More On MAGA Attacks On Haitian Migrants
Thoughts that didn't fit in my last post
Yesterday, both Steven and I posted about the baseless, xenophobic, racist attacks being levied at the Haitian migrant community in the small city of Springfield, Ohio. To keep my post focused, I ended up leaving out some tangential observations about the situation. Rather than letting them disappear into the ether, I’m sharing them in the fragment post that follows.
White Christian Nationalism vs Christianity
One of the things that stands out about reporting on the Haitian Migrant community in Springfield are discussions of their religiosity. From the New York Times exploration of the community:
They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole. [source]
[Emphasis mine – MB]
And from a PBS news report on the community:
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The sounds of Haitian Creole carrying across soccer fields, in grocery stores, in restaurants dishing up the popular Haitian street food pate kode. It’s striking hearing all this in the heartland of the United States Springfield, Ohio. Springfield is a small, blue-collar city with a familiar story. Much of the factory work left decades ago, and the residents followed. A community of more than 80,000, emptied out to less than 60,000, that is, until the last few years.
WES BABIAN, Springfield Resident: Our churches, we see new people.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In the pews?
WES BABIAN: Yes, absolutely.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Wes Babian was the pastor at First Baptist church for almost 20 years.
WES BABIAN: For years, we have lost people. But you hope somebody else will come and take their place. That hasn’t happened here.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Until now.
WES BABIAN: Because there are folks from Haiti who are coming to church.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Luckens Merzius, who among his many other jobs mans the sound board for Sunday services, is one of those new Haitian members. [source]This is such a great example of why analysts and scholars understand White Christian Nationalism, promoted by people like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, is far more interested the the “White” and “Nationalism” components than the “Christian” part. Haiti, like many countries in the Carribean, Central, and South America, is a majority Christian county. Migrants from Haiti are overwhelmingly Christian. Yet rather than invite an influx of Chrisitians into the country, MAGA see’s them an a object of scorn and spreads very unChrisitan lies about them. MAGA claims to celebrate Christianity, but apparently only the right… I mean White Christians.
Eating Dogs And Roadkill Is Wrong… When They Do It!
It’s a bit rich that a movement that celebrated RFK Jr endorsing Trump is wholly offended at the idea that someone would eat a dog or other wild animal. Of course, MAGA folks believe RFK Jr when he promises that he didn’t eat a dog. And who knows what he was planning to do with that bear cub.
Meme vs. Reality: Trump Edition
One of the bizarre aspects of the memes that MAGA folks are sharing is that many feature Donald Trump saving kittens and ducks. For example, this cursed AI generated image:
Anyone who knows Trump’s history will appreciate the irony of him being pictured this way. He famously doesn’t like dogs and dogs don’t like him. Unfortunately, the last few days made it impossible to search for previous reporting on his position on cats. Given that his White House had no pets, let’s assume he’s neutral at best on them. As far as his history with birds, well… there was that one “incident.”
But People Say They Have Seen Haitians Eating Animals
MAGA supporters keep responding to claims that there is no proof with videos from Springfield city hall meetings. The problem is that those videos often feature outsiders like this guy:
His name is Drake R. Berentz. He gave the false name of “Nathaniel Higgers” (N. Higgers… say it fast and you’ll get the “joke”) when he spoke at the meeting. He literally leads a neo-Nazi group.
They will also share a video featuring this guy:
Meet Anthony Harris (yes, that’s his name on his hoodie). He does live in Springfield. He’s a YouTube “Influencer” who creates MAGA-themed trolling videos on his YouTube channel “Red flagged.” While this isn’t to say he’s lying, but it definitely should be taken into account.
Then there is this video that’s now making the rounds:
Which begins with a person who yells at a Haitian migrant for… waving to greet them from a distance. And then, calls them a “fucking sand monkey.” I guess that’s better than the N-word that I suspect they had enough presence of mind not to use. Beyond that racism, the video again doesn’t contain anyone saying that they actually have seen this behavior first-hand; they’ve only heard about incidents from other people. This includes someone who claims that there was a van full of Haitians driving around that had rounded up over 100 cats and were cooking and eating them as they went. Which, as a former cat owner, is utterly impossible to imagine. It’s challenging to catch a single cat let alone trying to keep 100+ in a van. These types of over-the-top stories are common with anxiety-based moral panic, like the Satanic Child Abuse Day Care scare or the Q-Anon/Comet Pizza conspiracy.
But MAGA folks swear this is evidence. And folks like Trump and Vance are more than happy to use the panic for electoral gain.
They are taking jobs away from Real Americans(TM)
One thing that MAGA folks conveniently ignore is that the job these Haitians are doing existed before they migrated to Springfield. From the NYT reporting:
Springfield crafted a strategic plan to attract business. City leaders pitched the town’s affordability, its work force development programs and its location, smack-dab between Columbus and Dayton and accessible to two interstates.
In 2017, Topre, a major Japanese auto parts manufacturer, picked Springfield for a new plant in a decaying part of town that had been the site of International Harvester, a farm equipment manufacturer that was once the biggest employer.
By 2020, Springfield had lured food-service firms, logistics companies and a microchip maker, among others, creating an estimated 8,000 new jobs and optimism for the future.
“It was incredible to witness the transformation of our community,” said Horton Hobbs, vice president of economic development for the Greater Springfield Partnership, which executed the plan.
But soon there were not enough workers. Many young, working-age people had descended into addiction. Others shunned entry-level, rote work altogether, employers said.
The Haitians had Social Security numbers and work permits, thanks to a federal program that offered them temporary protection in the United States. Some had been living for years in places like Florida, where there is a thriving Haitian community.
McGregor Metal, a family-owned business in Springfield that makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors, was short of workers after investing millions to boost production.
The business needed machine operators, forklift drivers and quality inspectors, said Jamie McGregor, the chief executive.
“The Haitians were there to fill those positions,” he said. The immigrants now comprise about 10 percent of his work force.
“They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” he said. [Source]
I am completely supportive of the need for more opioid treatment programs as part of a robust social safety net. I honestly don’t know where the Trump Campaign stands on those topics. And, at the same time, I think MAGA folks would understand the need for employers to find workers.
The Government Has To Have Shipped Haitians To Springfield For… REASONS!
The US has a long history of immigrant groups moving around the country to areas where there is work. Heck, not just immigrants, but whole populations of Americans. Just look at the Great Migration leading Black enclaves moving from the South to the North. It’s common for this type of thing to happen with people living in the diaspora. It most likely was accelerated by religious- and community-based organizations that work with Haitian migrants, but that isn’t government intervention.
Love “Rural Folks,” Hate Actual “Rural Behaviors”
In closing, I’ll leave this one to Tyler Austin Harper, an English Professor living and teaching in Maine.
I’m old enough to remember when Republican shamed Democrats and Liberals for negatively reacting to Mike Huckabee’s story about eating fried squirrel on Morning Joe:
“Mika, I bet you never did this,” Huckabee went on, addressing Mika Brzezinski. “When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.“
I’m sure someone will explain the difference between frying squirrels and ducks or geese. Personally, there really isn’t that much of a distinction in the act. Now the differences in the people doing these acts, well, that’s another story. This leads to this last bit of Xtter analysis:
When DJT went on his rant about this, I thought ” What US government entity shipped the Haitians to Springfield?” Was it the Federal government? Was it some governor?
It now seems that it was a natural migration in search of jobs and previously existing Haitian community.
When I asked some Trump supporters who shipped them, their answer was a resounding: “Biden and Harris, of course !”
And now the bomb threats have started. Great job racists and those who lay with them to own the libs!
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/springfield-city-hall-evacuated-due-to-unspecified-threat/LEJGCXXHZRHT3HH3HYHABRZGT4/
@Bobert:
Yeah, despite being Real Americans (TM), their knowledge of American history (including how White Folks made their way to the midwest) is sorely lacking. I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame that ignorance on the Haitians as well.
Yet not a peep from JFK Jr. and his extreme, omnivore ways which may indeed include dogs. Yet another example from an immigrant family.
PS. Who wastes perfectly good bear meat?
Just want to note that the name “Nathaniel Higgers” is, as I understand it, a play on Nate Higgers by white supremacists. Switch the first letters and now you know the rest of the story.
I think we are underestimating how much this racist crap is going to *improve* Trump’s election chances. MAGA is eating it up. And the voters have shown that lies, negativity and yes, racism, will get their votes. I’m reminded of the Alicia Machado stuff which Dems all thought was a rhetorical kill shot by Clinton and either made no difference or actually got him votes. You’ll rarely go wrong betting on the American voters being idiots.
@Bobert:
Are we certain they weren’t shipped from Texas or Florida at the behest of their governors?
@Hal_10000: Pretty sure that anyone who could be persuaded to vote for Trump based on this was already voting for Trump…
@James R Ehrler:
Huh… that’s even worse.
Thanks, I think, for that information.
Ducks and geese have way more body fat. It takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to cook them. Squirrels, kind of the opposite. Never gonna get that done in a popcorn popper.
@Matt Bernius: Sorry…but forewarned is forearmed they say.
What I find interesting is that nearby Dayton (Springfield can be considered a suburb of greater Dayton) has been loudly immigrant friendly even setting up a program in 2011 called Welcome Dayton.
Why did Dayton do this? Because Dayton was (and is) a declining industrial city. They realized that immigrants could be an economy booster.
@Joe:
I’ve had duck a few times in restaurants. There was a time where it seemed de rigueur to order Peking Duck at a Chinese restaurant. I’ve never cooked it.
I wonder how a duck breast would do in an air fryer. I can get duck at several nearby stores, but it’s expensive.
Back on topic, just about all animals are edible by all omnivores, barring poisonous ones. Since we embraced agriculture thousands of years ago, and since factory farming grew globally more recently, the vast majority of the meat consumed by humans comes from farms that raise domesticates for food.
Hunting is recreational in the west. Exotic meats like crocodile, frog, ostrich, buffalo, snake, iguana, etc. can be had, mostly from specialized farms, but it’s expensive and there’s little of it.
Pretty much what won’t kill you will either nourish you, or pass through the digestive tract to be expelled.
About eating pets and other unconventional types of meat, I recall reading something about consumption of dog meat in South Korea just prior to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. That was a long while ago, so I don’t recall what the issue was.
Longer ago, in the 70s, there was a story circulating about a family visiting China with their pet dog. At one restaurant they couldn’t communicate verbally with the staff, though somehow they managed to order a meal, and tried to indicate by signs and gestures to please feed the dog as well.
The story goes on, as you might anticipate, that a short time later the family was served their pet dog, cooked and in an ornate platter.
I don’t buy it.
I speculate that early agricultural cultures might have eaten cats. One hypothesis of cat domestication is they hunted mice and rats that ate grain from stores that humans kept. It makes sense the predator will follow their prey. The hypothesis is that cats were tolerated, as they dealt with pests and didn’t eat the grain.
But they might also have been seen as a ready source of meat, easy to find, not dangerous at all, and relatively easy to catch and kill.
Maybe. On the other hand, cats or no cats, people would have themselves hunted the mice and rats eating their grain, maybe setting traps to catch them (as we do to this day). and then they’d have a caught meat source, perhaps already dead. So they may have eaten mice and rats as well.
@Kathy: “I wonder how a duck breast would do in an air fryer. ”
There’s a thick layer of fat between the duck’s skin and the flesh. When you cook it, you start it skin-side down to render all that fat — and there’s a lot of it. I don’t know if your air fryer can do that. But I suppose that once the fat is rendered you could stick it in the air fryer, just as you might normally put it in the oven…
@wr:
I looked it up. Several recipes indicate scoring the skin before cooking, in order to allow the rendered fat an outlet. I wouldn’t swear that works, but at restaurants I’ve been served duck with a diamond crosshatch pattern on the skin. So maybe.
Then I looked up duck breast at the store. it’s $40 per kilo. I can cook two weeks worth of meals for what one duck breast would likely cost me.
@Kathy: When studying archaeology and doing field work the bones of mice, ground squirrels, voles, marmots and so on are often found in and around the hearths of settled and foraging peoples. We referred to them as STRs (small tasty rodents). Most were stewed, not roasted.
@Mr. Prosser:
My understanding is that hunter gatherers were mostly gatherers, and most actual hunting involved small game. Gathering included picking over leftovers from kills by bigger predators*, as well as other dead animals. Taking down bigger prey seemed to have been a rare treat.
*I suppose a great many tools made of bone and antlers came from such finds.
@Kathy: In both countries (Korea and China), they have specific breeds that are “meat” breeds. Dogs off the street, or lap for that matter, are not eaten.
@Scott:
Let me use that as a segue to scratch a small itch. These things always seem to be presented as happening in heartland farming communities full of the common clay of the new west. Not only is Springfield, at 58,000 population city, 136,000 metro, a large outer suburb of Dayton, it’s 45 miles from Columbus, all on I-70. Columbus is a major city, state capital, and seat of Ohio State U. These aren’t a bunch of poor rural folk who had 8,000 people dropped on their isolated little town.
@Bug:
Makes sense. The Olmecs bred small dogs for food. So did other mesoamerican civilizations.
It strikes me as odd. Typically food animals either eat things humans don’t*, like grass, or that is worth feeding them to turn into meat (especially if they also produce other things, like eggs). Dogs are omnivores, but very much prefer meat. I don’t see how you raise dogs for food without giving up some of your meat supply in the process.
*I mean in ancient times at the dawn of agriculture and for several millennia. In the present we feed our food animals a lot of grain and other things. Grass fed beef is a minor luxury food item.
@Bug: I wouldn’t go so far as “never,” but it certainly isn’t routine, at least in Korea. And my Korean friends used to assure me that dogs raised for food were not readily identifiable as pet- type dogs.
My Joy of Cooking has recipes for squirrel and other animals. It’s part of our culinary history.
In a shock nobody would have expected, JD’s answer when directly confronted by Kaitlan Collins regarding these lies is “whether those exact rumors turn out to be whatever the case may be, this town was ravaged by 20 thousand migrants coming in”.
Sure, buddy. Only if by “ravaged” you mean “works harder than the whites and contributes more per capita to the economy than the whites.”
And yes, their presence is legal: They have been given TPS [temporary protected status] because of both the earthquake and the gangs.
But hey, facts don’t matter — because Republicans, as always, are the party of vibes and are all up in their feelings.
I grew up in Ohio — the rumor that was going around when I was growing up was that there were satanic rituals happening in the forests. These stupid fake lies are all Republicans have ever had.
Still waiting for that first satanic cult to be found in the woods, of course. But the cops were then [just like now] all about believing it and pulled tons of overtime to Investigate The Forests. If memory serves, all they found was a bunch of lonely kids doing whip-its.
@Gavin:
J D Vance continues to spread lies about a spike in crime. Yes the overall number of crimes has gone up. But so to has the population. The question is whether or not one rose in proportion to the other.
The answer, when you look at things per capita, matches the patterns we’ve seen across the US. Looking at data that goes back to 2005 (long before the migration) we see that overall per capita crime is down.
Yes, Springfield crime rates remain higher than the rest of Ohio. But it’s been that way since at least 2005. This is common in communities in decline.
I’m not saying everything is perfect. Murders have increased over the last few years. But they still have yet to reach the levels they hit in 2017 and 2018. I wish I could remember who was president then.