Over There Is Not Right Here

After Vance’s modern blood libel about immigrants stealing and eating pets was easily debunked, he doubled down on his slurs, The senator fanned an outrage that he himself had generated, upending everyday life in Springfield. Contingents of the Proud Boys and Blood Tribe hate groups showed up. The Ku Klux Klan dropped fliers. While the world watched, bomb threats shut down hospitals, schools, and city buildings in this city of 59,000 people, while the world watched.

Yet Vance persisted. It became apparent that he hadn’t merely fallen prey to an urban legend but had an agenda that made openly fabricating a threat from Haitians useful. Donald Trump likewise repeated the lies at top volume from the presidential debate stage before a national audience.

Spreading racist ideas has become part of the personal brand for both men, but why exactly were the Republican candidates doing it about one small city in Ohio? They seemed bent on summoning violence on a community, while avoiding any responsibility for it. To foster actual violence in Springfield was their only path to making their lies true, to proving that it was dangerous to let Haitian immigrants into American hometowns because one way or another, it would lead to harm—even if they had to inspire their followers to commit it.

The kind of outrage egged on by Vance in Springfield has many precedents, and Trump’s use of this kind of stochastic terrorism led to the bloody attempted coup on January 6, 2021. But looking to the last century for examples to help ponder our historical moment, I believe the ending in Springfield isn’t likely to be the one Trump and Vance want. 

The Kristallnacht that wasn’t

On the morning of October 3, 1941, bombs exploded at seven synagogues and a Jewish prayer house in Paris, injuring six. France had fallen to Hitler’s army a year before, and right-wing extremists hoped to cement fascist rule. To that end, a French group founded by rabid antisemite Eugène Deloncle had collaborated with Gestapo tacticians to unleash a wave of violence against Jews in Occupied France.

These fascists hoped to spark violence in the streets of Paris on the epic scale of Kristallnacht, when people had taken to the streets to terrorize Jewish populations across Germany and Austria. Carefully instigated by the Nazis three years earlier, Kristallnacht had triggered widespread violence and looting, with the government taking part, too, arresting some 30,000 Jews in the Reich and sending them to concentration camps.

The events of Kristallnacht would become notorious in history as the first massive roundup and detention of Jews in the Nazi camp system simply for being Jewish. It was a key step in normalizing violence, setting the stage for a future genocide across Europe.

The German Kristallnacht fulfilled its architects’ wildest dreams, but the attempt to launch a similar uprising in France failed. With his acts of sabotage, Deloncle imagined he would destroy France in order to save it. But no street riots broke out in response. If they were lackadaisical in defending their Jewish neighbors, the French people likewise neglected to rise up against them.

The failure was not due to a lack of antisemitism in France. For years, the far right had actively linked anti-communism with antisemitism, representing them as the same battle. Newspapers and propaganda had railed against Jewish influence. The country had been polarized over scapegoating its Jewish residents for decades, most famously in the Dreyfus Affair.

The Germans were well aware of all this, and had even had a hand in some of it—which made the response in Paris even more puzzling to them.

“Although they do not like the Jews,” observed the German military command’s Propaganda-Abteilung newspaper, “the French are displeased when they see Jews massacred and when their places of worship are blown up.”

The fascist organization Eugène Deloncle founded before the war, La Cagoule (The Hood) had shared parts of its costume and its tactics with the Ku Klux Klan. In his attempts to launch a French Kristallnacht, Deloncle’s error had been to use a similar brand of terrorism.

They were simply too aggressive too soon, even for the Vichy era, shocking the public with their crude violence. “The dynamiting of Paris synagogues,” wrote historian Bertram Gordon, “alienated many whose support Deloncle would need in a mass movement.” 

By the time the Nazis launched Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938, fascism had ruled for five years—years during which the Nazis had passed legislation, built a concentration camp system, set up a police state, and perhaps most importantly, crafted an overarching, relentless propaganda machine to infect the minds of German citizens with conspiracy theories and antisemitic lies.

In 1941, Nazi control of France was far less absolute. They were dependent on collaborators to run society at every level. A pro-fascist propaganda machine had long existed in France, but it was not as adept or unified and had not had been unilaterally imposed nationwide for years under conditions of low-grade terror.

The French people were no less vulnerable to these ideas than Germans were. But in France, the process of brainwashing via propaganda and scapegoating was incomplete.

 Springfield resists

How does this French history speak to what’s happening in Springfield, where there have been bomb threats but as of yet no bombs? The failure to spark a vast pogrom nearly eight decades ago overseas helps explain the failure by Vance, Trump, and others to turn Springfield into a tinderbox and further their odds of taking power. It tells us something primal about the role of propaganda in politics.

Trump is a clumsy, undisciplined tactician. And while Vance dispenses blatant untruths more convincingly, he’s often inept, and voters find him repellent. Their methods have likewise been too crude, too soon.

Rob Rue, the Republican mayor of Springfield who just took office in January, countered their lies within days, saying, “Your pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio.”

Though a part-time official mayor for less than a year, he showed more humanity and leadership than politicians hoping to run the country. He acknowledged the problems the community was facing due to so much recent growth, from language issues in schools to housing costs. But he also talked about the benefits Haitian immigrants had brought to the town, reviving its prospects for the future.

The Republican governor of Ohio and city officials followed suit, disputing misrepresentations about Springfield. When Vance tried to switch tracks, claiming a “massive rise” in infectious diseases due to Haitian arrivals, public health officials corrected his misdirection. The city commission has since held meetings, letting people speak about their hopes and fears for the town. Some people were removed for being too disorderly, but speakers with a wide range of views were allowed to speak. City functions and civic order remain turbulent, but in place.

Make no mistake—violence could still erupt in Springfield. A businessman who praised Haitian workers at his company for a PBS story has since received what the FBI considers credible death threats. And Congressman Clay Higgins certainly understood the assignment from Vance and Trump. He posted on Twitter about Haitians, who are living in Springfield legally today, writing that “All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country by January 20,” when he envisions Trump returning to power.

The Republican platform demands the violent dislocation of tens of millions of people, and Trump aides aim to strip even naturalized US citizens of their rights. Policies like these sound soothing to some voters, who have come to believe lies about faraway cities made to sound dangerous or a border region portrayed as a lawless inferno threatening to engulf the nation.

But when romanticized violence and hate are transplanted from use in some abstract, distant place to everyone’s hometown, the public often has a different reaction. Enthusiasm for backyard fascism exists in America, but it’s supported by a smaller percentage of people than is willing for those policies to be applied somewhere else in the country, against anonymous targets.

Over there is not the same as right here, at least not in Springfield.

It remains an open question whether this immigration full-court press might backfire. Other fronts in the culture wars currently being stoked by Republicans—such as book bans and legislative persecution of trans people—are encountering backlash to policies, legislation, and candidates pushing intolerance and restricting the rights of minority groups. Though support is slipping in the wake of decades of propaganda, Pew Research reported in June of this year that 59% of registered voters surveyed still want undocumented people living in America to be allowed to stay in the country. Other polls paint a bleaker picture, but the wording seems to be key, and it’s clear that Americans do not yet understand what Trump’s deportation plan will mean. 

Ordinary heroes

It might be tempting to assume that the citizens of Springfield today or France in 1941 are better people than the Germans who somehow allowed Nazi rule. Maybe we want to imagine the good things we’ve done in the past as indicating that we wouldn’t make the bad choices others have. But at the community level, those choices are often made easier or more excruciating by society itself.

Like France and Germany during World War II, and every town in America right now, Springfield’s civic health is undermined by propaganda fed to its residents via reactionary outlets, demonstrable untruths that shape minds a little more every day and foster serious civic dysfunction.

But in Springfield, unlike a police state, it’s still possible to counter that propaganda. A Republican mayor of Springfield can still take issue with the specifics of lies about his hometown by a member of his own political party. Public health officials can respond to misrepresentations. Residents of Springfield have come out to support the Haitians among them, though the town’s safety has been compromised enough to force them to lock down public buildings at times and cancel a community festival.

Most national-level Republicans have shown themselves unwilling to stand against Trump—some because they agree with him, others in part because they fear for their safety. But one miracle of Springfield so far has been to show that some local Republican leaders aren’t yet too frightened to disagree with what’s being said about their own communities.

Whether or not all residents of Springfield are happy with their new neighbors—and many are not—they understand that Vance is misrepresenting the situation on the ground. They understand that Haitians and their defenders are being terrorized.

In any such situation, there are always those who will go along, to benefit themselves or to revel in someone else’s punishment. But for many, it is harder to enthusiastically embrace something they know is a lie, especially when everyone else in the community likewise knows it’s untrue.

Even the Trump supporter who accused Haitians of stealing her cat and eating it apologized to her neighbors once the cat was found alive in her basement. To go along with a lie that has been disproved in a small community, residents have to be willing to enter a conspiracy of lies together, which is a greater commitment than simply accepting vague untruths reported elsewhere.

Trump and Vance have tried the same incendiary rhetoric in other places, most recently in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. But officials—including Republicans—are likewise standing up to say that at least this part of the hate spewed by the Republican ticket is not true. That part of the social fabric in our small communities is holding in the face of such racism offers some hope for our future. 

Importing mayhem

Even if Trump loses to Harris next month, racist tensions stoked in Springfield won’t subside overnight. And if Trump wins, Springfield will likely have a hand in it. The town has been staunchly in his corner, delivering 56.88% of its presidential vote to him in 2016 and even more in 2020.

This support is no comfort to him today. The town countering his lies effectively seems to have infuriated Trump. As Springfield tried to return to everyday life, Trump vowed to begin his mass deportation program from Springfield itself in a second term as president. If the people will not rise up in a Midwestern Kristallnacht on their own, Trump will bring the violence to town himself.

Trump and Vance’s plan for mass detention camps and deportation would be likely to follow the threatened Springfield model of blunt-force policy as community punishment across the country. In the September presidential debate, Trump used the word “remigration,” a term used by European right-wing extremists advocating the deportation of people of color to the lands of their ancestors, and parallel deportations for those who advocate on behalf of refugees. Trump and Vance have both declared that Haitians or others being here legally is a nicety that they don’t feel obliged to respect.

The risk of Trump and Vance winning the election remains very real. And not only has Trump vowed to be a dictator on day one of his second administration, but last week, he threatened to unleash police for a day of crude, extrajudicial vengeance (knowingly or unknowingly echoing fascist American plots in 1940s Los Angeles).

That Trump understands so clearly he cannot yet get atomized local groups to do this work for him and must direct the police to do it shows his hand and underlines his precarious position. Like the gentle defiance we’ve seen in Springfield, his exasperation is also reason for hope.

In the wake of abortion bans, more people are realizing the consequences of cruel national policies applied in their counties and towns. The specter of neighbors, family, and children being denied medical care, assaulted, or carried away by agents of the state is real in a way it wasn’t for some people before.

Police brutality and door-to-door raids are already imposed on the most vulnerable among us. But under the exponentially expanded model Trump is proposing, Americans who imagine a president protecting them by deporting foreigners at the border will see what that violence and hatred looks like applied against their neighbors. The romantic illusion of protection vanishes under widespread arrests and detention. The most brainwashed and most sadistic among us might approve; a majority would not. Not yet.

 The risk is real

With the level of Q-batshittery circulating, and the staggering amount of faux conspiracies and misinformation, none of us can persist in the illusion that Americans are largely invulnerable to Trump’s act.

Our saving grace is only that we’re not yet far enough along for the tactics he and Vance are currently using to be effective. They’re getting ahead of themselves—too crude, too soon. Journalism is still possible, though it has been decimated as a field. The right to protest is under threat but is not yet gone. The courts are compromised, but some judges are countering corrupt rulings. It is still possible to tell the truth.

My prediction is that Trump and Vance do not have time before November 5—or even before January 2025—to convince or pressure the dithering, frightened middle to buy in to the terror campaign they want to launch. If they are to be victorious, they will have to stumble and cheat their way there.

The more people who stand up in the coming weeks against these neighbor-deporting, panty-sniffing dog killers and insist on basic humanity in their communities, the worse it will go for Trump on election night. This could mean organizing friends to vote, helping vulnerable people on the local level through mutual aid or existing nonprofits, making calls, telling relatives about the dangers of Project 2025, writing postcards, driving people to vote (where it’s legal), supporting people in the trenches in swing states, funding down-ballot candidates wherever it has the greatest chance to make a difference, locally or nationally.

The more Republicans who want to speak up, the better. Though the Democratic Party has sins of its own—some of them grave and currently being committed—the Republican Party remains the chief threat to our ability to express our political will and shape the country going forward.

If conservative former senator Jeff Flake managed to find his spine, everyone should be pressured to, not because I believe he is a good person (or even that anyone is inherently good). It’s necessary to point to as many people choosing to uphold democracy as possible to normalize it across the political spectrum again. Pushing back on any part of Trump’s agenda should be valorized; it makes it easier for the next person to do it. We have to hold onto the little social fabric we have left in order to be able to rebuild everything else.

I believe the backyard fascism of the Springfield experiment and the mass deportation project currently on offer from Donald Trump and JD Vance are likely doomed. But only because the tactics are premature. The longer they persist in these strategies, the more normalized provocations become, running the risk of triggering other tragic events that might carry us into a new framework, where grimmer possibilities await.

Denying Trump the leadership of the free world won’t solve everything. But ending the prospects of a Trump presidency forever would throw a wrench into the effectiveness of the propaganda loop of Trumpism and buy us more time to address the long-term challenges. It would demoralize all but his most committed followers, hollowing out the populist fig-leaf front that billionaires have long used to get their policies enacted.

The first step toward building a safer, more functional democracy is to defeat Trump in this election. And unlike the bleaker moments of history in mature police states, this November ordinary people don’t have to commit to extraordinary deeds. Hurdles lie ahead, but the task before us remains very doable, in small, concrete steps. We have four weeks.

[You can find out more about me and this newsletter in my introductory post.]