Donald Trump’s Springfield Scapegoat

Donald Trump doesn’t so much run for something as he runs against somebody. His latest attacks are aimed at Haitian immigrants, but what we’re seeing is a playbook previously used to target other ethnic or religious groups, and with a similar goal: to make the MAGA base feel like they’re under attack.

“The followers must feel besieged,” as the late Italian writer Umberto Eco, who grew up in fascist Italy, wrote nearly three decades ago in The New York Review of Books. “The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.” Indeed, in order to enact much of his radical right-wing agenda, Trump needs his people to think America is on the brink of collapse—and to associate that collapse with an “other.” The goal is to panic the base, and since there isn’t a scary enough truth, lies will do.

“They’re eating the dogs,” Trump bellowed to Kamala Harris last Tuesday night, alluding to the utterly baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and feasting on people’s pets. It was immediately clear what Trump was doing. After all, scapegoating is one of Trump’s favorite ploys. He demonized Mexicans and Muslims in 2016, and long insisted that immigrants are “destroying the blood” and the “fabric” of America.” He even used his closing remarks at the debate to stoke fears of “criminals” entering the United States and “destroying our country.”

But the irony of Trump’s fascist rhetoric was particularly rich in Springfield, where the Haitian influx has revitalized the city’s workforce—as with so many places in America, where there just weren’t enough people living in the area to keep the economy going.

It bears repeating that there is no pet-eating of any kind going on. In fact, Trump running mate JD Vance basically admitted as much in a CNN interview over the weekend. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” he told Dana Bash, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast. You had one interview with her. You talk about pushing back against me, Dana. You didn’t push back against the fact that she cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which is why a lot of Americans can’t afford food and housing. We ought to be talking about public policy.”

“You just said that you’re creating a story,” Bash rightly responded. “So the eating dogs and cats thing is not accurate.”

“We are creating, we are…,” Vance caught himself. “Dana, it comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents.”

Trump’s lie about Springfield might be particularly grotesque. But it’s in the same tradition of racist rhetoric that he has been testing out since the beginning of his campaign.

A campaign that started in June 2015 when he came down that bronze escalator and announced he was running for president. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you,” he said, while unveiling his bid. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

The othering continued, as the former president has kept scapegoating ethnic and religious minorities going through his first, second, and third presidential campaigns, including Muslims (by blaming them for domestic terrorism, culminating in his notorious Muslim travel ban); Chinese people (by blaming them for the COVID crisis); Mexican people (by blaming them for the fentanyl crisis); Venezuelans (whose gangs he’s accused of taking over the town of Aurora, Colorado); and most recently, of course, Haitians.

Almost all of these attacks are bits of unreality spliced together, based on events that are wildly exaggerated or ones that simply did not happen. Springfield, Ohio just had the misfortune of getting caught up in those lies. Now, two of their hospitals have been sent into lockdown after bomb threats. Public schools and municipal buildings have been shut down for consecutive days because of similar concerns. Trump reportedly plans to soon visit Springfield, a trip that could further inflame a nation already gripped by fears of political violence. Trump, himself, faced an apparent assassination attempt on Sunday, just two months since he was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania.

That visit to Springfield—which could happen imminently, or perhaps never—is unlikely to cool the national temperature. But in the meantime, the town’s residents will continue to live in fear, including the Haitian immigrants, who are there legally but who Trump has promised to deport “back to Venezuela.” This is the post-truth Republican Party: fake stories, real consequences. If Trump wins, we’ll see a whole lot more of this—more othering, more scapegoating, more racism, more of anything to panic the base so that he can enact the kind of laws that turn a democracy into an autocracy.