On Cats, Fascism and The Moral Clarity We Need

The 2024 electoral circus saw an important milestone on Tuesday night, with what could be the only presidential debate of this election cycle. Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated her performance on social media, as she successfully baited Donald Trump with critiques of his rallies, while dodging questions about how her own policy positions have shifted over the years. Amid Trump’s blathering and Harris’s jabs, I found one exchange between the two candidates especially noteworthy. On the subject of immigration, Trump spouted grotesque lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming that migrants were stealing and eating people’s pets. "In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump sputtered. The idea that immigrants are a savage threat to Western civilization is central to Trump’s politics and the collective identity of the MAGA movement. Trump’s followers see themselves as an aggrieved people whose greatness must be reclaimed. Given that their outrage and spiteful impulses are encouraged by Trump and the MAGA group culture, violent action is not only viewed as justified but is actually considered preferable to nonviolence. Violence against the targets of MAGA’s angst is viewed as redemptive – a reclamation of masculinity and a satisfying measure of justice. This worldview necessitates scapegoats who can be depicted as subhuman and whose suffering and subjugation can be applauded. Vilifying immigrants fuels fascistic fantasies about redemptive violence and a desire for social “purification,” which can only be achieved through the expulsion, containment, or destruction of stigmatized out-groups. Such politics must be challenged and rebuked. However, while debate moderator David Muir briefly contradicted Trump’s lie about Haitian immigrants, noting that there have been no reports of pets being stolen or eaten in Springfield, Harris chose not to hit back on the subject. Rather than denouncing Trump’s dehumanizing claims about Haitian immigrants, Harris responded by emphasizing how much Republican support her campaign has garnered. Why would Harris, who challenged Trump eagerly on a number of subjects Tuesday night, fail to push back against his fascistic rhetoric? The MAGA brand of fascism has brought a variety of morbid symptoms to this political interregnum. Unfortunately, Harris is working to co-opt, rather than combat, the impulses that animate those symptoms.

Harris has chosen to exploit the idea that immigrants who are seeking refuge in the United States pose a threat that must be fought off, and she is touting her history as a prosecutor as evidence that she is up for the task. When confronted with dehumanizing lies about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pet dogs and cats, she could not bring herself to counter or condemn these lies or to speak to what they represent in the conservative or American psyche. She could not do this because, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore has commented, the Democrats are seeking to domesticate elements of fascism rather than defeat it. Harris could not condemn what she aims to mold and weaponize for her own purposes. 

Harris has abandoned Democratic platitudes about how we live in “a nation of immigrants” and any acknowledgment of the contributions of migrant workers and community members. She has even moved to the right of Obama’s troubled rhetoric about deporting “felons, not families.” Why? The Democratic Party is clearly invested in the idea of winning over Republican and centrist voters. Republican speakers who support Harris were showcased at the Democratic National Convention, while Palestinian delegates protested outside, pleading for a single Palestinian Democrat to be allowed to speak on the DNC’s main stage. On Tuesday night, when Trump invoked xenophobic, anti-Black rhetoric targeting Haitian immigrants, Harris responded by touting the endorsements of more than 200 Republicans who have worked for Republican presidents and other Republican leaders. She has also stated that she was “honored” to receive the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a prolific Republican war criminal. 

On the debate stage, Harris complained about Trump’s successful effort to prevent a horrific bipartisan border bill from being passed earlier this year. The bill would have enshrined Trump-era immigration policies, expedited the removal of many asylum seekers from the United States, removed asylum processes from immigration court, and mandated border closures, in addition to permanently defunding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The bill was widely condemned by migrant rights advocates. Harris cited the bill as an important effort to secure the border that was derailed by Trump. She then switched gears and mocked Trump’s unfocused performance at his rallies, noting that many attendees leave his events early.

From Harris’s harsh stance on immigration to her talk of ensuring that the US has the “most lethal” military on earth, it’s clear that she is courting conservative votes. This political posture is not only morally flawed but overlooks the fact that Biden only defeated Trump in 2020 with the help of grassroots coalitions that were often anchored by the left. Harris has urged people in states like Georgia to “do it again” without any regard for who did what or how she has abandoned many of the same constituents who helped organize Biden’s path to victory in 2020.

Personally, I expect very little of Harris, but watching her fail to condemn Trump’s blatant dehumanization of Haitian immigrants or rightwing efforts to stoke violence against them was nonetheless disturbing. While tacking to the right, there is apparently a great deal that Harris will not say or acknowledge, so let’s cover some of that ground right now.

According to the Vera Institute, Black immigrants are “disproportionately represented among immigrants facing deportation on criminal grounds, even though Black immigrants do not commit crimes at greater rates than other immigrants.” Anti-Black racism and the disproportionate targeting of Black people by law enforcement leads to large numbers of Black migrants being moved through the deportation system on criminal grounds. 76 percent of Black immigrants who were deported in 2013, for example, were removed on the basis of criminality, compared to 45 percent for all immigrants. For Haitian immigrants, this process often ends with incarceration in their country of origin, as it is typical for Haitians who are deported from the United States on criminal grounds to be imprisoned without any due process upon arriving in Haiti. 

Haitian immigrants are in desperate need of safety, shelter, and economic opportunity due to deteriorating conditions that the US and its allies have fostered. After Haitians overthrew the country’s slave-owning class and claimed their freedom in 1804, the country was viewed with contempt by the ruling class in the United States and by European powers. 21 years after declaring its independence, Haiti was strong-armed into agreeing to an “independence debt” to France, in which France was to be compensated for the property it lost during the Haitian revolution – including Haitian slaves. This astronomical debt hindered Haiti’s financial development. At Wall Street’s instigation, the US invaded Haiti in 1915. The US occupied Haiti until 1934 and exacted control over the country until 1947. In 2004, Canada, the United States and France conspired to back a coup d’état against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the years following the coup, destabilizing and anti-democratic interventions at the hands of the US and its allies continued, all of which have contributed to the current crisis of factionalized violence in Haiti. 

The dehumanization of Haitians, a people who freed themselves from chattel slavery through a successful decolonial struggle, is a longstanding tradition among Republicans and Democrats alike. In 1994, then-Senator Joe Biden stated, "If Haiti — a God-awful thing to say — just quietly sunk into the Caribbean, or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interests." Biden was making a comparison between Haiti and Bosnia, claiming that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia could spread to countries like Ukraine, Belarus, and the former Soviet Union, leading to destabilizations that could profoundly affect the United States. The destabilization of Haiti struck Biden as being about as consequential as Haitians being consumed by rising seas, which is to say, not at all. 

Many Haitians have died at sea while fleeing to the United States. Upon reaching our shores, Haitian immigrants have been met with detention, anti-Black racism, and rampant systemic abuse. In 2021, photos circulated of whip-wielding Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing down Haitian migrants. The agents were clearing a camp of asylum seekers near Del Rio, Texas. A year later, US Customs and Border Protection would issue a report concluding that no migrants were whipped by the agents. No migrants were interviewed during the investigation. Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback poised to whip Black people drew swift comparisons to the violence of chattel slavery. This comparison is historically significant but also speaks to the position of Black people in the fascist imagination.

By vilifying and dehumanizing Haitian immigrants, rightwing forces are also vilifying and dehumanizing Black people more broadly. After all, one cannot tell by looking at someone if they are a migrant. Black and brown people alike are often treated as though they are inherently suspect, potentially criminal, and potentially “alien.” Notably, there is a particular brand of contempt associated with Black emancipation, which applies to Haiti, as a nation, and to all Black people in the United States. The assertion of Black freedom following the Civil War was a profound disruption to white wealth and to a social order that fundamentally privileged whiteness above Blackness. Every assertion of Black rights in the aftermath of slavery has been met with contempt and derision by many white people. That contempt has its roots in the idea that Black people are innately inferior to white people and have no right to insist upon equal treatment under the law. The dynamics of racial capitalism reinforce that belief, which is a fundamental political current of US politics. Football player Tyreek Hill’s recent encounter with police serves as a reminder that failing to know one’s place, as a Black person, is an offense that justifies violence in many people’s minds.  

As I recently discussed with Tracy Rosenthal, the criminalization of homelessness is another vehicle for right-wing anti-Blackness. Towns like Grants Pass, which were once sundown towns, now focus their police resources on the criminalization of their unhoused residents. 40 percent of unhoused people are Black, whereas only 12-14 percent of the US population is Black. Therefore, targeting unhoused people for the crime of existing can often mean disproportionately targeting Black people for the crime of existing – as US police are wont to do. The transition from sundown towns to the hyper-policing of unhoused people, as Tracy pointed out, is part of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore might call the “changing same” of racial capitalism. The fear-mongering we have seen about unhoused people, like the fear-mongering we have seen about migrants, facilitates a kind of dehumanization that is not race-specific, rhetorically speaking. Such rhetoric encapsulates racism within social categories that are cast as social problems in need of solutions. When rightwingers tell us that unhoused people should be placed in relocation camps or that all migrants should be rounded up and reported, we are hearing something louder than a dog whistle. It’s a drumbeat that even Democrats can dance to. 

Democratic mayors have been major players in the criminalization of homelessness, and California Governor Gavin Newsome has proudly become an enforcer of such policies. Newsome has even participated in the physical work of clearing encampment spaces. This does not mean that rightwing efforts on this front are not dangerous or even a national threat (as Trump has threatened to make relocation camps a national phenomenon), but can the Democrats fight what they have chosen to embody? The Democratic Party is not an antifascist force, and neither is Harris. It is important to remember this and to ask ourselves, if the Democrats do not stand between us and fascistic outcomes, what should a struggle against these forces actually look like? What must be built in opposition to these threats?

Returning to the case of Springfield, Ohio, it is worth examining how the hoax Trump reiterated on the debate stage got started. Last year, an 11-year-old boy named Aiden Clark was killed in a tragic car accident. The driver at fault was a Haitian immigrant. The boy’s family has stated publicly that the crash was an accident, not a murder. Nonetheless, anti-immigrant sentiments targeting the city’s Haitian community escalated after the accident. Viles Dorsainvil, head of Springfield’s Haitian Community Help & Support Center, told Jonathan M. Katz in an interview that prior to the accident, relations between Haitian migrants and other locals were mostly positive. “The community was okay,” Dorsainvil said. “There was still a group of people in Springfield who saw the coming of the Haitians as a threat. But normally, generally, the community was so open with us.” After Aidan Clark’s death, the political climate in the city changed. Dorsainvil said the accident led some locals “to talk so badly about Haitians.” 

Last month, a dozen people wearing ski masks and carrying swastikas and rifles marched through Springfield’s downtown area during a jazz and blues fest. A white man who participated in the march, and identifies as a member of the white nationalist group Blood Tribe, spoke at a Springfield City Commission meeting in late August, warning, “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.” The story about abducted pets seems to have originated from a third-hand story in a social media post about a “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” whose cat was supposedly stolen and slaughtered. The post claimed that Haitian immigrants were responsible for the alleged acts, even though no reports of such incidents exist. The post included an image of a Black man carrying a Canada goose. According to the man who took the photo, the image was captured in another part of Ohio. There is no evidence that the man pictured is Haitian, and notably, early Canada goose hunting season runs from September 7 to September 15 in Ohio. Rightwing influencers popularized the story on Twitter and added new dimensions, including claims that a Canton, Ohio woman who was arrested for allegedly killing and eating a cat was Haitian. The woman has no known connection to Haiti and is a US citizen. 

Facts, however, are not a hindrance for right-wing influencers determined to shape a dehumanizing narrative. As any savvy social media user knows, people in the US are often more deeply affected by stories about pets being killed than they are by stories about people being tortured or killed. Armed with the knowledge that many people in the US view household pets as family members, rightwing influencers on Elon Musk’s social media platform have now spread a hoax about Haitian immigrants killing and eating people’s pets to an audience of millions. While rightwing claims that immigrants pose a violent threat are not new, the implication of savagery suggests a clash of civilizations – such as the conflict in Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the Saints (a book that Trump lackey Stephen Miller has famously celebrated). In The Camp of the Saints, Western leaders who refuse to commit annihilatory acts of violence against a flotilla of immigrants are portrayed as responsible for white genocide and the downfall of Western civilization.

The idea that immigrants are not governed by the norms of US culture and, therefore, pose a savage threat to Americans and the American way of life can be enough to inspire violence, even when the lives of people and pets are not allegedly at stake. Rumors about migrants eating rats were followed by white supremacist attacks on refugees in the 1980s. As some observers have rightly noted, the hoax Trump reiterated on Tuesday is reminiscent of stories that depicted Jewish people as cannibals who targeted children. Those stories, known as blood libel, emerged during the Middle Ages and were invoked by the Nazis in the run-up to the Holocaust. In some right-wing forums where the pet-eating rumors have been discussed, images of guns have been shared in response. 

In Springfield, these lies stem from anti-immigrant animus, which exploded after 11-year-old Aidan Clark’s death. Aidan’s father, Nathan Clark, is having none of it. “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man,” Clark said at a recent Springfield City Commission meeting. “I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” Clark said. “The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

“This needs to stop now,” Clark demanded. “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.”Donald Trump should have been met with such moral clarity during Tuesday night’s debate. His dehumanizing lies about migrants should have been met with the words, “This needs to stop now.” 

Ahead of Tuesday’s debate, Katz asked Dorsainvil if there was anything he was hoping Harris would say about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Dorsainvil replied, “I would like her to say that immigrants are not here to eat cats and dogs. They're here just to boost the economy.”

Dorsainvil set a low bar, but Harris still managed to trip over it. 

Dorsainvil went on to say, “We are here to work and to find a safe place to raise our family. We're not here to do anything bad or to harm the community. We are just here to contribute toward a peaceful place here, toward a peaceful community here.” He added that, “Most people understand that, actually. I know that most people understand that.”

Rather than trusting that most people understand that and appealing to voters who might take a stand against dehumanization and the violence it inspires, Harris opted to appeal to this country’s xenophobic tendencies. She is offering Trumpian policies couched in mainstream rhetoric, with some representational politics on the side. While meaningful distinctions between Trump and Harris exist, theirs is not a battle of good versus evil. It is, at best, a fight between bad and worse. In order to engage with the reality of our current situation, we must recognize that Democrats are not the enemies of fascism. As a party, the Democrats are willing to co-opt fascist policies and impulses toward their own ends. Theirs is a politics of normalization rather than radicalization. It is our duty to fight that normalization in the name of our shared humanity. It is our duty to speak out when anyone is dehumanized, especially when that dehumanization is done in our name or, supposedly, in our defense. It is our duty to name what is happening around us. If we fail to do that, if we go with the political flow and support rhetoric that dehumanizes people and abets violence because we are afraid, we are cooperating with and participating in that violence. Cheering the opponents of our openly fascist enemies does not make us enemies of fascism. To become true enemies of fascism, we must be defenders of the people those politics would scapegoat, cage, and kill. We must reject the idea that people are disposable or that identity should dictate anyone’s fate. We must become a political force with the power to push back against fascistic politics rather than mere spectators at a circus.

UPDATE: Thursday morning, Springfield, Ohio's City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat.

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