If you were confused on Monday by the sudden proliferation of social media memes featuring AI-generated images of Donald Trump surrounded by kittens and ducks, or saving them from Haitians mobs, let me explain.
Residents of Springfield, Ohio, a town of about 60,000 people, have been complaining recently about the influx of some 20,000 Haitian immigrants over the past three years, which has transformed their community in profound and disturbing ways. Some have claimed the Haitians are stealing people’s cats and dogs and slaughtering them to eat. Others have said they’re grabbing ducks and geese from the local park and decapitating them.
Corporate media were quick to publish stories on Monday “debunking” these claims, citing local police and municipal officials who say there have been no reports of missing pets or decapitated ducks in the park. Never mind that those officials have no way of knowing whether this is really happening, the point of such stories was to shame the people who dare to notice the problems that arise when you inundate a community with foreigners.
And of course it’s not just the slaughtering of animals that’s a problem in Springfield. The local community health clinic, for example, has been overwhelmed with Haitian patients in recent years, with a 13-fold increase from 2021 to 2023, from 115 to 1,500 according to the New York Times. The public school system had to hire two dozen Haitian-Creole interpreters and now spends ten times more on translation services compared to four years ago because so many school
