Trump's rants about Hannibal the cannibal show that his racist attack on the Springfield Haitians has been planned for some time

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Donald Trump's wild debate claim that Haitian immigrants living Springfield, OH are eating the cats and dogs of the residents of Springfield shocked most viewers. As a matter of fact, it was debunked by everyone from Ohio's Republican governor on down. But for the white supremacist resurgence being led by Trump and Vance, it was never about facts, it was about mobilizing one of the oldest racist fantasies about people from Africa—that they are cannibals—in their bid to win a senate majority in this year's election.

In these stories, the people's pets, their cats and dogs, are avatars for the people themselves, and so their consumption represents a kind of cannibalism in the unconscious mind. In our country, vegetarians are a true minority group. Most of us have no problem eating meats of all kinds, whether from fish, or fowl, or pigs, goats, cows, etc. The list is almost endless. It stops at cats and dogs because we keep those as pets. Dogs are man's best friend, and cats give comfort and affection to childless people everywhere. So, we universally find the very idea of eating them abhorrent. Even horses, which may be considered more as work animals and companions, have only been allowed to be eaten in times of extreme deprivation, like the Nazis failing to take Stalingrad. And when you hear that they are reduced to eating cats and dogs anywhere, you know they are just one step away from cannibalism. Which is why the extreme claim that Haitians are eating their neighbors cats and dogs masks the even more extreme, but nonetheless deeply embedded in Western cultural, fantasy that all people originating from Africa are cannibals in their hearts.   

Looney Tunes - Jungle Jitter

In his discussion of racists fantasies, Joel Kovel, in his White Racism: A Psychohistory, 1970, spoke about the role of the fantasy of African cannibalism:

The fantasies express certain more or less distinct forbidden instinctual trends—not the trend in itself, but the trend as actualized in some form of historical reality. To choose an obscene example: scarcely anyone grows up without exposure to the myth of African cannibalism: grinning black devils with bones stuck through their nostrils dancing about the simmering pot containing the hapless missionary. What child has not contemplated this scene in one form or another? Now, we know that cannibalism is both a universal infantile wish arising in the oral sadistic phase of development (by virtue of which it becomes an element of the mass unconscious), and a well-defined cultural custom in some aboriginal groups. Both of these truths are being represented here, but are combined with a third one: that the culture of the West is representing by projection what it has done to the culture and peoples of Africa, namely eaten them up. 

Disney's Cannibal Capers, 1930

Donald Trump has been talking about Hannibal Lecter for more than four months now: 

The late great Hannibal Lecter. He would like to have you for dinner. 

That rant has become a regular, and predicable, part of his stump speech. This deviation has been highlighted by his opposition as a prime example of how he's losing it, and how his speeches go off the rails with obsessions that have nothing to do with winning the election. But in those same speeches Trump has responded to his critics by plainly stating his desire to associate cannibalism with immigrants of color:

They say "He mentions Hannibal Lecter. It doesn't make any sense." No, it makes a lot of sense. They're coming into our country.

We can now see that it was a measured prelude to a larger plan to marshal this ancient racist fantasy of the African cannibals in his re-election bid. It's no coincidence that this introduction of the unlikely subject of "cannibalism" into the 2024 US presidential election landscape is now followed with this racist accusation that legal Haitian immigrants are eating our pets. 

Trump is often portrayed as mentally deficient with no self-control. Here I think he shows an ability to mobilize our darkness fantasies from the deepest recesses of our psycho history in the service of his election bid in a way that would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

Clay Claiborne

15 September 2024

And BTW, the decision to do this in Ohio is strategic. They need to knock Sherrod Brown out of the senate if are to have any hope of winning a majority in that body, and their candidate, Bernie Moreno, is a real turd, ala George Santos. 

Also, can't Haiti ever catch a break? Why do they still have to pay for winning their freedom in the first place?

UPDATE 16 Sept 2024: In the darkest recesses of the Internet, they are already accusing Haitians of eating humans as well as cats, of cannibalism directly, as in this NewsMax report here:

Haiti's Voodoo Culture Consists Of Sacrificing Cats, "Eating Animals, And Humans," According To Reports