For last week’s newsletter, I wrote about former president Donald Trump’s false claim during the presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them. Here is more information that we’ve learned since then.
NewsGuard tracked down the origin of the story and interviewed those involved. This is what happened: Erika Lee heard the story from her neighbor Kimberly Newton who heard from a friend who was an acquaintance of the alleged cat owner. Lee posted this third-hand information to Facebook, which then went viral online through right-wing influencers.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton told NewsGuard. “I don’t have any proof,” she added.
Lee took down the original post and expressed regret over what happened. Speaking through sobs, she told The New York Times, “I was not raised with hate. My whole family is biracial. I never wanted to cause problems for anyone.”
The Wall Street Journal tracked down the cat owner who started the rumor, Anna Kilgore, whose cat, Miss Sassy, went missing but was found a few days later in Kilgore’s basement. Kilgore apologized for insinuating that her Haitian neighbors played a role in Miss Sassy’s disappearance.
The neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe took credit for boosting the false claim that ended up in a presidential debate. Before Lee’s Facebook post, Blood Tribe had been spreading false rumors about immigrants eating geese and pets. After the presidential debate, a Blood Tribe leader bragged on social media that they had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness” along with a clip of Trump at the debate.
Blood Tribe had marched in Springfield under swastika flags just weeks before the debate, according to Military.com. A Blood Tribe leader spoke at a Springfield City Council meeting last month and was escorted out for making threats.
While Blood Tribe has a small social media following, other right-wing accounts with large followings, such as @EndWokeness and Libs of TikTok, have helped amplify anti-immigrant messages related to Springfield.
Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, has been one of the most outspoken voices condemning Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, for continuing to spread the debunked rumor.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, DeWine wrote,
As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.
The Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border is a very important issue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are talking about and one that the American people are rightfully deeply concerned about. But their verbal attacks against these Haitians — who are legally present in the United States — dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.
The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers — both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because, back in their birthplace, Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for cheering on the wrong team in a soccer match.
Read the whole thing with this gift link.
When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment, and ask who abducted our consciences. That’s especially true for those of us who, like me, claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who told us that on the Day of Judgment, “people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Mt 12:36).
For many Haitian immigrants, Sunday mornings in Springfield, Ohio, are spent joyfully worshipping God as they sing and pray in their native Creole. This Sunday, they needed that uplifting balm more than ever.
Their community is reeling — confused, frustrated, hurt — from false accusations that they are eating their neighbor’s cats and dogs. The now viral and highly politicized rumors are being fueled by former President Donald Trump, his running mate JD Vance and others, and violent threats against the community are upending daily life in their city.
“Jesus is with us in truth, and the truth is that Haitians are not eating pets and geese in Springfield,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, preaching at Central Christian Church. He invited community members to join his congregation in prayer and peaceful protest of the false rumors leveled against their Haitian neighbors.
With less than two months to go until Election Day, and with former President Donald Trump continuing to repeat baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the issue of election integrity will likely remain at the forefront of many voters’ minds.
Election officials from seven battleground states convened in Atlanta last week to compare notes and prepare for Election Day. Four of them — one Democrat and three Republicans — spoke with CBS News about the stress and anxiety of their jobs, and also their conviction that elections are conducted freely and fairly.
Read or watch the whole thing.
Imagine the unthinkable: a mass shooting of members of Congress that leaves a large swath of the country unrepresented and shifts the balance of political power in Washington.
In the current political environment, such an outbreak of violence is not as unthinkable as it used to be, according to a bipartisan collection of House members. The attempted assassination of members at a congressional baseball team practice in 2017, the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a dramatic spike in threats against members and, most recently, a possible second assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump highlight the need for Congress to ensure it can continue to govern in the aftermath of mass violence, they said.
Editor’s Summary
Beliefs in conspiracies that a US election was stolen incited an attempted insurrection on 6 January 2021. Another conspiracy alleging that Germany’s COVID-19 restrictions were motivated by nefarious intentions sparked violent protests at Berlin’s Reichstag parliament building in August 2020. Amid growing threats to democracy, Costello et al. investigated whether dialogs with a generative artificial intelligence (AI) interface could convince people to abandon their conspiratorial beliefs (see the Perspective by Bago and Bonnefon). Human participants described a conspiracy theory that they subscribed to, and the AI then engaged in persuasive arguments with them that refuted their beliefs with evidence. The AI chatbot’s ability to sustain tailored counterarguments and personalized in-depth conversations reduced their beliefs in conspiracies for months, challenging research suggesting that such beliefs are impervious to change. This intervention illustrates how deploying AI may mitigate conflicts and serve society. —Ekeoma Uzogara
Link.
Abstract
Prior research demonstrates that news-related social media posts using negative language are re-posted more, rewarding users who produce negative content. We investigate whether negative material from external news sites is also introduced to social media through more user posts, offering comparable incentives for journalists to adopt a negative tone. Data from four US and UK news sites (95,282 articles) and two social media platforms (579,182,075 posts on Facebook and Twitter, now X) show social media users are 1.91 times more likely to share links to negative news articles. The impact of negativity varies by news site and social media platform and, for political articles, is moderated by topic focus, with users showing a greater inclination to share negative articles referring to opposing political groups. Additionally, negativity amplifies news dissemination on social media to a greater extent when accounting for the re-sharing of user posts containing article links. These findings suggest a higher prevalence of negatively toned articles on Facebook and Twitter compared to online news sites. Further, should journalists respond to the incentives created by the heightened sharing of negative articles to social media platforms, this could even increase negative news exposure for those who do not use social media.
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