In an article published last year, I tried to show that our moral judgement is heavily biased when it comes to migration. For instance, an action that we regard as a minimum moral obligation towards compatriots becomes, towards migrants or foreigners, non-obligatory and even forbidden. I tried to show that even ethicists well disposed towards foreigners – cosmopolitans, so to speak – suffer from the same bias. Nationalism stifles creativity to such an extent that we are often unable to imagine doing to foreigners what it is a minimum moral obligation towards compatriots.
A new example is given by the US election campaign.
During the presidential debate on 10 September, Republican candidate Donald Trump claimed that immigrants, who were arriving by ‘millions’, were eating the dogs, the cats and the pets of the people of Springfield. The reaction of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was one of laughter, as was that of most people, who ridiculed such excessive claims aimed at vilifying migrants.
I laughed too, and as an immigrant I was pleased to see so many people ridiculing Trump’s xenophobia. However, I can’t help but note the ‘banalisation’ of nationalist bias, a phenomenon now invisible to those of us who are laughing.
Imagine that a politician claimed that our compatriots were eating dogs, cats and pets. Even if such allegations were exaggerated and it was clear that the candidate was engaging in demagoguery just to win the election, no one would have dared laugh. People who have to eat dogs and cats for food are no laughing matter. No right-wing politician would have claimed that the real problem was not hunger, but hungry people.
Whether on the right or the left, politicians would have rivalled to show compassion and propose solutions to food insecurity. That hunger affected ‘millions’ would have encouraged, rather than discouraged, them from acting. Even driven by purely electoral purposes, their reaction is what you would expect from someone with humanity and compassion.
Yet, when hungry people are portrayed as migrants, the moral reactions are the opposite. Many politicians not only fail to feign compassion or provide solutions. Some of them see hunger as a reason to deport people. And they win votes. Their political opponents fear losing votes if they show too much openness to immigration. It is as if nationalism made us all lose our humanity.
In a world that has not lost its humanity, ‘eating dogs’ is a distress signal. It means that even in the US, ‘Zero Hunger’ – the UN’s second Sustainable Development Goal – has not been achieved. In a world that has not lost its humanity, people are not fed by the colour of their passport but by their need for protein. In a world that doesn’t let people starve, you are glad the hungry come to you instead of feeding them far away. In a world that has not lost its humanity…
{ 54 comments }
Matt 09.16.24 at 9:10 am
No right-wing politician would have claimed that the real problem was not hunger, but hungry people.
Whether on the right or the left, politicians would have rivalled to show compassion and propose solutions to food insecurity.
I think you might be underestimating the depravity of people like Trump, Vance, and no doubt others, and not just in the US.
Even in this case, I don’t think the idea was supposed to be that the immigrants were eating dogs or cats because they were too poor to buy other food, but rather because they were bad people. (People do eat dogs in some countries, after all, and not because they can’t get other food. Dog meat is more expensive than average in China, for example.)
basil 09.16.24 at 9:51 am
Thank you for this unexpected post! I am afraid we are in a tiny minority, even in this province. My sense is that the mechanics of supporting and demanding support for the “lesser evil” induces more and more of us to a politics of nationalism and therefore of extreme callousness. The ecological crisis sharpens the stakes further.
But please allow me to push back against the proposal that the politics of hunger produces solidarity or even sympathy when the hungry are non-migrants..
It came to pass that the ethical choice in Britain in 2019 was to reject the electoral choice that pledged to do something about child hunger as elaborated in this pre-election Channel 4 documentary in the link. Millions – liberals and social democrats included – watched this or excerpts of it on social media and decided that the lesser evil was to let the children starve. Even now in power, they can be found everywhere supporting the two-child cap and cold winters for the elderly as responsible government policy. So no, the non-migrant hungry don’t excite a politics of care and solidarity.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dispatches-growing-up-poor-kids-food-banks/
engels 09.16.24 at 9:54 am
Trying to look at it logically, diet is a powerful marker of group membership capable of triggering the disgust reflex, hence suitable for weaponisation against “outsiders”. But I think (like a lot of the Covid BS) claims like these really serve several functions: dominating the “discourse”, signaling loyalty, and degrading rational discussion (how much if any of that is conscious I don’t know). Repeating really wild claims about out-groups also seems to be a kind of epistemic insult which implies that they’re beneath reputational concern.
qwerty 09.16.24 at 10:36 am
@1 “…but rather because they were bad people”
I haven’t been following this particular controversy, but I don’t think “because they were bad people” has to be part of it either.
Remember the pro-abortion thought experiment where a famous violinist is attached to a woman? The perpetrator (violinist) is deliberately described as a super-valuable (“good”) person, but the woman is still entitled to kill him, because, hey, it’s her body.
It’s something very similar here. The migrant could be the greatest person in the world, but if he’s appearing out of nowhere, uninvited (just like the violinist in the pro-abortion story) and starting eating citizens’ pets and ducks (if that’s indeed the case), then, well, doesn’t the pro-abortion logic apply here?
notGoodenough 09.16.24 at 11:17 am
I don’t think that the “eating domestic animals” accusation has much to do with food insecurity, but rather is merely another form of “othering” – with the intended implication not being “immigrants eat cats and dogs because they are hungry”, but instead “immigrants eat cats and dogs because they are [strange/bad/etc.] people”.
In short, it seems to me that this essentially boils down to yet another culture-war style argument going “look at [Group X] doing [Thing Y], which makes them [weird/alien/disgusting/dangerous/a threat to our precious bodily fluids/etc.] – clearly we should do something [which conveniently advances our agenda] about this and no one in their right mind would say otherwise [without inviting widely broadcast emotional screeds to be weaponised against them]”. The convenient thing about such arguments is you can just fill in X, Y, etc. as needed without changing the basic format (regardless of how [un]true they may be), which makes is useful to both political and media classes…
notGoodenough 09.16.24 at 11:29 am
qwerty @ 4 doesn’t the pro-abortion logic apply here
AFAIK, the pro-abortion logic you refer to relates to bodily autonomy. Most people’s pets are not part of their bodies. This might be rather a key point to consider…
Matt 09.16.24 at 11:36 am
and starting eating citizens’ pets and ducks (if that’s indeed the case), then, well, doesn’t the pro-abortion logic apply here?
In the Violinist case, the violinist is attached to the woman by someone else (a music lovers group, if I remember correctly.) If the violinist tried to attach himself to the woman directly, no one would disagree that you could stop him. But, eating someone else’s pet isn’t normally something that just happens to you. It’s something you do. The post seems to suggest that the idea is that immigrants do it because they are suffering from hunger. Even still, it would be a positive action, not something that just happens, as with the violinist. But, I don’t think the suggestion by Trump, et al in this case was that this is done because of hunger. The point here, though, is that it’s not like the violinist case, in either scenario, because the logic of the actions in the two cases are different. So, looking at it that way isn’t right.
A closer fit to the violinist case would be if “immigrant lovers” were stealing dogs and cats to feed hungery/and or dog and cat eating loving immigrants, who didn’t know what they were being fed. But that’s probably too preposterous even for Trump supporters, as well as being too complicated to make a meme out of. So, there’s no similarity here.
engels 09.16.24 at 11:51 am
I think the most notorious example of “exotic” meat-eating is probably the siege of Paris.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-winter-when-parisians-ate-the-zoo/
J-D 09.16.24 at 12:03 pm
I don’t know what makes you think that. I don’t notice a lot of proposals from politicians to deal with the problem of food insecurity–and I mean food insecurity among their own people in their own countries. It would certainly make me happy to learn about them, if they exist.
Well, yes. That’s pretty much what I thought. But what are US politicians proposing to do about it?
I see basil has a similar reaction.
J, not that one 09.16.24 at 3:21 pm
The OP seems to be claiming that the allegations of specific immigrants stealing other people’s pets as if they were “fair game” to be picked up for food are merely “exaggerated” and not outright false. I hope this isn’t the case. I don’t find “immigrants are actually doing this but we should be sympathetic because we should expect them to steal to survive” to have any predictably useful valence from any political perspective.
To suggest that “liberals” are laughing at immigrants for being too poor to buy food is not especially good either.
qwerty 09.16.24 at 3:47 pm
@Matt, 7
I don’t understand your objection. The violinist is uninvitedly attached to my body by someone, and he consumes my precious bodily fluids. The migrant is uninvitedly brought by someone into my immediate environment, and he (allegedly) consumes my beloved pets and my precious environmental wildlife. From where I’m standing, it’s exactly the same thing.
And yes, it would be “something that just happens”, if it’s a cultural misunderstanding. Where I come from, any animal you can catch outside is fair game.
Lee A. Arnold 09.16.24 at 3:50 pm
Not sure why “pro-abortion logic” should apply to anything but abortion.
Not sure why universalist logic should apply to different moral situations.
Cf. The Abuse of Casuistry by Jonsen & Toulmin (1988)
somebody who remembers the guy with sagging pants buying t-bone steaks with food stamps 20 years after food stamps didnt exist 09.16.24 at 4:58 pm
you’re missing the other part of the story, which is given to its intended audience at top volume 7 days a week – that illegal immigrants are given around a hundred thousand dollars a year in “food stamps” simply for the asking. they want to kill a white family’s pet, and eat them, because they’re unrelenting monsters, not because they’re hungry. they have infinite government benefits from the most far left government the united states has ever had in its history – a true communist, joe biden – but still crave the blood of mr. fluffykins because of their dna or whatever. when you go to the grocery store and pay $20 for something, it’s important that you remember that illegal immigrants don’t have to pay for food at all, they get free food whenever they want. then when you see the skin tint of the face of the bag check boy, you want to get the gun out of your F90000 pickup/aircraft carrier and blow him to kingdom come to Protect Your Family – “don’t tell me he was born in pennsylvania – a dog born in a horse’s stable isn’t a horse”. the idea that they could ever be moved to aid in america’s hunger is laughable. they’d rather beat their neighbor to death than feed their children, and they will do so at a moment’s notice.
the intended audience for the cat eating story – blood and soil fascists, the ideological vanguard of america’s current conservative movement – dont actually think immigrants feel hunger, or any human feeling. they still believe the story, they didn’t laugh and they’re armed.
Peter Dorman 09.16.24 at 5:05 pm
As with others, I think the failure of imagination here is the inability to imagine what it’s like to be a racist. The problem for a racist isn’t that Haitian immigrants are so hungry they’ll abduct and eat household pets (and geese, which lots of people eat, including Trump’s beloved NRA hunters), but that they are primitive “third world” creatures who lack the civilized behaviors of True Americans. Similarly with the purported Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, Colorado. There are gangs all over the US, but these are supposedly worse because they are propelled by “third world” amoralism and will to power.
Incidentally, note the subtle suppression of agency in right wing accounts of immigration. They send their worst people to our countries, as if there were some government agency in Venezuela or Haiti (they should be so lucky) that pulls their citizens out of jails, puts some money in their pockets and buys a one-way plane ticket to somewhere in the US. This denial of agency further dehumanizes the migrant, who is now a guided missile and not a regular person seeking a better life.
Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant 09.16.24 at 5:54 pm
“No right-wing politician would have claimed that the real problem was not hunger, but hungry people.”
Not quite.
In America, it has been a rightist badge of honor to boast who could cause the most suffering in one’s own fellow citizens. President Bill Clinton, in an effort at “triangulation”, proposed to “End Welfare as We Know It”, in obeisance to neoliberalist bond holders and to win the White Anti-Black vote while claiming to be a Democrat. That action angered even James Carville.
Mr. Trump and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 promise much worse.
Hurting one’s fellow citizens has always been a winning case for too many Americans. As long as those fellow citizens remain a disempowered “other” in America. We may now be at a turning point where that policy has fewer supporters now than in the past.
Cheez Whiz 09.16.24 at 6:52 pm
Where is this “because they’re hungry” coming from? I’ve seen no reason offered why the “illegal” Hatians are eating pets and local wild animals, ducks and geese IIRC. This is old urban legend stuff, Chinese and Mexican restraunts, Vietnamese immigrants. We haven’t had a former President and his political party go all-in on targeting a very specific group in a very specific place before. People are laughing because they’re shallow and blind to privilege, sure. Welcome to America. But they’re also laughing because they’re scared of what this implies about their country and the people eating this up. And they should be.
NomadUK 09.16.24 at 7:31 pm
As with others, I think the failure of imagination here is the inability to imagine what it’s like to be a racist. The problem for a racist isn’t that Haitian immigrants are so hungry they’ll abduct and eat household pets (and geese, which lots of people eat, including Trump’s beloved NRA hunters), but that they are primitive “third world” creatures who lack the civilized behaviors of True Americans.
Reading through the original post and the comments, I found myself simply gobsmacked that anyone could actually have any interpretation of the ‘eating pets’ canard than the one just given above. This is quite patently obviously what was meant.
engels 09.16.24 at 8:55 pm
“Qwerty” one difference is that foetuses really are attached to pregnant but migrants aren’t eating people’s pets. Beyond that, having someone in your “immediate environment” isn’t anything like having them in your womb. Among other disanalogies.
Evan 09.16.24 at 11:25 pm
I think this post underestimates how hostile Americans, and maybe people of some other nations, can be towards homeless people.
Derek Bowman 09.17.24 at 12:50 am
qwerty,
The only sensible comparison between this story and Thomson’s violinist case is that they are both strange hypotheticals which can be the basis of philosophical analysis but which bare little resemblance to happenings in the actual world.
The argument you’re trying to suggest makes no sense. If someone does abduct and kill my pets, the violation is either in the taking of something that’s mine, or in the cruelty visited upon the animal. Neither of those have anything to do with where the perpetrator came from, or how they came to reside in my neighborhood. Nor do either have any basis in my autonomy over my own body.
Indeed, a concern with the primacy of autonomy over one’s own body does not provide any basis for the right to complain about the migration of others into my neighborhood. Rather, such migration can be seen as an exercise of the bodily autonomy of those so migrating, and no encroachment on mine, insofar as my neighborhood is not, in fact, part of my body.
I suppose, were the ‘body politic’ more than a metaphor, and were I somehow the proper bearer of that body… but now we’ve exceeded even the bounds of Thomson’s imagination and begun to invite a rather nastier line of thought, which I’d rather not simulate even for illustrative purposes.
Timothy Sommers 09.17.24 at 1:22 am
Before you get to “we should want to help people who as a result of poverty who have to resort to eating cats and dogs,” you have to take seriously the possibility that there are such people.
Harris had the correct response. Ridicule and laugh at the claim. You think she should have said, “If people are eating cats and dogs, we should be concerned for their welfare?”
I never thought I would say this, but this kind of oversensitivity to the niceties of how to argue with morally monstrous idiocy is unhelpful.
Also, I’m no expert but “implicit-bias” research is controversial at best.
LFC 09.17.24 at 2:04 am
The specifics of this particular episode may be worth mentioning. (I’ve gleaned the following from news accounts.) Springfield, Ohio is a city whose population has been swelled in recent years by an influx of Haitian migrants, all of whom are in the U.S. legally under something called temporary protected status. The fairly rapid and significant increase in the city’s population has apparently strained city services, as might be expected, but many employers in town have welcomed the Haitians because there was something of a labor shortage before their arrival and there was a need for reliable workers, which the new arrivals are. There have apparently been some local complaints about reckless driving (according to one account), but no credible evidence that the migrants have stolen or eaten household pets.
None of this matches Trump’s standard narrative about illegal immigrants who are criminals and are taking Americans’ jobs. Nonetheless, Trump seized on a false Facebook rumor that got amplified on social media and made absurd and false claims about pets being stolen and eaten. To the extent Trump was met by laughter (in addition to outrage), it was because the claims are absurd. This particular episode has a lot to do with Trump’s xenophobia and disconnection from reality, but, as previous comments have said, it has nothing directly to do with hunger or food insecurity. Of course neither Trump nor Vance has apologized for this nonsense, with Vance now saying the story was a way of getting the media to focus on the issue of immigration (as if the media weren’t doing that before) or, more specifically, focus on it from the Trump/Vance perspective. It’s just another indication of how Trump/Vance are conducting their campaign.
All that said, the OP makes reasonable points about the differing views of obligations toward migrants vs. compatriots.
PatinIowa 09.17.24 at 3:05 am
Qwerty at 11:
“The migrant is uninvitedly brought by someone into my immediate environment.”
As an immigrant, let me point out that my family was invited by the people who gave my father a job. One of the more racist features of the conservative discourse on immigration is the assumption that the Haitians in Springfield (or Mexicans in Polk County Iowa) are unemployed. They aren’t. They’re working their asses off for the lowest wages their employers can get away with.
As a resident of a red agricultural state, the cognitive dissonance of our legislators ranting about undocumented migrants would be funny if it weren’t so cruel. Once it had succeeded in busting the unions in the packing plants, the very people squealing about securing the border began “inviting” workers to come work for minimum wage or less on farms and in packing plants. I don’t know if it counts as “inviting,” but if you want to see human trafficking on an industrial scale, pick a corporate farm in Iowa. Then see which members of the legislator have a stake. It’ll turn your stomach.
And example: https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/03/14/trapped-on-wisconsin-farms-the-hidden-plight-of-trafficked-workers/
KT2 09.17.24 at 3:34 am
***Reality Journalism… which goes with truthiness and alternate facts, and a “dispositional override of empathy”.(fn^1.) And a detail
@14 said “The problem for a racist isn’t that Haitian immigrants are so hungry they’ll abduct and eat household pets (and geese, which lots of people eat, including Trump’s beloved NRA hunters), but that they are primitive “third world” creatures who lack the civilized behaviors of True Americans.”
Unfortunately a goose, held by a non white person, was also posted in this stream of garbage, further exciting in the susceptible the notion that the Hatiian’s are “primitive “third world” creatures who lack the civilized behaviors of True Americans.”
“Are Haitians Eating Pets?” shows required “additional lies and a graphic” + the goose + “immigrant” pic, elevated the ‘socials’ route to Trump’s lips from idle gossip to full blown lie, contains an actor and a post not seen to my knowledge elsewhere… inviting “… a second stimulus soon after being aroused by the media violence, the emotional reaction to said stimulus will be far more intense because of the arousal from the initial stimulus”.(fn^2.)
The 2nd stimulus….
“#CounterfeitConservative @EndWokeness could not resist the bait at getting a dig into President Biden, so he reposted this content with additional lies and a graphic.”
Continued…
“This post was then screenshotted by a twitter user named @buckeyegirrl who said:
– see screenshot
“#CounterfeitConservative @EndWokeness could not resist the bait at getting a dig into President Biden, so he reposted this content with additional lies and a graphic.”
– see screenshot + excitors
“It should be noted that #1, @EndWokeness is likely Right-Wing Activist @JackPosobiec. Apparantly, Harvard lawyer and instructor @Esqueer_ was the first to discover this, not me. https://t.co/zyUus9YrLu
“It is then likely that Ohip Senator @JDVance, who had spoken about the topic in what was likely July of 2024, posted a video where he connected his speech about illegal immigration to missing pets. [Link]
“This last item may have been what encouraged former President Trump to use the “Dogs and Cats” accusation as an attack line. It is possible that former President Trump’s advisors were aware of the “Dogs and Cats” zeitgeist and the post from @JDVance made it safe to use.
“It should be noted that @EndWokeness claimed that “Springfield, Ohio will be every town and city in America if Kamala wins.”
“Springfield Ohio is a Republican-leaning city with Republican-leaning leadership at the municipal, county and state level. This means that the Republians are likely in charge of Springfield. @EndWokeness this is not the flex you think it is.” [Link]
https://unrollnow.com/status/1835061001676349704#google_vignette
*** “Political activities
“Posobiec describes himself as a “Republican political operative”.[23] During the 2016 election, Posobiec was a special projects director of the political organization Citizens for Trump.[20] Semafor found he was by far the most influential voice with dozens of Republican strategists going into the 2024 campaign season.[24]
“He said in 2017 that his work was
***”reality journalism—part investigative, part activist, part commentary”,[25][26] and that “I’m willing to break the fourth wall. I’m willing to walk into an anti-Trump march and start chanting anti-Clinton stuff—to make something happen, and then cover what happens.”[18] Will Sommer, then an editor at The Hill, said in 2017 that Posobiec “make[s] stuff up, relentlessly”, and that “there’s no one at that level.”[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Posobiec
fn^1. My pop psychology…
“In this connection, a model of the dispositional override of empathy is featured to shed light on seemingly inappropriate, malicious, if not sadistic, joyous reactions to others’ demise. Cognitive functions are further explored in the emotional effect of moral sanction.”
“Dramaturgy for Emotions From Fictional Narration”
By Dolf Zillmann
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203873694-15/dramaturgy-emotions-fictional-narration-dolf-zillmann
fn^2. “Applications
“Media violence and aggression
“Researchers have found there to be a relation between excitation-transfer and the effect of media violence. This concept is explained in the sense that when media violence is observed by a viewer, the first stimulus, it will cause them to be emotionally aroused. When approached with a second stimulus soon after being aroused by the media violence, the emotional reaction to said stimulus will be far more intense because of the arousal from the initial stimulus.[7][15]”
…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitation-transfer_theory
And then… A “Joke” sent to 198m emotionally excited folowers keeps imagnation on the dark side.
Lucky it is all just a joke…. more reach than all msn combined…
“Musk reshared a post Sunday night asking why people want to kill Donald Trump and wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” followed by the thinking face emoji.
…
“After taking down the post, Musk appeared to suggest it was a joke, saying: “One lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X.”
forbes 2024/09/16 musk-posts-then-deletes-no-one-is-even-trying-to-assassinate-bidenkamala
Imagination is just fantasy if you don’t know any reality. 198m viewers are “.. approached with a second stimulus soon after being aroused by the media violence, the emotional reaction to said stimulus will be far more intense because of the arousal from the initial stimulus”.
As the nominee for a new trump government czar says, its a joke. But very exciting, like yelling fire in a crowded theatre. That is also imagination. And fantasy. And they know it.
qwerty 09.17.24 at 5:55 am
“engels”,
The violinist in the pro-abortion story is not in my womb either. He is just someone who is dying, who was uninvitedly attached to me, and who is causing me inconveniences for a few months.
Of course if the migrant in the anti-migrant story is not causing any inconveniences at all, then there’s no basis for a controversy. But are you sure you want this to be your story? There must be some inconveniences, no? And finally, I don’t see why having an actual physical attachment would be essential for this thought experiment, but ymmv.
engels 09.17.24 at 8:21 am
if the migrant in the anti-migrant story is not causing any inconveniences at all, then there’s no basis for a controversy … I don’t see why having an actual physical attachment would be essential for this thought experiment
Because it’s essential to pregnancy, which is what it’s about. Pregnancy is not an inconvenience. The whole point of the thought experiment is to bring out its onerousness; you are trivialising it.
engels 09.17.24 at 9:22 am
Vance now saying the story was a way of getting the media to focus on the issue of immigration
Yes imo and on Trump. Everyone who has (mis)spent time on the internet is familiar with this phenomenon.
PRW 09.17.24 at 2:43 pm
Are you perhaps not familiar with the subsidized school lunch controversy in the US?
somebody who remembers it was vietnamese immigrants eating the dogs in the 1980s, korean immigrants before that, and chinese immignrats before that 09.17.24 at 6:59 pm
although i dont fully follow KT2’s post @ #24 i do think the connection between imagination and fantasy is critical here. the american conservative, on some level, loves to fantasize that every black household’s kitchen is a blood-spattered abbatoir where they tear apart the local labradoodles with their powerful teeth and flexing arms. they imagined the same for previous immigrant groups in previous decades and never came to the conclusion that they were wrong, but they simply moved to the next thing, like a pornography enjoyer flicking their finger to move to the next video. and like pornography, the fantasy of the monstrous black immigrant brings with it the white conservative’s arousal, an excitement that can’t be found in reality. in reality the haitian family sits in a christian church on sunday and sings the same songs praising jesus as their white neighbors.
but this reality does not make the conservative heart beat faster, doesn’t make their breath come shallower, eagerly, doesn’t make their fingers flex or fists clench, doesn’t make them think about their guns. but imagining that after church the haitian family strips to the waist and stalk the alleyways of a cincinatti exurb looking for satanic sacrifices to a mad evil god, what reality can compete with this fantasy? horror movies are more fun than documentaries – conservatives having intentionally deprived themselves of horror fiction (they’re satanic, liberal, etc.) means this imaginary must manifest elsewhere.
Sev 09.17.24 at 9:04 pm
I think the slur is aimed not only at Haitians, but at reinforcing the entire perceived racial hierarchy of the US, in which Haitians are seen as being at the bottom of, particularly by Trump’s predominantly white supporters who consider themselves its proper stewards and beneficiaries.
Alex SL 09.17.24 at 10:31 pm
While I appreciate the underlying point – yes, we do not default to the same moral obligations for immigrants as for people who were born locally – in this case I agree with the skepticism others have already expressed. There is no implication in any of the recordings I have seen of Republicans propagating the current moral panic that the pets were supposedly eaten because of hunger and poverty. And if asked directly, they would probably claim that the immigrants aren’t poor anyway because the Democrats are giving them free houses taken away from Real Americans or something.
The context here isn’t poverty, it is an extremely old racist trope that reads, ‘those people are disgusting because they have disgusting culture where they think it is normal to eat animals that it is taboo to eat in our good, clean, normal culture’. I have more frequently seen it applied to eastern Asians and sometimes to Peruvians (guinea pig), and there too never with the implication that it is about the desperation of poverty, but instead, ‘those people are weird because you can eat snakes and cats in their restaurants’. As such, there would be no difference in the moral outrage if a WASP was found to eat their neighbour’s cat or dog; the critical difference is that if a WASP did it, they would be seen as an outlier from their community, whereas this moral panic is about othering an entire immigrant community.
Alex SL 09.17.24 at 11:07 pm
Belatedly, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. occurs to me as another recent news perennial, and I think he hasn’t been mentioned yet. Nobody thinks something has to be done about RFK Jr.’s poverty because he is eating roadkill either. People just think he is weird, despite being white and US-born (WASC, I presume). Both discourses are in the realm where one can comfortably laugh about a self-admitted roadkill connoisseur and comfortably ridicule those who lie to whip up hatred against an entire community without poverty coming into it – the orthogonal fact that there is poverty in countries as wealthy as the USA notwithstanding.
qwerty 09.18.24 at 5:50 am
@26 ” The whole point of the thought experiment is to bring out its onerousness; you are trivialising it.”
By the way: I appreciate your politeness; I know, it’s difficult. But anyhow: I disagree. I see the point of the thought experiment in emphasizing the imposition of it. That the burden is being imposed, forced on me. In fact, the violinist story makes it sound like some people (doctors?) deliberately kidnapped me and forced it on me. Which (this aspect of the story) I find questionable in a description of pregnancy. But like I said, ymmv.
Tm 09.18.24 at 6:27 am
OP: “No right-wing politician would have claimed that the real problem was not hunger, but hungry people.
Whether on the right or the left, politicians would have rivalled to show compassion and propose solutions to food insecurity. That hunger affected ‘millions’ would have encouraged, rather than discouraged, them from acting.”
I have no idea what universe you live in. Are you aware that VP candidate governor Tim Walz has been labeled a Communist (not in the sense of a compliment) for enacting a universal free school lunch program?
“Imagine that a politician claimed that our compatriots were eating dogs, cats and pets. Even if such allegations were exaggerated and it was clear that the candidate was engaging in demagoguery just to win the election, no one would have dared laugh.”
Jokes about roadkill eating white American “hillbillies” in the US are not uncommon. People do laugh about them. Now if such jokes were used in an election campaign, that might provoke negative reactions but not for the reasons you outline.
You are right of course that denying food and basic necessities to refugees is in today’s fascist-infected political environment a vote-winner. But I disagree with your optimism regarding the treatment of poor “compatriots” by today’s right wing and increasingly center political parties. The German government gets heavily criticized both from fascist and conservative parties for having raised welfare payments to poor citizens last year to compensate for inflation. In this political discourse, it is “common sense” that that money should have been better spent on infrastructure investment (a total non sequitur of course but treated as a serious political “argument”).
A subtext is always that poor people are often immigrants or refugees (in the US, also non-immigrant Blacks who are in the racist discourse treated as “not real Americans”). That makes it easier to stoke hatred for poor people in general. But that hatred as easily applies ot the “compatriots”. It’s a continuum of hatred.
Harry 09.18.24 at 1:18 pm
Timothy Sommers (21) seems exactly right to me. Vance and Trump don’t know or care whether anybody eats pets – the point of saying it was to get their opponents to call them racists and talk about immigration, which helps them rather than, eg, abortion, which hurts them. Harris’s response was exactly right — look like you think they’re crazy, and say nothing: focus on talking about things that help you. (My reaction — “Good grief, are you seriously implying the President of the United States should care about whether someone eats someone else’s pets” — is one of twenty thousand bits of evidence that I shouldn’t ever run for office).
Also about implicit bias, but that’s another story.
Harry 09.18.24 at 2:08 pm
qwerty (33): “That the burden is being imposed, forced on me. In fact, the violinist story makes it sound like some people (doctors?) deliberately kidnapped me and forced it on me. Which (this aspect of the story) I find questionable in a description of pregnancy. ”
In Thomson’s piece its a Society of Music Lovers that kidnaps the person. The violinist example is supposed to be analogous to a case in which pregnancy was caused by rape. Toward the end of the article she gives another thought experiment which is supposed to be analogous to pregnancy caused through consensual sex in which contraception was used and failed. (I’m not convinced by either case for what it’s worth — for a powerful (and to me convincing) response to the violinist case see Gina’s paper linked here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26381183)
qwerty 09.18.24 at 2:36 pm
“The violinist example is supposed to be analogous to a case in which pregnancy was caused by rape. ”
Ah, okay, it makes sense. Thanks.
PatinIowa 09.19.24 at 5:34 pm
Two, possibly off topic, thoughts about road kill.
In Colorado, and probably other states, if one comes across a freshly killed deer or elk (or any animal) on the highway, you can take it home, dress it out, and eat it. People do. People also pretend that animals they’ve poached are roadkill, so the rule is that you must call the Department of Parks and Wildlife to get a tag for roadkill you’re harvesting.
My sister worked at a women’s shelter in the Four Corners area. The local state police and sheriffs would transport roadkill to a wildlife butcher and bring to the meat to the shelter. Apparently it was a happy day when there was venison for dinner.
One of my favorite John McPhee essays is “Travels in Georgia,” in which he interviews a Atlanta biologist who collects road kill to assess animal populations. The fresh carcasses go in the stewpot, apparently.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/04/28/travels-in-georgia.
Speranta Dumitru 09.19.24 at 10:51 pm
I apologize if my post appeared offensive. My point was that we are often inclined to treat people differently, sometimes in opposite ways, depending on their nationality. While we treat compatriots who are hungry with either solidarity or indifference but never with the idea of causing them further harm, the Republican candidate suggested deporting foreigners for this reason.
I am familiar with the process of “othering”, of making foreigners seem exotic. The Democrats have had the merit of standing together to defend migrants against this exotisation. But perhaps they would not react exactly in the same way if compatriots were said to be eating dogs. Would they?
J-D 09.20.24 at 12:44 am
Is that how ‘we’ are? Doesn’t that depend on who you’re including within the scope of ‘we’?
Is that something ‘we’ never do? Doesn’t that depend on who you’re including within the scope of ‘we’?
qwerty 09.20.24 at 7:30 am
“Exotic” is synonymous with “foreign”. Yes, foreigners often seem foreign. Especially undocumented foreign migrants, as opposed to foreign professionals. If the Democrats are denying it, they are delusional.
Speranta Dumitru 09.20.24 at 9:24 am
One doesn’t need to be an analytic philosopher to distinguish between multiple meanings of the same word. Etymologically, ‘exotic’ means foreign but not in the same sense as foreigners are ‘foreign’. To understand he words ‘foreigners’ and ‘documented’ that you use, a Martian would need to understand our very complex institutions that we build to ensure that humanity stays divided between ‘citizens’ and ‘foreigners’.
exotic
? adjective – antonyms native, nearby, conventional.
Matt 09.20.24 at 9:34 am
Especially undocumented foreign migrants
For what it’s worth, the Hatians at the heart of this story are not “undocumented”. They were either paroled into the US, with full authorization, or have been granted Temporary Protected Status. Some also likely entered with authorization in other ways. To be granted TPS, one must register with the government. Most of the Hatians with TPS would have entered with authorization in the first place, but even if some did not, they now have authorization, and are “documented” in every sense of the word. You here seem to be picking up on the stange lies of Vance. I’d recommend dropping that.
Speranta Dumitru 09.20.24 at 9:50 am
Thank you for your reply. Of course, people are different but could you please specify the relevance of this observation in our context?
In my opinion, both Trump and Harris treat foreigners and citizens in different/opposing ways. Trump wouldn’t suggest to deport out of a town compatriots who use pets for food; Harris wouldn’t laugh at a similar claim about compatriots even if it was a claim clearly demagogic and excessive.
Both Trump and Harris exhibit a nationalist bias. But their moral faults are different. If people are hungry to the point of eating dogs, Trump shows cruelty by wanting to deport them. He’s a kind of moral monster: because you’re hungry, you deserve more harm. Harris seems unaware that people can be so hungry and thinks Trump’s only fault is to exoticize them: she mistakes a moral monster for a clown.
Matt 09.20.24 at 10:05 am
Harris seems unaware that people can be so hungry and thinks Trump’s only fault is to exoticize them: she mistakes a moral monster for a clown.
Once again, I don’t think this is an accurate representation of the situation. Again, it wasn’t claimed, by anyone, that the dogs and cats in question were being eaten because of hunger. (Where does this claim come from?) Thinking this is like thinking people in France eat frogs legs because they are too poor to buy chicken. And, I don’t think there’s any reason at all to think Harris doubts Trump is a moral monster. Laughing at him is a strategy. There may be cases where what you’re saying here is right, but I think you’ve just got the wrong handle on this case.
qwerty 09.20.24 at 10:30 am
“To understand he words ‘foreigners’ and ‘documented’ that you use, a Martian would need to understand our very complex institutions…”
I don’t think they would strike a Martian as very complex. Populations of geographic territories choose to organize a common government. Martians govern Mars, and Earthlings Earth.
As for monsters and troubles with humanity, I’ll suggest this, as much more dramatic and consequential, and directly related to concepts of nationalism and mass-migrations.
notGoodenough 09.20.24 at 12:01 pm
It is fascinating seeing someone graduate from “not understanding why a thought experiment regarding bodily autonomy relates to bodily autonomy” to now “not understanding there is a difference between ‘acknowledging differences (and similarities!) between cultures’ and ‘singling out groups of people as pet-eating freaks’”.
I don’t typically employ “moral evaluations”, but those who wish to do so might note that whether or not there has been a significant increase in violence and threats of violence – something which might be a cause for concern, providing one isn’t indifferent to the wellbeing of humanity. After all,
Equally, however high we may hold faith as we look at life and find our ways through it, the world Falk and von Sponeck anticipate will not come about by way of faith. It will come about as a result of what each of us determines to do to bring it about in our common defense of the humanity of humanity.
Perhaps some reflection might be in order regarding what constitutes “common defense of the humanity of humanity” and what does not.
Derek Bowman 09.20.24 at 1:18 pm
Speranta Dumitru,
I agree with Matt. The broad analysis that begins and motivates your original post is surely correct. But you have misapplied it to the case at hand in the way that Matt and others have pointed out here. This slander isn’t about hunger. And even if it were, Trump and the Republican party are perfectly happy to demonize and slander all sorts of co-nationals they dislike, and elite Democrats are perfectly capable of ignoring or condescendingly othering those facing food insecurity.
PatinIowa does a much better job of identifying the way in which prejudice against immigrants plays out in this case at #23. It’s not that we’re just so gosh darned sympathetic to our co-nationals; it’s that there’s a default assumption that the very presence of those seen as ‘outsiders’ is seen as automatically suspect and in need of justification.
I think the difficulty is that you’re right about the existence of migration based bias in our default moral sympathies and assumptions. But you don’t seem sufficiently aware of the existence of a number of other forms of bias, and so you’re not in a good position to distinguish the (very real) operation of migrant-bias from other forms of bias and prejudice.
J, not that one 09.20.24 at 3:19 pm
The OP appears to take J.D. Vance seriously, but not literally, as shown by the use of “eating dogs” in quotation marks to indicate a whole raft of concepts and facts that transcend the literal meaning of the words. This is an important skill for academic and literary readers, and I do truly appreciate the example offered.
somebody who remembers that school lunch is communism and if you allow the school to give lunch to a poor child youre worse than stalin 09.20.24 at 4:55 pm
Speranta Dumitru writes: “While we treat compatriots who are hungry with either solidarity or indifference but never with the idea of causing them further harm…”
again, you are not paying any attention at all to the actual functioning of the american conservative movement, which suggests that anyone in america who doesnt have enough to eat is a lazy communist who is paid $500,000 a year by the government to buy drugs, “makes more money panhandling than they would working”, and should be arrested, their possessions burned in a bonfire and their families shot. the hatred of the hungry in american conservatism is deranged, crazed – a “woke” church offered to pay the “lunch debt” of some local schoolkids and the principal said no because the kids were just lazy and their families were just lazy and it was better if they went hungry. governor walz signed a bill giving free lunch to kids in school and every conservative in america heralded this as communism and woke-ism and said those kids should starve if their parents dont work. no exceptions, anywhere. its literally an attack line on him: “walz signed a bill to FORCE his schools to give a FREE LUNCH!!!!!! A BLACK KID got one!!!! a HOMELESS KID got one!!!!!!!!!!” (screaming boos, a roaring wave of hatred)
Harry 09.20.24 at 8:04 pm
“Harris seems unaware that people can be so hungry and thinks Trump’s only fault is to exoticize them: she mistakes a moral monster for a clown.”
I think this misreads Harris. She knows exactly what he’s like, but she wants to beat him. Her reaction was calculated to do two things: piss him off in the moment (because that puts him off his game), and above all else move the conversation on from immigration (where he wants it, because it wins him votes in the midwest) to just about anything else (where he doesn’t want it).
Speranta Dumitru 09.20.24 at 11:00 pm
Thank you for your reply, I think you’re right. Laughter has healing powers and reduces tension. And if she succeeds in shifting the debate from immigration to something else, we’ll have to kidnap her here.
J-D 09.21.24 at 1:05 am
First unclarity about who is meant by ‘we’ and now unclarity about who is meant by ‘you’. Is that ‘you’ intended to refer to me? It looks as if it could be, but I can’t be sure.
Simply because of the finitude of time there are depravities that Donald Trump has not yet embraced and there will be some that he has not embraced even by the end of his life, but if you think you can predict in advance particular limits beyond which his depravity will not transgress, you have more confidence in your judgment than I do in mine.
Often it does, but not when it’s mocking and scornful. When Kamala Harris laughed at Donald Trump, neither the intention nor the effect was to make him feel less tense.
Tm 09.23.24 at 7:22 am
39: “we treat compatriots who are hungry with either solidarity or indifference but never with the idea of causing them further harm”
That claim needs justification (apart from the way you are using “we”, which I think isn’t helpful in this context) and has been disputed by several commenters. I would have hoped that you would address some of the objections to your piece.
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