J.D. Vance is a liar, and he doesn’t care who knows it. For the past several weeks, he has said, falsely, that Haitian immigrants have overrun Springfield, Ohio. They’re eating cats, they’re spreading disease, they’re overwhelming the schools, and they can’t even drive, claims the state’s junior senator. Vance’s propaganda spread quickly on the right, as Republican officials and extremist social-media personalities picked it up even as local police and Ohio’s Republican governor debunked these claims. Christopher Rufo, a far-right commentator, offered a $5,000 “bounty” to anyone who could send him proof of the story. Donald Trump repeated the false story during his debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris.
During a Sunday appearance on CNN, Vance stuck by his claims but then added, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” When host Dana Bash pressed him further, he said, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.” Some have interpreted that statement as an admission of guilt, though it’s not clear whether Vance truly meant it as such. Though he may not confess to lying outright, he seems to think of himself as a propagandist or at least to be comfortable in the role. Why wouldn’t he be? The public, not Vance, is paying the price for his lies.
By the time he spoke of creating a “story” on CNN, threats had temporarily shut down government offices, schools, and colleges in Springfield. Haitian immigrants say their cars have been vandalized, one with acid. “I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me,” one woman told The Haitian Times. “I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.”
In launching a verbal assault on Haitian immigrants, Vance encouraged a commensurate attack on public life in Springfield. Immigrants bear the brunt of his rhetoric, though it is becoming difficult for anyone in town to go to work, or to school, or to the hospital, regardless of their immigration status. What’s happening in Springfield could happen anywhere — and matters would get worse if in November he obtains the power he seeks. Springfield is a laboratory in which he is experimenting with a national project. His rhetoric forecasts a brutal strike on multiracial democracy itself.
Trump, in a related move, amplified false allegations that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, a claim that has led to violent threats against the tenants. The slumlord who owns the apartments encouraged the gang rumor, eager to distract the public from his own alleged misdeeds. Tenants say there are rats and roaches and that the apartments often lack running water. Trump would only multiply their woes. The former president has promised mass deportations if elected with Springfield and Aurora leading the way.
A shared belief in the inhumanity of the immigrant binds Vance to Trump and forms the heart of their deportation plot. Blood libel is a tactic, another way for them to frighten voters and inflame the base. When Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets in Springfield, he knew he was striking directly at American domestic life. The Haitian community can’t understand its new home, he implied, and that makes it dangerous. Your household is at risk; not even your beloved animals are safe.
The truth has never mattered to Trump, let alone to Vance. The aspiring vice-president lies in service of his political ambitions, which are deeply authoritarian in character. He appears to believe that the right to participate in public life is conditional. Native-born Americans may take part, but recent immigrants can’t be trusted to do the same, especially if they are not white. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times wrote in his newsletter, Vance does not care how immigrants came here, or why, or whether they are willing to work. “What matters to Vance is who they are, where they come from and what they look like,” Bouie wrote. “They don’t belong to this soil, he might say, and therefore they don’t belong.” If public life is tied to blood and soil, immigrant Americans are shut out from it by definition. In this view, multiracial democracy is a liberal fiction, and pluralism can only pervert America’s authentic nature.
That view has many adherents, but it has not yet prevailed, even in Springfield. Though some residents are fearful of the town’s Haitian community, they do not speak for everyone. When a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant crashed into a school bus, killing 11 year-old Aiden Clark, the boy’s father, Nathan, spoke up against prejudice. “My son was not murdered,” Clark said at a city meeting. “He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.” Clark added, “This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate.”
Vance wants to pit recent immigrants against native-born Americans. This is an old trick, and it can keep political careers alive for a while, but as Springfield shows, there is no way to attack immigrants without undermining rights for everyone else. If the right to belong, to be in public life, is conditional, then it can be stripped from anyone. In Springfield, as elsewhere, the fates of native-born Americans are bound up with those of their immigrant neighbors. To recognize that fact is to foster a new solidarity. The price of J.D. Vance’s lies could be high indeed, but it doesn’t have to be.
