It’s a sign of how deeply the virus of populism has become enmeshed in some of our biggest democracies that politicians can spout venomous lies without any obvious comeback.
Donald Trump, during his televised debate with Kamala Harris earlier this month, insisted that in the small town of Springfield in Ohio, illegal immigrants are ‘eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people who live there’.
It’s an incendiary claim in a nation where two-thirds of households have a pet, which is often preened and pampered as a much-loved member of the family.
But it’s not true. The moderator of the debate quickly butted in to say that the town authorities report no credible evidence that pets have been eaten in Springfield. The local police have also said that there’s no basis for the former president’s assertions. The mayor has insisted: ‘people’s pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio’.
Trump’s comments were – by design one most assume – an attempt to incite division. But they fit a narrative which his supporters have been cultivating avidly on social media. And rather than demonstrating to Americans how unfit Donald Trump is to return to the White House, the incident seems not even to have dented his standing in the polls.
Springfield is a town with a population of about 60,000 which is one of many in this part of the US to have suffered depopulation and economic decline as the old industries on which its wealth was based faded away. In recent years, it has attracted up to 20,000 new residents who hail from Haiti, a desperately poor, politically unstable and overwhelmingly Black nation in the Caribbean.
The first Haitians to move to Springfield took unfilled, low paid jobs in new manufacturing industries which had been attracted to the town. Once the Haitian community had become established in this corner of Ohio, it served as a beacon for other newcomers from Haiti who were keen to move to a place where some people spoke their language (French or Creole) and constituted a support network.
The impact of this wave of migration has been mixed. It has helped to revive Springfield’s moribund economy – the governor of Ohio, who like Trump is a Republican, has declared that ‘the Haitians who are here are hard-working people’ – but has also increased the local cost of housing and put pressure on health and education services.
That’s often the balance sheet when there’s a spurt of incomers. There’s usually a long-term gain, but some of the established residents who feel they are being pushed out or inconvenienced nurture a sense of grievance.
This grievance is then seized on by populists as part of their narrative of a political system that’s turned on its own people – that needs cleansing and reclaiming – and that requires a political saviour who will vanquish the liberals and do-gooders and (as it says on the placards) ‘Make Our Nation Great Again’.
The Springfield saga has now taken a new turn. Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance – a Republican who represents Ohio in the US Senate – has appeared to admit that he made up the pet-eating story. He told CNN that he ‘created’ the story in order ‘to draw attention to the Biden-Harris immigration policies’.
Vance said that if he has 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 … I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. Her policies did that.’
This is an astonishing defence of deception during an election campaign to grub up votes. What’s even more worrying, it could work.
Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent.
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