About a month ago on CNN, Yale Law School alumnus JD Vance admitted that he is willing “to create stories so that the media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.” 

To clarify what kind of stories Vance was creating: since September, far-right social media groups spread rumors that Haitian immigrants have been eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. Rather than denouncing these baseless claims, Donald Trump and JD Vance doubled down, continuing to amplify these rumors on major news outlets and even during the presidential debate. 

This is how we got “they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats” on our Instagram Reels. 

Words have consequences, especially when politicians with immense power and influence say them. Springfield communities received “at least 33 bomb threats” after these rumors went viral. Now, Springfield schools require a daily bomb sweep. 

As a first-generation immigrant from China, such xenophobic rhetoric is not new to me. Asian Americans, in particular, deal with the “eating domestic pets” stereotype. What does surprise me is simply how normalized explicit bigotry has become within mainstream American politics. This election cycle, it’s not even a dog whistle — it’s a clarion call to the worst impulses of our past, impulses that politicians and the richest man on Earth are embracing. 

Surprising? Perhaps. But it is not hard to see how we got here. Eight years of Trump and his acolytes have numbed the American public to racism. Since he walked down his tacky golden escalator in 2015, Trump has called Mexicans “rapists,” told non-white congresswomen to “go back [to] where they came from” and labeled the coronavirus as “Kung flu.” Now our Haitian brothers and sisters are facing the same lies, and legal immigrants are threatened with deportation. His modus operandi couldn’t be clearer. 

One might wonder, do Trump and Vance have a method behind the hatred? Yes. By drumming up fears over immigration, with explicit racial overtones, they hope to appeal to voters who are frustrated by Joe Biden’s border policy. 

This is nothing new for the American right. Consider what Trump and Vance are not talking about when they spread lies about migrants. They’re not talking about a detailed solution for the border, one that would deport 15 to 20 million people. A recent report by the American Immigration Council found that this would cost over $88 billion per year, which triples the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) combined, and it could cause nearly one million US citizens to lose their jobs. 

When Trump and Vance lie about Haitians eating cats, they aren’t talking about the possibility that Trump might appoint two more hard-right Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and Chevron. They’re not talking about Project 2025, which includes plans to rip away a woman’s right to choose nationwide and dismantling the Department of Education. 

They’re not talking about their plans to pardon the insurrectionists and rioters who broke into the Capitol on January 6th. They’re not talking about how Trump said he would “terminate” the Constitution and be a “dictator” on “day one.”

It is the American far right’s favorite tactic to operate with racism and extremism. Seventy years ago, Lyndon Johnson remarked: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” 

This is precisely what is worrying about the current state of affairs; this messaging is effective. Not only does it appeal to extreme voters, but it also avoids any serious criticism at the policy level. Trump and Vance do not have to defend their flawed and ridiculous plans because they have a thick cloak of racism to cover it. Only their extreme rhetoric makes the news headlines and social media virality, not the immaturity of their policies. 

Illegal immigration as an issue is no longer even discussed as a matter of national security but merely as a way for politicians to fearmonger. Their extreme rhetoric should be receiving much more attention and criticism from academics, intellectuals and institutions that are concerned about American democracy and civil debate. 

This November, America faces a choice. Trump and Vance represent the worst tradition in American politics: a divide-and-conquer, us-vs-them strategy on behalf of America’s plutocrats. It is a tradition with a long history, dating back to before the Civil War. We have a decision to make. Don’t let racism distract us. 

THOMAS LIN is a first year in Morse College. He can be reached at thomas.lin@yale.edu.