The “Immigrants Eating Cats” Thing is a Witch Scare
No, really!
I’m less cynical than many when it comes to politics- I teach US History and lead our Social Studies department, so I’m well aware of the history of politics in the US and the occasionally skeezy ways politicians and parties try to scare up votes. But I still believe in this process and its potential to create positive outcomes. As the saying goes, “democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the others.”
But something in the debate this past week raised my eyebrows. I was at a friend’s house playing a board game, which was going a bit late. We turned on the debate in the background, and I’d keep an eye on the TV when it wasn’t my turn. I was in the middle of caching my gem tokens under my event cards when I heard something that caught my attention:
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats… They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
It was one of those “wait, what?” moments that caused all of us to stop what we were doing and look at each other quizzically. I hadn’t heard this particular rumor coming out of Springfield, OH, so the next day I went down the rabbit hole to see what it was all about. The more I discovered, the more I thought the whole Springfield crisis resembled something I read last summer in Malcom Gaskill’s The Ruin of All Witches. It’s a book about a witch scare that occurred 40 years before the more famous Salem witch trials, in the 1650s. The setting of the book? Springfield, Massachusetts. Can’t make this up.
I want to be clear that I’m not saying the “immigrants eating cats” thing is like a witch scare. I’m saying that it is a witch scare.
First, let’s lay out what a witch scare is, according to Gaskill:
Witch scares tend to pop up in moments of time characterized by extreme political and religious fractiousness. Witches become symbols of “the other,” and can be an object of fear in turbulent times.
In the 1650s, Springfield MA witches were anti-Christ, anti-mother, and anti-citizen. Being accused of killing your baby, developing a reputation as a loner and staying away from the close-knit frontier colonial communities, or speaking blasphemy were all seen as valid reasons for labeling someone as a witch. Witches are seen as the polar opposite of societal norms.
These trials happen in the context of their times. This seems obvious, but we’re guilty of what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery, “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”1 It’s easy for us to dismiss witch scares as backwards, superstitious, or silly, but to the people who lived them they were incredibly serious. The 17th century new world witch trials occurred because of a confluence of the following factors:
The dangers of survival on the frontier
The almost spiritual quality of the fear of Indian attacks
Conflicts with the land, weather, Indians, and neighbors that lent itself to a general sense of embattlement
A debt-based society that can foster resentment
A syncretic mix of old-world magic and Christianity
Finally, witch scares pop up amidst disorder. Per Gaskill, “witchcraft was not some wild superstition but a serious expression of disorder embedded in politics, religion, and law. Witches were believed to invert every cherished ideal, to obeying one’s superiors to familial love. They were traitors and murderers, bad subjects and neighbors, delighting in spite and mayhem” (p. xxiv).
The 2024 Connection
A quick summary of how this whole “Haitian immigrants eating pets” thing came to be:
The town of Springfield, OH is a small rust-belt town of 60,000 that has grappled with all the issues that are common to, well, the rust-belt. In the last few years, the community has experienced ann influx of 15,000 to 20,000 immigrants (mostly from Haiti) exacerbating an existing housing crisis and putting a significant strain on city resources. The scare seems to have begun with a Facebook post by one woman who repeated a story told to her by a neighbor that her cat had gone missing, and she was concerned that “the Haitians” had potentially taken it for food.
The post quickly spread, and when a man showed up at a city council meeting to report his own concerns about the influx of immigrants to the city, the issue blew up on social media and became a viral phenomenon. Many have pointed to the existence of a 911 call by a man reporting he saw several Haitians carrying geese near a city park. The Springfield Police and Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources did not find any credibility to this actually occurring, but many see the call as evidence that there actually is some sort of diabolical pet-eating going on. Mix in a fatal school bus crash caused by a Haitian immigrant and amplification by the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and we have a veritable crisis.
Several YouTube documentarians have done some of their own poking around, and recorded residents claiming that they have firsthand knowledge of Haitians driving around in cars and snatching up dogs and cats. The video linked above also contains some interviews with some of the Haitian residents sounding rather puzzled about the whole ordeal, claiming they in fact have little interest in eating dogs or cats.
Which brings us back to the witch scare comparison. The thing is, I believe that the Springfield residents who believe this is actually happening (despite no evidence) are 100% sincere. There are plenty who are using this kerfuffle to amplify existing xenophobic stereotypes about immigrant food or the NIMBYism we’ve seen around migrant resettlement programs. But there is also a real, legitimate fear that has led to this becoming a local (and nationally amplified) crisis. Let’s apply the above factors and see how it works out.
The US has become increasingly polarized in the last decade, and is experiencing significant political and religious division, as we try to grapple with how to achieve unity amidst diversity. ✅
Immigrant communities, especially when highly concentrated in one area, often attract accusations of being anti-American due to the retention of cultural practices from their home country such as dress, food, music, worship, or collectivism. ✅
In recent years the west has seen a dramatic increase in existential anxiety. Accelerating technological change, rapid secularization, the proliferation of viral social media content, and political cynicism have created a climate where scares can spread easily. ✅
The community of Springfield was already suffering from a spate of crime and disorder, with increases in shoplifting, drug use, overburdened schools and hospitals, and the existing political tension of an election year. ✅
It’s a witch scare. Sure, we might not believe that witches actually exist like our ancestors did. But the climate of fear and panic from exaggerated, unreliable eyewitness testimony is the exact same. Though times change, humans don’t.
Some Takeaways
In his book, Gaskill points out that much of the accusations of witchcraft came from unreliable written witness testimony. This fact meant that many of the people who were accused didn’t actually make it to trial, and for those who did, less than 1 in 4 were actually convicted and sentenced under anti-witchcraft laws.
The image we have in our head of pitchfork and torch-wielding mobs rounding up average women and burning them at the stake is a much more chaotic and fantastical picture than the reality of the situation. Very few people faced legal consequences for being accused of witchcraft, and similarly, probably no Haitians in Springfield will be indicted for animal cruelty or abducting the pets of their neighbors.
That being said, there were still incredible social consequences for the accused, and we are obviously seeing that it is no different today.
Which is why we should read more history books and elevate the importance of high school and college history courses. When we are historically illiterate, it’s easy to think that much is new and that what we experience today is a first for mankind. We think the past has little ability to speak into the present. I’ll admit that even for someone like me who teaches history as his 9-5, this is all too easy! “Chronological snobbery” is lurking around every corner. But as Ecclesiastes says, “there is no new thing under the sun!” When we allow the past in as a conversation partner, we might see that this situation has more recognizable roots than we otherwise would.
In his essay “Historicism.”