The Springfield blood libel and preparing the ground for mass deportation

A sinister plan unfolding

The blood libel Donald Trump and JD Vance have been perpetuating about what is happening in Springfield, Ohio, has been debunked in virtually all of its nauseating particulars. There is no evidence of Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating other people's pets, the outrageous charge that started all this madness. Indeed, one of the social media posts that helped set it off was from a Trump-supporting woman whose cat disappeared and who originally blamed the disappearance on Haitians. It turns out the cat was in her basement.

Because she's a normal human being, the woman actually apologized to her Haitian neighbors once she realized what had happened.

No such luck with the conscience-less men at the top of the Republican ticket. Vance subsequently insisted that the lie about pets was in service of a greater truth, calling attention to how those Haitians were "ruining people's lives" in Springfield. In particular, and by stooping to the most blatantly racist tropes, Vance insisted that they were spreading diseases like HIV and were responsible for a surge in crime. Both claims have been shown to be patently false. There is no increase in communicable diseases attributable to Haitian residents, according to health officials and all the available data. The same is true for crime. And has been reported everywhere, the Haitian residents are in the country legally, many under a program granting them Temporary Protected Status that dates to the 1990s. Despite that fact, Vance smugly told a campaign rally recently that he would continue to call them “illegal aliens.”

The reality is that the immigrants to Springfield have helped spark an economic uptick in a town that had been stagnant and losing population for more than a generation. As Mike DeWine, the Republican governor (and a Trump supporter) has said repeatedly, yes, there are resource challenges related to health and school capacity because of the population increase. But all the Trump/Vance claims are, to use DeWine's words, “a piece of garbage.” That garbage has succeeded in setting off a wave of bomb threats in the two weeks since Trump repeated the scurrilous lies in his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris, sowing fear and chaos in Springfield, leading to school closings and other disruptions.

Many have noted that this false, sickening attack is a reflection of the demented online culture that has consumed the MAGA right, and to which Trump and Vance seem singularly focused on stoking and appealing to. But it's more than that. Trump has repeatedly said he intends to deport over ten million people, should he win the election. But how this horrific plan might be carried out and what its consequences could be have received less attention. Trump himself is not shy about what could follow. Earlier this month, he asserted that it would be a “bloody story.”

Just a couple of days ago, Trump mused:

“So yes to mass deportation, even of women and children. You put one wrong person onto a bus or onto an airplane, and your radical left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that's ever happened."  

“But we're getting the criminals out, and we're going to do that fast, and we know who they are, and the local police know their names and they know their serial numbers. They know everything about them.”

Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser and anti-immigrant extremist gleefully told Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk that the deportations would: “commence immediately (on inauguration day) and it will be joyous and it will be wonderful and it will be everything you want it to be.” 

Trump has repeatedly hearkened back to a program that unfolded in two waves during the 1950s, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the xenophobic “Operation Wetback,” which involved the deportation of perhaps a million Mexican immigrants. What Trump envisions is ten times that number. And there is no way to execute such a monstrous operation without a massive mobilization of state violence, including what would amount to concentration camps, massive violations of civil liberties, including sweeps that would also surely consume many documented residents and citizens who “look” like they fit a certain profile. Such an operation can also be expected to unleash violent actors of the sort who were whipped into a frenzy prior to January 6, itching to take matters into their own hands.

At a recent Trump rally, a friendly reporter asked an attendee how illegal immigration is affecting his life. The attendee said it wasn't, but that such people were getting something handed to them for free and that was wrong, so they should go back to where they came from. At least he was honest. If the problem of unauthorized immigrants were such a scourge in the United States, in terms of crime, adverse economic impact and so on, Trump, Vance and their ilk wouldn't need to make up stories to prove their point. But Vance, like Trump, isn't lying about Springfield to expose a larger truth about immigration. He's exposing a larger truth about himself, that he's willing to fabricate and falsify in service of the most sinister motives. Namely, to foment the kind of hatred necessary to make people comfortable with their government committing terrible acts against groups Vance is doing everything in his power to dehumanize, including children.

So, the Springfield libel isn’t just disgusting on its own terms. It should be understood as kind of test of the emergency broadcasting system, a warning about what Trump/Vance have in store for millions of people should they get their hands on the levers of power.

Update: Trump is now spreading the same falsehoods about Haitian immigrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, which has prompted condemnations from local officials and the Republican State Senator whose district includes Charleroi.