Several city, county and school buildings around Springfield were closed Thursday because of a bomb threat "to multiple facilities throughout Springfield," according to a city statement released Thursday morning. Springfield City Hall was evacuated around 8:30 a.m.
Nazis in the heartland:
Tensions over Haitian immigration continue to be an overriding issue at City Hall meetings
Updated Aug 28, 2024
[O]ne of the speakers addressing city leaders introduced himself as a member of the Blood Tribe group that marched in Springfield on Aug. 10. The name he gave appears to be an anti-Black pseudonym used by some hate groups.
"I was head of the anti-Haitian immigration march earlier this month," the man told city commissioners, referring to a dozen people who marched through the city during the Jazz & Blues Fest with Nazi flags and ski-mask covered faces.
". . .I've come to bring a word of warning," the man affiliated with the Nazi group said. "Stop what you're doing before it's too late. Crime and savagery only increase with every Haitian you bring in ... "
Trump and Vance's promotion of the cat eating story is not accidental, emphasis mine:
Neo-Nazi and far right groups seize on Trump's anti-immigration rhetoricwww.theguardian.com
Extremist groups are latching on to ex-president's xenophobic messages to recruit people and spread ideology
In tandem with the Trump campaign's sloganeering, known figures on the far right and their online denizens are seizing on the open hatred of immigrants from the top Republican and going even more public with their brand of activism.
"At this point, demonizing and lying about immigrants is part and parcel of the far-right scene and a major part of its anti-immigrant messaging," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), an extremism watchdog organization. "Non-white immigrants and refugees are enemy number one for the far-right."
Beirich warned the current climate is even more dangerous as she's seeing ideologies, once the sole domain of fringe neo-Nazis, being "mainstreamed by political figures".
For example, two separate hate groups recently descended on Springfield, Ohio, rallying with masks and uniforms and threatening the approximately 20,000 Haitian immigrants that have arrived in the town since the pandemic. In 2023, tensions among local residents flared up after a bus crash involving a Haitian driver helped make the Rust-belt town a flashpoint in anti-immigration debates.
In August, Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi group led by ex-US marine Christopher Pohlhaus, marched in Springfield waving swastika flags (with at least two members carrying rifles) and yelling anti-Black and racist epithets at a jazz festival.
Then, in early September, one of its leaders was granted time to speak at a town forum with local politicians.
"I've come to bring a word of warning," said the leader, speaking under a racist pseudonym. He is believed to be the second-in-command of Blood Tribe, after Pohlhaus, and also a former marine. "Stop what you're doing before it's too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in."
The leader then continued, directly threatening local Haitian residents. He was booted from the meeting.
Though he doesn't seem to have appeared in Springfield this summer, Pohlhaus was part of a 2022 protest in Maine harassing Somali refugees and used his Telegram account to call on "ALL GROUPS AND ORGS" to "HIT SPRINGFIELD, OHIO."
Is there any short explanation as to WHY many Haitians are moving to Springfield?
#11 | Posted by REDIAL
My understanding was that refugees are resettled per federal orders. That's how a bunch of Somalis found themselves in Maine, of all places, a few decades back. Also how Vietnamese were settled in Texas.
Some info here: www.cfr.org
When a Lie Becomes a Bomb Threat: The Fallout of a Racist Conspiracy in Springfieldwww.readtpa.com
Trump and Vance's baseless claims about pet-eating Haitian immigrants show how falsehoods spread for political gain can lead to real-world chaos.
It began with a single post in a private Facebook group. An unnamed individual claimed that Haitian immigrants were abducting pets for food. There was no evidence, no credible witnesses--just hearsay from an anonymous user in a small town. Yet, within days, right-wing influencers on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) had taken this baseless claim and run with it. They didn't just repeat it; they embellished it, framing it as a systemic issue tied directly to immigration policy under the Biden-Harris administration.
This was nothing new. We've seen this before: the "birther" movement, the constant "caravans" of immigrants supposedly invading the southern border. The formula is simple: manufacture a crisis, target a minority group, and watch as the lie spreads while benefitting politically. But the speed with which this conspiracy took off, reaching the lips of a former president and his running mate, was alarming. It wasn't just an online conspiracy anymore--it had entered the mainstream.
Trump and Vance, knowing full well that no evidence existed to support the pet-eating immigrant narrative, used the lie strategically. It wasn't about truth--it was about stoking fear, playing into racist anxieties about immigrants and rallying their base around a common enemy. This is a despicable tactic that we've seen before, but the consequences in Springfield were swift and brutal.
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