Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

The claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating housecats is a meme and conspiracy theory that came out of nowhere. I saw my first “illegal alien eating cats” meme, an internet post that featured the 80s sitcom character “Alf,” on Monday morning. By Tuesday night, the whole country was talking about eating cats after Donald Trump brought up the claim during the presidential debate. 

Per multiple outlets, the story begins in Springfield, Ohio with a Facebook post. Snopes has screenshots of the original post in a neighborhood group in which a user relates a story allegedly passed along by their neighbor’s daughter’s friend. The woman supposedly lost her cat and then found it at a nearby house where Haitian immigrants lived “hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering.” The post goes on to say the author had “been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese, as I was told that last bit by rangers and police.” 

The claim was somehow picked up by the End Wokeness Twitter account and went viral from there. Even days before the debate, there were a multitude of Trump-saves-the-animals memes popping up all over the internet. 

The facts are that there are Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, but there is no evidence that they are eating pets. 

The backstory for the Haitian immigrant population is that Haiti has been a basket case for a long time, but recent unrest has spurred many Haitians to seek a better life elsewhere. The New York Times reported earlier this month that as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants had settled in the Springfield area over the past few years, lured there by 18,000 new manufacturing jobs that the city’s native labor force could not fill. 

But the Haitians were not illegal immigrants as many suppose. The US has granted Haitian immigrants temporary protected status since 2011 due to the economic and political hardships that they face in their home country. That status enables Haitians to live and work in the US, a situation that benefits both employers and immigrants. 

It’s a story as old as time. A rapid influx of immigrants into a small-ish city puts a strain on the community and government services. Schools get crowded and the homegrown residents feel uneasy about the new masses of people who look and sound different. It’s easy for resentment to build. Sometimes when that happens, people like to stir the pot. 

This is especially true when there is a tragedy like the school bus accident caused by a Haitian immigrant that left an 11-year-old boy dead and injured numerous others. It isn’t clear that the driver’s immigration status had anything to do with the accident, but such incidents can translate into anger at entire immigrant communities. (For the record, the boy’s father says he resents the Trump campaign using his son’s death for political purposes.)

Stirring the pot is probably what happened with the Facebook post. The user said that police and park rangers were aware of the animal killings, but city officials denied this claim before the debate. 

“We have not been able to verify any credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue told local news outlets on September 10. City officials also denied that animals in parks were being killed or that there were reports of Haitians “squatting” or littering front of homes. The complaints were limited to speeding and distracted driving. 

So the original Facebook post is busted. The user claimed that police and rangers were aware of the animal killings, but the city has not found evidence of such crimes.

There was a real case of an Ohio woman eating a cat, but it did not originate in Springfield. More than 100 miles away in Canton, 27-year-old Allexis Ferrell was arrested on August 16 for killing and eating a cat. But as WBNS reports, Ferrell is neither Haitian nor an immigrant and was reportedly born in Ohio. 

Another picture used by some to justify the viral claims shows a black man carrying a dead goose down the street. This picture is also not from Springfield and originated on Reddit thread about things you see while driving a bus in Columbus, Ohio, and predates the Springfield claims. The man who took the picture says that right-wing media is using it out of context and there is no evidence that it represents an animal killing by immigrants.

The sole piece of evidence that I have found for the claims is a Federalist report of a police call that alleged that four Haitian men were stealing geese from a city park in Springfield. The Federalist provides no corroboration of the accuracy of the report or whether the call was related to a legitimate crime by immigrants.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good meme craze. 

Enter Donald Trump. The former president ensured himself a place in presidential debate trivia history when he stated Tuesday night, “The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.”

We don’t know what “people on television” Donald Trump was watching, but we do know that Trump is an internet lurker and right-wing news watcher. By that point, the cat-eating memes had been shared by such notable accounts as Ted Cruz, the House Judiciary GOP, and JD Vance (who Trump apparently doesn’t talk to). 

It has been said that the Trump Administration was like being governed by the comments section of a Republican Facebook group, and this incident only serves as further proof of the validity of that statement. Trump saw it on the internet or a Republican-leaning television network and blindly accepted it as truth. Honestly, this isn’t much different from the millions of other Boomers who believe everything on Facebook and Fox News except that Donald Trump is competing to have the keys to the nuclear launch codes and what the Supreme Court now holds is absolute immunity for official acts. 

I’m not going to claim that being naive about internet lies is unique to Boomers or Republicans. Democrats have fallen for a lot of hysteria about Project 2025, some of which is based in reality and some not, and some believe the assassination attempt on Trump was a hoax. I’ve even been guilty of biting on some internet hoaxes myself, but Boomers do have a reputation for believing and sharing internet hoaxes from the paranoia that Facebook is banning Bible verses to the fear that Apple is letting criminals steal your data by tapping your phone to believing that you preserve legal rights to your social media pictures by resetting the system through copying and pasting a status message. You know what I’m talking about, and I think presidents need better discernment.

Even Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel was caught repeating bad information this week. Cantore told a story about a police officer telling his crew that a nonvenomous water snake was the product of crossbreeding between a rattlesnake and a copperhead. The officer may have been playing with the out-of-town film crew or he may have been passing along an old wives tale, but either way, Cantore needed a good fact-checker before going on-air with the story.

As I write this, I’m still seeing people who believe Trump’s thoroughly debunked claims. The story will never go away because now Donald Trump has said it, and Trump must be defended at all costs. Anything tangentially related to Springfield Haitians eating pets will be accepted as proof that Trump knew what he was talking about after all. This tendency to treat Trump as infallible is one of the things that makes MAGA weird.

A few days ago, I shared a tweet by Erick Erickson in which he went on a rant about the “stupid MF’ers” in the Republican media universe who “just got Trump to repeat your lie about the pets.” Erickson has a point that Trump was manipulated and misled by the viral lies. And Trump was also easily manipulated by Kamala Harris. The Former Guy took every piece of bait she laid out and danced to her tune most of the night. 

That brings us to the question of fitness. Is Trump really fit to be president if he is so easily misled and manipulated? I think the answer to that is clear. Just imagine how a crafty dictator like Vladimir Putin could manipulate The Former Guy… and possibly already has.

On top of the fact that they are false, the pet-eating conspiracy claims exhibit the worst side of MAGA. They seek to sow racial strife on a false basis, and they revel in the poverty of recent immigrants (who are not illegal I’ll stress again). The rumors are a blatant attempt to divide communities and instill anger and hatred against immigrants.

Donald Trump’s political career has been built on lies. He is easily the most prolific liar of any mainstream (to use the term loosely) politician that I have ever seen. It will be a fitting end to his political career if he loses the election in part because he mindlessly repeated an internet conspiracy theory with racist undertones. 

What is it that they say about karma being a female dog?

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