Creationist logic is soaking into the general discourse, I’m sorry to say. As we’ve all heard, Donald Trump declared that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, and some people have been desperately trying to validate that. Among their ranks we have Chris Rufo, the professional racist, destroyer of universities, and flailing idiot trained in the heart of the Discovery Institute, who attempts to mimic skeptical reasoning in a post titled…
The Cat Eaters of Ohio
The establishment media called it a racist myth, but is it?
Yes. Yes it is.
He’s going to get to the bottom of this story.
So, is there any truth to the charge? We have conducted an exclusive investigation that reveals that, yes, in fact, some migrants in Ohio appear to have been “eating the cats,” though not exactly in the manner that Trump described.
“Not exactly” is doing a lot of work here. To translate, he’s saying “not even close to what Trump described,” which he interprets as reasonable doubt that any rebuttals are valid.
Our investigation begins in a run-down neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, the closest major city to Springfield, about a half-hour’s drive away. We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque. “Yoooo the Africans wildn on Parkwood,” reads the text, referring to Parkwood Drive. The video then pans down to two live cats walking across the grass in front of a run-down fence, with a voice on the video warning: “There go a cat right there. His ass better get missin’, man. Look like his homies on the grill!”
I watched the video. It’s true, there are live cats on camera, and there is a barbecue grill, and there is something unidentifiable cooking on the grill, and there is a man vocally accusing them of grilling cats. That’s it. One ambiguous video yanked off of TikTok. That’s Rufo’s evidence.
He does go a significant step further, and he or someone he’s associated with contacted the creator of the video, and even visited the neighborhood to ask questions. It’s a significant effort, but all he’s going to get out of it is a lot of irrelevant details. As any creationist knows, piling on random detail is an adequate substitute for actually confirming a hypothesis.
We spoke with the author of the video, who asked to remain anonymous but confirmed its time, location, and authenticity. He told us that he was picking up his son last summer, when he noticed the unusual situation. “It was some Africans that stay right next door to my kid’s mother,” he said. “This African dude next door had the damn cat on the grill.”
Point of order: there has been no evidence presented that it was a cat on the grill. Having the initial accuser repeat the accusation adds nothing.
We then identified the home by matching it to the visuals in the video and cross-referencing them with the eyewitness. When we knocked on the door of the first unit, a family answered, telling us they were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that all of the surrounding units were occupied by other African migrants.
So, not a Haitian. Telling us the country of origin of the accused does not in any way confirm that they were eating cats — we keep drifting further and further away from the initial claim — but it does contradict the story we were told.
But hey, people from Africa, people from a Caribbean island, they’re all the same. They’re black. Is Rufo trying to establish that yes, it sure is a racist myth?
One of the residents told us that her former neighbors, also from Africa, had lived in the adjacent unit until last month. They had a blue grill and the father would find meat in the neighborhood. “Her dad was going to find meat,” she said. “Her dad was going, holding a knife.” The current residents also showed us a blue grill of the same make and model as in the video, which the former neighbors had abandoned after they moved out. There were at least ten cats wandering around the complex and another resident complained that they were breeding on the property.
At this point, we’ve lost the plot. Now we’ve got the testimony of someone in the neighborhood saying that she had a neighbor, not necessarily the same person as the one accused in the video, was from Africa. In Rufo’s mind, this is a connection sufficient to establish guilt, and he had a knife, and he was reputed to have hunted for meat in the neighborhood.
Somebody had a blue grill, the same color as the grill in the video, therefore they must have been cooking cats.
There are many cats wandering about, further evidence. I’m going to have to confess: there are many feral and pet cats living in my neighborhood. I’m going to be in big trouble if ever I’m accused of cat-eating, because they’ll be able to point to a random cat strolling by and announce “A-ha! Opportunity! Therefore, guilty!”
Rufo imagines himself a reasonable man, so he offers a reasonable
interpretation.
To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs. But it does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its “fact checkers,” who insisted that this has never happened, and that any suggestion otherwise is somehow an expression of racism.
It does not confirm any particularity of Trump’s statement. It’s a different city and a different nationality. Notice how he now segues from a video of something indefinite on a grill to a definitive statement that “cats alone were on the grill,” something that has not been established by this investigation
. The question he should be asking is — what was Trump’s source for this garbled, ugly claim? I know, he’s just going to say it was people on television
, but what ought to be engaging Rufo is not whether there is some thin, tenuous thread of circumstance that can be attached post-hoc to Trump’s claim, but what was the actual basis for the claim?
Also, the fact checkers never insisted that this has never happened
. Every account I’ve read points out that there was an isolated instance of a mentally ill person eating a cat, so right away there’s an awareness that it’s entirely possible that there have been individual cases of such incidents. The expression of racism
arises from the fact that Rufo and Trump and a whole wing of conservatives are flatly accusing an entire group of people of reprehensible behavior on the basis of the flimsiest evidence. It arises from the fact that Rufo can blithely equate Congolese with Haitian.
It takes only a single exception, however, to falsify a hypothesis, and the logical next step, for any honest broker, is to ask if it is happening more often, and elsewhere. It is not implausible. Many developing nations, including the Congo and Haiti, have traditions of animal sacrifice or consumption of what Americans would consider household pets. And if this occurred in Dayton, where the migrant population is relatively small, it could be going on down the road in Springfield, where it is relatively much larger.
Keep in mind that the hypothesis that Rufo is falsifying is the idea that no one has ever eaten a cat, which is both trivially false and a hypothesis that no one has proposed. An honest broker would not suggest that this is the premise in contention; the concern is that it has become a Republican talking point that an entire large community of immigrants is habitually preying on household pets in Ohio.
This is simply not true.
You also cannot extrapolate from one poorly documented possible case in Dayton to conclude that it must be happening on a larger scale in Springfield. You also don’t get to plop down the claim that pet-eating is endemic in Congo and Haiti without a source and without evidence, trusting only in the assumed racist bias that of course, black people everywhere engage in behaviors that good, civilized white people deplore.
Rufo has managed to confirm only that a) he’s racist as fuck, and b) has no grasp of elementary logic. It’s about what I’d expect from a creationist fool and professional hatemonger. How can we doubt that Haitians are eating your cats if he has photographic evidence that blue barbecue grills exist?
Rufo is a successful propagandist and racist. This only confirms that fascists are racist.
We also have Vance flatly admitting the story was made up and the whole chain of weak garbled “telephone” game explaining all the (non) “ëvidence” for Tump’s utter bullshit racist claim. See Vance defends pet-eating claims, says he will ‘create stories’ to get media attention by MSNBC 7.57 mins long.
Plus :
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/trump/104357690
As well as :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-13/donald-trump-springfield-ohio-cats-and-dogs-rumour-origin/104348440
Snopes already ha s asimilar article backing this ^ up too
Pretty sure there’s no general culture of eating cat in eitehr haitian or “African” culture tho’not an expert or that familiar with those cultures. I imagine if there was it’d be much mor eof a thing and better known long before now?
@1. whywhywhy : Is he tho’ – successful that is!
Racist and fascist he definitely is.
That’s a lot of words just to say “I’m fucking racist”.
@2: I wish I could take Snopes at face value, but I can’t anymore. They get some heavy side-eye from me.
There’s a YouTuber named Tyler Oliveira who traveled to Springfield to talk to the residents there about this. The white residents are claiming the Haitian immigrants are receiving a lot of welfare and food stamps. One woman claims the Haitians call their gov’t-issued welfare cards “magic money cards” because they never run out of money.
This is nothing I haven’t heard before about immigrants even in my own East Coast city. And the only reason I’m bringing it up is because it really has my internal Bullshit Detector sounding when I hear that a certain group of ppl are receiving food stamps but also resorting to eating cats, dogs, and wild caught geese.
It’s as dumb as claiming some group is receiving free luxury houses but choosing to live in tent cities under a bridge. It’s a racist and very obviously stupid lie.
Why would anyone go through the trouble of catching a cat, skinning it, cutting it up and cooking it when America is overflowing with food. There are more accurate stories about people who eat quite well by dumpster diving. Furthermore, I think people would tend to steal a steak before doing the cat thing. The amount of free and cheap food available in America puts a pin int the hot air balloon known as cat eating in Ohio. Maybe, if there is a tradition in a country where they have always eaten certain animals (not considered a normal dietary staple), it can be extended to their future country/home. But in this case, there is no evidence cats or dogs are being consumed in Haiiti, or it would have been brought into the discussion already.
It’s been so wild to see this become the next big right wing talking point. “That wasn’t chicken” jokes were tired and gross 20 years ago.
@ ^ Autobot Silverwynde : Yeah, hence why I cited other sources & that is a sad thing.
Clip here of what Trump is inciting and Trump Goes FULL FASCIST In JAW DROPPING Moment | The Kyle Kulinski Show. (7 mins long) and his hateful literal nazi lies.
USA, you cannot, cannot, cannot allow this now fully gone fash scumbag to become POTUS again ever.
Because Jeff Dahmer, Rufo is killing and eating people.
Both white, so it must be true.
When an old man starts ranting about people eating cats and dogs, it’s time to get him to a doctor, not give him access to nuclear launch codes. Just sayin’.
‘Clearly chicken you weirdo’: People respond to JD Vance sharing video he claims shows migrants grilling cats
Trump and Vance’s disease, tabloid mind, is spreading to their followers. Trump wants to turn America into a reality show where he is the (only) star and the only news source who will have permission to cover the show will be the National Enquirer.
If anyone is cooking live-caught animals, as opposed to store-bought meat, they’d have to skin them first. So what would they (hypothetically) do with the skins of all those animals? (Yes, “all those” ‘cuz it’s allegedly lots of people eating lots of live-caught pets over a considerable period of time.) They might burn them, but have you ever smelled burning hair? Even a tiny pinch of it would stink up a room, so a whole animal’s pelt would be a huge and VERY SMELLY bonfire, which neighbors would have noticed and remarked on. And if they didn’t burn them, they’d soon be found and used as definitive proof of what, and whose, animals had been cooked and eaten.
Did any of these oh-so-eager “investigators” ever think to look for animal-skins? Did any of them even ASK about them? Did any cops ever get a warrant to search for animal-skins? ‘Cuz if you REALLY want to prove those grubby immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets, that would be a stark, visually-show-stopping, irrefutable way to prove it. So if people like Rufo aren’t even mentioning this possibility, that means either they’re inexcusably stupid, or they know fine well they have no case to begin with. (Or, you know, BOTH, ‘cuz as they say in the TV ads, “or” is such a limiting word.)
Oh, and then there’s bones, and they can be identified too. Even a so-so cook like me can see through all this BS…
Lots of stray cats breeding on the property. Now thats what I call urban farming and “buying” locally grown food. They should be praised for their environmentally friendly initiative.
Xtian terrorists and magat repugnantcants, logic eludes them, INTENTIONALLY. They want to create their own ‘reality’ to fit their own twisted little preconceptions. Reading the news, my bullshit meter has pegged so many times recently that I have had to disconnect it.
The vancehole even admitted that he has made up false stories to gain the spotlight. WTF!
@9 StevoR wrote: USA, you cannot. . . allow this now fully gone fash scumbag to become POTUS again ever.
I reply: I hope we won’t. I will vote against the magat and vancehole, But, sadly, I can’t answer for the drooling masses and the billionaires inciting them to support the magat. The liars have huge amounts of cash supporting them.
I was a kid in Columbus, Ohio. I watched my neighbor skin a pair of small furry animals he trapped in the neighborhood, preparatory to eating them. Don’t know if he grilled or baked them. Of course, he was white and the animals were squirrels, so no harm no foul – or was I deluded at the time?
When this absurd talking point went live, my first thought was always “How would you know?”. Even if we believe that there are people whose pets go missing, how would they know what became of them?
Do they have urban coyotes in Ohio? Because I think those are the destination of most of the cats that go missing around the places I’ve lived.
Of course, since it’s a deliberately created racist lie – there’s no need to question its internal logic. It’s made up, it’s always made up. When I was a kid it was ‘chinese restaurants will buy dead cats’, though nobody I knew ever said that they personally had seen or participated in such a sale, it was just something that was ‘known’.
Forgive me if I already said this in another thread, but we are not that far removed from a time when eating cats was not that uncommon. I have a cookbook from the 1800s that has a recipe for cat; you fry it with onions, smother it with gravy, and serve it with grits.
This particular racist myth has a long history in the USA.
At the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees entered the US in large numbers.
Soon after, the stories about cat and dog eating Southeast Asian refugees started to circulate. As usual, without any real proof.
Faye Stewart II, the GOP candidate for Oregon Senate, was repeating this lie in 2016, 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war.
The GOP doesn’t let go of old lies. They just add to them and recycle them.
All that matters to scum like Trump, Vance, Loomer, Rufo is that people continue to talk and write about this crap. The whole point is to foreground the issue of immigration, on which Trump has a big polling lead over Harris. It doesn’t matter in the least to them how many people believe the specific lies.
Joseph Goebbels is smiling in hell.
One refuting fact can prove a claim false. Yes,sure.
But the absence of such a fact does not prove the claim true. That is classic burden shifting.
@22 agreed.
Ignore the “look squirrel” and push the real issue instead.
#19 snarkhuntr
Yes, we have Coyotes. Coyotes were re-introduced in Ohio several years ago and have spread so far that we even see them in some of the outer urban areas of Cleveland. I had a convo with my little sister a few days before this racist rumor got started. She lives in Cleveland Hts., and says she has seen these odd stray dogs, that looked a little menacing. I told her they were no danger to people but that she should be careful of her pets.
DanDare @24:
Proving claims false seems to be increasingly irrelevant to many people these days. We point at creationists and anti-vaxxers, but I’ve come across people “on my side” who do exactly the same thing; find a source they trust (for some amazingly weird reason), and staunchly defend that source, despite the demonstrable falsity of the claims, and the defenders’ utter lack of qualification to judge their validity.
If you follow the trail here that Cathy is laying out we get to a spot in the video where Vance basically says he made up the story. https://cathiefromcanada.blogspot.com/2024/09/todays-roundup-sundays-vance-interview.html
It’s nothing more nor less than a recycled version of the Blood Libel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel). So as for recycling old tropes at 800-1000 years takes some beating.
‘All wood burns,’ states Sir Bedevere. ‘Therefore,’ he concludes, ‘all that burns is wood.’ This is, of course, pure bullshit.
https://monty-casinos.com/montypython/scripts/logician.php.html
@22. KG :
Wonder if it matters to them if people point out the truth that the migration “problem” remains an issue because the Repugs VETOED a bipartisan migration bill so the issue they supposed care so much is an issue theyare causing and effectively refusing to address.
There’s something that needs to be talked about mor eand made more widely known.
Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans-block-border-security-bill-campaign-border-chaos-rcna153607
[meta]
StevoR, consider whether this is a true or a false proposition:
If “It doesn’t matter in the least to them how many people believe the specific lies.”
then “Wonder if it matters to them if people point out the truth” is not fully thought out.
@ ^ John Morales : Okay, will have to think about that.
Initially it seems messy and, of course, affecting by degrees of “mattering” and to how many and which people. Specifics make for complications here as usual.
@ KG, #22
You’re missing something rather important with regard to Trump, which is that he specifically wants people to do violence because of what he said. This isn’t some grand strategy on his part; it’s something far more visceral and immediate.
There’s no greater high to a man like Trump than watching people harm themselves or others for his sake. We see this over and over at his rallies: any time his MAGATs attack people in front of him, he’s absolutely beside himself with glee. He doesn’t condemn the violence. He eggs it on, praises the offenders, and promises he’ll defend them (it’s a lie, but it’s a lie he tells in service of encouraging more violence).
He wants people to kill and die in his name- no more, no less. To a malignant narcissist, having the power of life and death over others is the ultimate rush. That’s a big part of why he’s so keen on executing people, but it’s even better when he doesn’t have to give explicit orders. He’s a god in his own mind, and his truest worshipers know without being told that human sacrifice will please him.
There’s some degree of that pathology present in the motivations of all the people you named, but out of the four only Trump has really been able to realize the dream. Any of them would do the same thing in his position, though, and that’s something we cannot afford to forget.
#34 vucodlak
I fully agree with this. There is no grand plan. That he derives some other benefits from causing the violence are just a bonus for him, (like distracting the public from his debate loss, or keeping the mainstream media from talking about his lack of policies).
I remember the description of his behavior during the Jan 6th event, of how he sat and watched the event for hours, making no attempt to stop it, or call for aid. I also think its not just the violence itself, but the terror and panic of political officials, (and any other victims), that also gives him a sense of glee.
I think it’s probably both. In any case, the people he’s likely to stir to violence don’t need to believe the lies – they will, rightly, regard Trump as having given them permission, indeed instruction, to carry out violence against Haitians, or anyone who “looks as though they might be Haitian”, to adapt Sam Harris. In the UK we recently had fascist riots triggered by a horrible murder of three young girls; online liars originally claimed the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker who had recently arrived on a small boat across the Channel – but it made not the slightest difference when the suspect was named as British born and almost certainly Christian, Muslims and asylum seekers were still targeted.
BTW, vucodlak@34, I do fully agree with your analysis of Trump’s visceral motives – in an earlier comment (on Mano’s blog?) I prefaced much the same point as I made @22 with a reference to Trump’s racism and sadistic pleasure in others’ suffering. I could have been clearer @22, but my “All that matters…” referred to their motives as regards the election.
StevoR@31,
I very much doubt that that point would make any difference. Most potential Trump voters won’t take it in, and those that do, will just regard it as demonstrating his cleverness.
Where I come from, cats got the nickname “roof rabbits”, because a skinned cat without head or tail is hard to distinguish from a rabbit to the untrained eye, hence the custom to always sell rabbits with a head. Which means two things:
One, people in general are notoriously bad at identified barbecue kitty
Two, good nice white European people have been eating cats for quite some time
Anyway, here is a video about a National Review editor letting a hard R word slip during an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b8vu2anFbA
When it comes to people eating animals perhaps instead of looking at migrants the Repugs should look at their new supporter RFK? Unsettling photo appears to show RFK Jr. with barbequed carcass of dog – New York Post (Minute and seven seconds long.) WARNING : Some sleazy sexual references and possible sexual exploitation by RFK also mentioned there.
I wonder if Kristy Noem and RFK are going to go out hunting or head to any more gravel pits together now they’re sharing a party? (Time machine trip potential, RFK claims he ate goat not dog – maybe he’ll travel back to that day with Noem and take a taste test to compare them? Ewww.. Shuddders.)
Trump’s behavior had me looking into the so-called “dark tetrad” more, and I think I may have a few observations.
The classic “dark triad” consists of psychopathy, machiavellianism, and narcissism; to which the “dark tetrad” adds sadism. Trump seems to be a rich wellspring of all four.
Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy, or at least sympathy, for others, along with poor impulse control as the second most consistent symptom/feature/whatever. I think the poor impulse control might be explainable as a consequence of the lack of sympathy, in the specific case of lack of sympathy for the psychopath’s own future self. Indeed a psychopath seems unmoved by aversive stimuli in general, while exhibiting sensation-seeking behavior. This seems in curious juxtaposition with depression, whose victims seem unmoved by normally-rewarding stimuli. Depression damps the positive; psychopathy damps the negative.
Machiavellianism seems to involve trust and control issues. Preferring to manipulate other people into doing what one wishes done over simply asking for or negotiating for same points to either problems trusting others to do so without coercion or manipulation or a psychological need to be in control. Manipulation puts you in control, or at least lets you believe you are, versus negotiation where the other person may say “no” or ask for more than you were expecting. In either case, machiavellians are disturbed by, even frightened by other people’s autonomy.
Narcissism has the pattern of an addiction. You may have heard of the term “narcissistic supply”. Well, narcissists act like people who are addicted to narcissistic supply. In particular, it seems unlikely to me they genuinely and unreservedly think extremely highly of themselves; rather, they seem desperate for constant reassurance that they are great and they are loved. This speaks to some deep insecurities. Also clear is that all the narcissistic supply in the world doesn’t permanently assuage their fears and self-doubt, or they would improve, rather than get worse, over time.
As for sadism, sadism is about one thing and one thing only: Power. Distinct from the machiavellian need for control, which is about ensuring their own needs and wants can be met and they’re not left twisting in the wind by the whims of others, the sadist desires to be the one calling the shots for other people, deciding whether they get anything or not. Even when a sadist appears to do something generous, in the end it’s about demonstrating power. But the surest demonstration of power over another person is forcing them to endure something they would never choose to willingly. So, the ultimate proof of power is to torture someone else; getting others killed comes a close second, and is what we see Trump taking such glee in elsewhere in this thread.
At least two of the traits point to bad parenting as a possible culprit. The machiavellian’s need for control points to neglect, while the narcissist’s need for adulation points to abandonment and/or conditional affection, withheld at times by strict (or manipulative) parents. Neglect in two forms could explain two of the dark tetrad traits. Sadism is more likely to result from overt abuse: active bad acts, especially violence, visited upon the helpless child by adults. Power’s value in the end is as a threat, a deterrent, and the thing one most wants to deter is having someone else do those things to you. Spending 18 years being smacked about teaches one lesson above all others: “get big and strong so as to be the one doing the smacking from then on”.
Where does psychopathy fit into this picture? Perhaps a childhood rife with maltreatment makes one inured to negative stimuli eventually; but keep in mind that psychopaths do seem to avoid painful things in the moment. They just lack sympathy for painful things happening at other times or to other people. It may be that they more specifically become inured to the distress of others. This could be expected if a child from an abusive household was forced to bear witness to abuse and neglect of siblings, or others (their mother at the hands of their father, particularly), while helpless to intervene (and likely to get smacked for trying). Sympathy was taught out of them; in many cases, even beat out of them.
Trump, of course, is known to have come from a spectacularly abusive family background. It is unsurprising, then, that he is spectacularly imbued with these four antisocial personality traits, and it is likely his own abusive behavior (likely including sexual, in Ivanka’s case) has imbued his own offspring with them as well. (Certainly Don Jr. and Ivanka have both exhibited machiavellian tendencies and a disdain for the rule of law nearly equal to their father’s, particularly on display with their various corrupt dealings and activities during Trump’s term. Ivanka misused her father’s political office to boost her business ventures and get political favors for her real-estate mogul-scumbag husband, and Don Jr. was point man for that treasonous meeting with Russian agents in 2016 that traded a promise to repeal the Magnitsky sanctions for oppo research on Clinton.)
Unfortunately, we won’t have seen the last of Trump family dark tetrad behaviors after the Don shuffles off his mortal coil. We can only hope the kids end up in no more position to do further damage than his old man was: corrupt businesspersons with a surfeit of shady and racist dealings but never in a position to bring down a republic and end the rule of law for a third of a billion people, let alone to start a world war or a worldwide economic depression.
In light of the above, it is worth noting that conservatism seems to be nothing more or less than the dark tetrad traits being exercised on behalf of a group rather than an individual.
The sadism is evident in the treatment of the “outgroups the law must bind but not protect”. The conservative lack of qualms with cheating to gain political power fits squarely with machiavellianism, and every time they wax rhapsodic about how modern technology is only possible because of “the white race”, or sing paeans to how great and wonderful Christianity is, that would be the group-analogue of narcissism on display. The psychopathy is evident between the lack of empathy for the suffering endured by outgroup members harmed by their laws and the ruinous shortsightedness that has brought the GOP to the brink of ruin. (If they lose this election, it’s the political wilderness for them for quite a while; if they “win” it by cheating hard enough, they’re going to do a victory lap, screw everyone who isn’t them, and then promptly fall to infighting, not least of it when the fundie Protestants and fundie Catholics both try to implement their own Gilead-like visions of theocracy simultaneously. There’s no way this ends with the GOP not in tatters, even if those tatters have technically attained single-party rule. The only thing holding it together right now is loyalty to Trump, who is 80ish and in fast-declining health; within years, if not months, he’s going to be replaced by a howling power vacuum that will surround itself with the mother of all political hurricanes, especially if the GOP still holds any significant levers of power.)