Presidential Debate Was a Cat-astrophe
Plus: An Evangelical Confession
How did a false, absurd, racist, xenophobic conspiracy end up in a presidential debate?
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there," former president Donald Trump said in what will likely be remembered as one of the strangest moments in the history of presidential debates.
The Springfield Trump is referring to is the one in Ohio and the people he referenced are Haitian immigrants who are there legally on temporary work permits to fill the many needed jobs in manufacturing and warehouses. As with most crazed conspiracies these days, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the rumor that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets began, but it spread quickly on right-wing media, including neo-Nazis. According to The Washington Post, 159 right-wing influencers and 23 Republican politicians, candidates or party officials helped spread the disinformation online.
After first putting the rumor out there, the search for evidence then began, and this is what right-wingers found:
In August, a black woman was arrested for killing and eating a cat in her driveway, but she wasn't Haitian, an immigrant, or in Springfield.
Someone reported to police that they saw four Haitian immigrants carrying geese.
That's it. That's the entirety of the supposed "evidence" being presented that Haitian immigrants are stealing pets and eating them.
From there, the fact that the misinformation spread online is itself presented as evidence. “There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening," Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said on CNN, which is an "appeal to popularity" logical fallacy. Vice presidential nominee and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance defended spreading the disinformation by claiming that while their is no evidence it's true, there's also no evidence it's not true, which is an "argument from ignorance" logical fallacy.
Andrew Eggar at The Bulwark reports,
Meanwhile, a horde of YouTubers and right-wing influencers have descended on Springfield, all hoping to find smoking-gun evidence of pet-cheffery in order to give proof to the lie they’ve helped launch. What they’ve found is locals echoing back their own rumors to them: “Then I heard that stuff on Facebook,” one Springfield woman told Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, “and I thought, I better watch my dogs!”
This point bears repeating. What do many residents of Springfield itself have in common with Bill Hagerty, a random shill from two states away? They’re all just repeating nonsense they saw on the internet. Not a single person who has lost a pet of their own has come forward with their story. But plenty of Springfield natives are now convinced that Haitian immigrants one subdivision over are snatching dogs and cats by the truckload.
But why are so many people believing such a ridiculous story without a shred of evidence? Here is David French's answer:
In the days after Jan. 6, 2021, I argued that years of extreme right-wing rhetoric had made millions of ordinary voters vulnerable to the wildest of ideas. If you watch right-wing television — or if you listen to right-wing radio — you will hear the most vicious insults against Democrats and the media over and over. It’s a constant drumbeat of inflammatory rhetoric: “They” hate America. “They” hate Christians. “They” will destroy our country.
And few populations have been more thoroughly demonized during the age of Trump than immigrants. From the opening speech of his first campaign (when he said immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”), Trump has been painting a lurid and terrifying picture of the immigrant threat.
Hear this long enough, and it seeps into your bones. You begin to develop a level of antipathy and distrust so profound that you are capable of believing just about anything about your opponents. After all, if Democrats are “demoncrats,” what won’t they do to attain power? If the immigrant community is full of rapists and drug dealers, how hard is it to imagine that they might kill and eat cats and dogs, never mind ducks?
Another way of putting it is that animosity fuels gullibility. If you like or respect someone, you’re immediately skeptical of negative claims, and the more outlandish the claim, the more skeptical you’ll be. But if you loathe a person or a population, in a perverse way you become more receptive to the worst stories. After all, they’re the ones that vindicate your hatred the most.
You can read the whole thing with this gift link.
Evangelical Confession
"Our Confession of Evangelical Conviction" was published last Friday, signed by over 300 evangelical pastors and leaders. I'm grateful to be one of the initial signers. AVC was one of many groups working to bring this confession to fruition.
As I've shared many times in this newsletter and in book chapters (here and here), evangelicals have been torn in different directions over the last eight years or so. Many, sadly, have been led by pastors and other leaders down a path of hyper-polarization and extremism, where the gospel of Jesus Christ is being misused as a tool for partisan political mobilization. The Confession points to an alternative. It rejects political idolatry while upholding the ancient truths that have long been foundational for evangelicals.
I know that readers of this newsletter have a variety of faith backgrounds. For our evangelicals readers, I encourage you to read the statement and sign if you agree with it. (Click on "Add Your Name" in the upper-right.) For our non-evangelical readers, please share it with your evangelical friends.
What Else We're Reading
Anne Applebaum: “The Americans Who Yearn for Anti-American Propaganda”
These pundits and their audience are not manipulated by Russian, Chinese, and other autocrats who sometimes fill their social-media feeds. The relationship goes the other way around; Russian, Chinese, and other influence operations are designed to spread the views of Americans who actively and enthusiastically support the autocratic narrative. You may have laughed at Trump’s rant on Tuesday night: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.” But that language is meant to reach an audience already primed to believe that Kamala Harris, as Trump himself said, is “destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn’t have a chance of success. Not only success. We’ll end up being Venezuela on steroids.”
The Guardian: “Christian group recruits ‘Trojan horse’ election skeptics as US poll workers”
A Christian political operative has teamed up with charismatic preachers to enroll election skeptics as poll workers across the country, using a Donald Trump-aligned swing state tour to enlist support in the effort.
Joshua Standifer, who leads the group called Lion of Judah, describes the effort as a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers”, which will help them identify alleged voter fraud and serve as “the first step on the path to victory this Fall”, according to his website.
Semafor: “Mysterious influencer network pushed sexual smears of Harris”
The network that would push the sexual smears began with more run-of-the-mill Republican talking points, but it was unusual in one way, a person who participated in its video calls said: None of the participants identified themselves by name, and all joined calls with their cameras off to preserve their mutual anonymity. However, Semafor was able to identify one of them: former New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who spoke up on one conference call to object when the parties discussed making sexual allegations against Harris.
Study: “Trump, Twitter, and truth judgments: The effects of “disputed” tags and political knowledge on the judged truthfulness of election misinformation”
Summary:
Misinformation has sown distrust in the legitimacy of American elections. Nowhere has this been more concerning than in the 2020 U.S. presidential election wherein Donald Trump falsely declared that it was stolen through fraud. Although social media platforms attempted to dispute Trump’s false claims by attaching soft moderation tags to his posts, little is known about the effectiveness of this strategy. We experimentally tested the use of “disputed” tags on Trump’s Twitter posts as a means of curbing election misinformation. Trump voters with high political knowledge judged election misinformation as more truthful when Trump’s claims included Twitter’s disputed tags compared to a control condition. Although Biden voters were largely unaffected by these soft moderation tags, third-party and non-voters were slightly less likely to judge election misinformation as true. Finally, little to no evidence was found for meaningful changes in beliefs about election fraud or fairness. These findings raise questions about the effectiveness of soft moderation tags in disputing highly prevalent or widely spread misinformation.
WaPo: “Elon Musk’s misleading election claims reach millions and alarm election officials”
Musk’s online utterances don’t stay online. His false and misleading election posts add to the deluge of inaccurate information plaguing voting officials across the country. Election officials say his posts about supposed voter fraud often coincide with an increase in baseless requests to purge voter rolls and heighten their worry over violent threats. Experts say Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of misinformation because his digital following stretches well beyond the political realm and into the technology and investment sectors, where his business achievements have earned him credibility.
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