them and of course, she wasn’t surprised when Señor T “repeated a vile, baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio. This allegation appears to stem from viral social media posts and statements at public meetings. It was picked up by some of the most rancid figures at the fringe of the MAGA-verse, then quickly hopscotched from there to a social media post by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and finally to the debate stage, sputtered by Trump himself. There is a temptation to treat this as yet another Trump rant, a disgusting lie about immigrants like the ones he uttered as he began his presidential bid in 2015, describing migrants crossing the border with Mexico as rapists and criminals. He’s done it time and again since. He is the master of exaggerated and fabricated claims against the boogeymen, a skill he has used for decades to polarize public opinion and raise his profile and power at the expense of others. But there is something particularly insidious about this claim, uttered at this time, from that stage. Food and pets are, to use a Freudian term, highly overdetermined symbols in our political life. They are capable of receiving and holding a multiplicity of very potent meanings, transmitting deep messages about identity and belonging... [I]t cannot be an accident that these resonances have been fused in an allegation against Haitians, a people who have long stood in for a kind of universal other in America— a completely racialized symbol of dark, chaotic forces that must be held at bay by the forces of white civilization.”

When the first colonists arrived in North America from England, they initially tended to welcome new arrivals, as the additional numbers strengthened their colonies economically and militarily. However, xenophobia and hostility toward outsiders emerged relatively quickly— based on fear of the unknown, cultural or religious differences and competition for resources. Leaving aside the genocidal approach to the indigenous population, who weren’t regarded as human, the first tensions in the English colonies began to arise with the arrival of large numbers of Dutch, Germans, French and Irish immigrants, some of it based on anti-Catholic sentiment. Religious-based xenophobia was certainly a thing among the Puritans in Massachusetts who were intolerant of Quakers, Catholics and others who didn’t align with their strict religious views, leading to persecution and the expulsion of dissenters, and contributing to the establishment of more religiously tolerant colonies like Rhode Island.

This contradiction between the Christian values of love, hospitality and compassion explicitly preached by Jesus, and the cruelty of xenophobia and exclusion reveals something very ugly and primitive about human nature, like fear of “the other,” a sense of sectarian-based entitlement, moral justification and even "spiritual superiority" that allowed them to rationalize harsh treatment of people who didn’t share their beliefs, viewing them as obstacles to their “divine mission,” and plain ole social divisions based on ethnicity, nationality and class. The colonists carried with them the prejudices of their homelands, and religion was often used as a cultural marker to define who was “in” and who was “out.” 

Long before Señor T showed up on his “golden” escalator, colonial leaders used religion as a tool to maintain control by framing “the other” as dangerous and sinful, thereby uniting their own communities under a common, albeit hate-based, banner. Trump understood that this divisiveness allowed them to create a sense of unity and order while pushing out those who threatened their rule. In colonial times, religion, then, became intertwined with maintaining political power at the expense of Jesus’ more compassionate teachings.

Christian colonists had a tendency to simply develop a blind eye to the systems of oppression they were creating or benefiting from, something that happens when people are born into or come to accept the societal norms around them. For many colonists, the racial and cultural hierarchies they were building seemed “natural.” More often than not, economic motivations overrode religious values. The drive for land and resources (wealth) justified dehumanizing others, seeing them, for example, as instruments of labor rather than fellow humans. Slaveholders, for instance, distorted biblical teachings to support the idea that some people were naturally meant to serve others, twisting scripture to justify their actions, part of the larger legacy of European colonization, which blended religion with conquest and control.

One group heavily stigmatized in the 1800s were German immigrants, especially by the 1840s when large numbers of Germans began immigrating to the U.S. because of political instability in Europe and economic hardship. German immigrants tended to settle in the Midwest and Northeast, creating tight-knit communities where they spoke German, maintained cultural practices and often formed their own schools, churches and social clubs. On top of religious tensions— many of the German immigrants were Catholics—this preservation of their culture caused anxiety, confusion and bigotry among native-born Americans who viewed it as a refusal to assimilate. Pre-MAGA nativist groups— the Know-Nothing Party— viewed Catholicism as a threat to American Protestant values. Germans, along with Irish Catholics, were stigmatized and accused of being loyal to the Pope rather than the U.S.

And, predictably, as German immigrants arrived in large numbers, they took up jobs and land in the growing industrial and agricultural sectors. This led to economic competition with native-born Americans, fueling resentment.

Friedrich Trumpanzee, the grandfather, experienced some of the anti-German sentiment and prejudice, moved to Canada, back to Bavaria and, eventually, alas, back to the U.S. It’s interesting to note that the Trumpanzee family took steps to distance themselves from their German origins. For a time, the Donald’s father, Fred, and then theDonald himself would claim that the family was of Swedish descent. His grandfather’s experience with prejudice didn’t make either Fred Trump (a KKK supporter) or the Donald more compassionate or less bigoted; quite the contrary in fact.

The other day I happened to pass by a TV when someone on MSNBC was interviewing former Ohio Governor Jon Kasich about the Vance-Trump pet-eating scandal. He went beyond denouncing them and their xenophobia to talk about how Ohio worked to encourage immigration to keep the state economically viable. Like many states, Ohio has faced economic shifts in recent decades, due to the decline of traditional manufacturing industries. As domestic manufacturing industries have declined, Ohio has needed to diversify its economy and immigrants have played a key role in the transition, filling both high- and low-skilled labor shortages, many industries, particularly agriculture, construction, tech, healthcare and the service sector, reliant on immigrant labor.

As Señor T should have noted from his own family history— but didn’t— immigrants are more likely to start businesses than native-born citizens and this entrepreneurial spirit has revitalized urban and rural communities in Ohio, contributing to local economies by creating jobs and bringing new vitality to areas that were stagnating.

Remember, Ohio, like many parts of the Rust Belt, has experienced population loss and aging demographics as young people moved away to states with better economic opportunities. Many cities in Ohio, such as Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Lima, Canton, Youngstown and— drumroll— Springfield, have seen declining populations. Immigrants help offset this population decline and contribute to the tax base, which is critical for sustaining local services and infrastructure. Cities, including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Springfield have actively sought to attract immigrants as a way to revitalize neighborhoods that had been hollowed out by deindustrialization. Immigrant communities often reinvest in housing, local businesses and schools, helping to stabilize areas that have falled into economic and social decline. In some rural parts of Ohio, immigrants have been encouraged to move into small towns that were experiencing severe depopulation, helping to stabilize local economies and schools. Without new residents, many of these communities would face— have faced— closure of schools, hospitals and businesses.

Political leaders, including Republicans if not MAGA bigots like Vance, have worked to create policies that encourage international students studying at top schools like Ohio State, the University of Cincinnati and Case Western Reserve University, to stay in Ohio after completing their studies, seen as crucial for Ohio’s long-term economic competitiveness, particularly in sectors like tech and healthcare, where a shortage of skilled labor has hampered growth.

Ohio’s business community, lobbies political leaders to support pro-immigration policies and Ohio has invested in programs to help immigrants integrate into the workforce. Other than the racist MAGAts like Vance, political leaders, across party lines, have often collaborated with business associations to create training programs that help immigrants acquire the skills needed in the state’s industries.

And from coked up neuroscientist Donald Trumpanzee, Jr, a wealth of new information. “Jr. suggested on Thursday that Haitian immigrants were less intelligent than people from other countries, and claimed that there was demographic evidence to back this up. He provided none. ‘You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average I.Q.— if you import the third world into your country, you’re going to become the third world,’ Trump said in an interview with [neo-Nazi] Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, a conservative broadcasting network. ‘That’s just basic. It’s not racist. It’s just fact.’ Claims inherently linking race, nationality and intelligence have long played a role in scientific racism, which uses pseudoscience to try to justify false claims of racial inferiority or superiority. And intelligence quotient testing, a commonly used measure of intelligence, has long been criticized as unreliable.”

Yesterday, reporting from Springfield, Stephen Starr noted that before Vance (and Trump) came along to exploit that ugly racist lies about Haitians, aa MAGA-like Nazi group, Blood Tribe, had already been propagating the baseless claims last month. That there is no basis to the lie “hasn’t prevented Republican party politicians from scapegoating Springfield’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants as Trump and others attempt to propel immigration to the center of their fall political campaigns. In addition to Tuesday’s debate, Trump held a news conference Friday in which he rambled without evidence about how Haitians had descended on Springfield ‘and destroyed the place.’”

When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

“They came to us for one reason: they were looking for ways to find out how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter, said of those who came to the Ohio city from Haiti.

“So we got together immigration lawyers and interpreters to figure out how to help them work. We are getting them online and getting them to apply [for work permits]. We wanted workers here [in Springfield]— they want to work.”

Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables— where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce— and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents. A popular Haitian radio station has been broadcasting for several years. And every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day that’s celebrated at a local park.

But the glut of new arrivals has also stretched hospitals and schools in the area, angering many locals who resented their presence. The outrage reached a crescendo last August, when an 11-year-old boy was thrown from a school bus and killed after its driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car driven by a Haitian immigrant who didn’t have an Ohio driver’s license.

The child’s death fueled anger and racism on Facebook and at Springfield city commission meetings, where public comments about immigration have often run for more than an hour. Locals upset by the growing immigrant community wondered if they were being taken over— if Springfield had become ground zero for the baseless “great replacement theory.”

Soon, rightwing extremists seized on Springfield’s unrest.

Armed neo-Nazi members of Blood Tribe— a hardcore white supremacist group, according to the Anti-Defamation League— flew flags bearing swastikas and marched through a prominent downtown street while a jazz and blues festival was taking place nearby in August… [M]embers of the group pointed guns at cars and told people to “go the fuck back to Africa.”

A Springfield police representative, however, appeared to downplay the scene, telling local media that the hate group’s march was “just a little peaceful protest.”

Several days later, a leading member of Blood Tribe who identified himself as Nathaniel Higgers, but whose real name is Drake Berentz, spoke at a Springfield city commission meeting.

“I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late,” Berentz told Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue. “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”

Berentz was promptly kicked out for espousing threatening language. Nonetheless, on Thursday morning, a bomb threat prompted Springfield’s city hall, a school and other government offices to be evacuated.

…“Blood Tribe celebrated Donald Trump bringing up the [immigrants killing cats] lie during the debate,” said Maria Bruno of Ohioans Against Extremism, a non-profit founded last month in part due to a rising presence of extremists in Ohio. “They are thrilled that there are politicians willing to echo their talking points.”

JD Vance has regularly claimed that “illegal immigrants” are “generally causing chaos all across Springfield” on the campaign trail in recent weeks. Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, said he plans to direct his office to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”

However, the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that’s been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country. Citizens of 16 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar, are eligible for TPS. It is not a pathway to US citizenship and is valid for only 18 months, at which point it must be renewed by the federal homeland security department for a status holder to remain in the country legally.

“They are entrepreneurs, they want to innovate,” Rollins said of Haitian people in Springfield. “They just work excessively once they are eligible.”

But many Haitians have been targeted in Springfield.

In December, a Springfield man was sentenced to20 years in federal jail for hate crimes after attacking eight Haitians earlier in 2023. Last year, the local Haitian church was broken into and damaged twice. Longtime Black residents of Springfield have reported being verbally abused when walking on the city’s streets, having been confused with members of the Haitian community.