Make America White Again...

[qwlauren35]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/trumps-campaign-immigrants-springfield-ohio-haiti/679913/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20240918&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The+Atlantic+Daily

The Real Reason Trump and Vance Are Spreading Lies About Haitians

ince former President Donald Trump and Vance began centering their campaign on lies about Haitian immigrants being “dumped” on Springfield, municipal buildings, schools, and local festivals have had to be evacuated or canceled because of bomb threats. Asked whether he condemned the threats against Haitian immigrants, Trump couldn’t even bring himself to say that the threats were wrong, and instead simply spread misinformation about the migrants again: “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened.” Besides failing to offer even a shred of concern for residents menaced by bomb threats, the statement was also false: The Haitians in Springfield are living and working there legally using green cards, humanitarian parole, and Temporary Protected Status, a legal immigration status for people who cannot return safely to their country of origin. Trump has vowed to deport them anyway.

The reward that the Haitian community in Springfield has received for doing exactly what Republicans demand of legal immigrants—work, provide for themselves, contribute to their community—is a campaign of slander and intimidation. Contrary to Vance’s insistence that he is creating “stories” about a community to alleviate the suffering of Ohioans, what the Trump campaign is actually doing is invoking that suffering as license to justify violence and harm. This is the most employed rhetorical device of the Trump campaign: point to someone’s suffering and then offer as a solution the application of state violence against a disfavored group, using Americans’ problems as a pretext to harm people they have chosen to hate.

So the question is, why are Trump and Vance so fixated on deporting the Haitians?

One reason is Trump has a particular, well-documented hatred toward Haitians. The former president infamously referred to Haiti as one of the “shithole countries” that the United States should reject immigrants from, in favor of those from countries “like Norway.” Trump had also previously complained that Haitians “all have AIDS.” Trump’s hostility to Haitians extends to other Black immigrants—he also reportedly complained that if Nigerian immigrants were allowed to stay, they would “never go back to their huts.” Nigerian Americans are the most highly educated immigrant subgroup in America, and Haitians, as the Cato Institute’s David Bier has documented, have a higher rate of employment than native-born Americans and are much more likely than other immigrants or native-born Americans to join the U.S. military. Trump apologists have repeatedly insisted that Trump simply wants immigrants who can contribute to American society, but Trump himself ignores Black immigrants’ contributions in favor of his own ingrained stereotypes about Black people.

Another reason is Trump and Vance appear not to be interested in helping anyone in Springfield, or anywhere else for that matter. Their actions point to a political theory of the election, which is that fearmongering about immigrants, especially Black immigrants, will scare white people into voting for Trump. They also point to an ideological theory of the nation, which is that America belongs to white people, and that the country would be better if it were poorer and weaker, as long as it were also whiter. Trump and Vance have a specific policy agenda for socially engineering the nation through state force to be whiter than it is now: mass deportation, repealing birthright citizenship, and denaturalization of American citizens. This agenda, in addition to being immoral, would wreck the American economy. Republican elected officials in Ohio are defending the Haitians in Springfield because they understand that removing them would have a terrible effect on their town and state—the same terrible effect that Trump’s agenda would have on the country.

Trump’s and Vance’s statements reveal a belief that it would be better to leave dying towns in the Midwest to wither away than revive them and have to share that prosperity with people who are Black, and they seem to be betting that enough American voters in enough swing states agree that it would be better to be broke than integrated.

[Kittycatkat]

1. That's what magat's are all about. White males...

with an inferiority complex. Real men loves them some Kamala!

[Dave Bowman]

2. MAWA? Sounds appropriate, I mean when Traitor Trump talks it sounds like this:

Mawamawa they are eating fields in Springdogs, mawawawa, poor me, not fair, mawawama sad.