On September 10, during a debate with his opponent Kamala Harris, Donald Trump made a rather surprising assertion. "In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They're eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there," said the presidential candidate. "They" refers to the Haitian immigrants living in this small Ohio town. Although the claim was formally denied by the local police, the mayor and Springfield's Republican governor, the city's Haitian community faced an upsurge in insults and threats. As the fake news went viral on social media, CBS reported on Sunday, September 22, that 69% of Trump voters considered the fake news to be "probably/certainly true."
Trump's strategy is all the more effective because Americans have a particularly strong bond with their pets. According to a Pew Research Center study conducted in July 2023, 62% of Americans live with at least one pet, and of these, 97% consider their pet a family member. "Donald Trump is tapping right into the racist stereotype of the barbaric immigrant," said Grace Ly, writer and anti-racist activist, to Le Monde. "The idea is to say: they can live here, work, but deep down they're savages, they'll never be like us." This kind of stigmatization isn't limited to Haitians.
As a Frenchwoman of Chinese-Cambodian origin, Ly recounts in her book Jeune Fille Modèle ("Perfect Young Girl," 2018) the many stereotypes surrounding the diet of Asians, who are often suspected of eating domestic animals. These prejudices are widespread in both the United States and Europe. "My parents ran a Chinese restaurant, and I was often asked what was in the spring rolls, if it was true that there was dog meat in them," she recalled. "Many people remember the 'dumpling apartments' shown in [French TV channel] M6 stories, where immigrants allegedly prepared meals in squalid, unhygienic conditions."
It's only a short step from believing that Asians are secretly cooking our beloved pets. In a village in the Isère department (southeastern France), a Vietnamese woman and her husband filed a harassment complaint against their neighbor. The neighbor was convinced that they were trying to catch her cat to eat it, and had been banging on their door daily for four years, shouting "Cat thieves!"
Asians are still associated with a supposedly barbaric dietary custom, whereas in Europe, another pet regularly finds its way onto our plates: the rabbit. It's true that their presence, both as pets and as food, is less significant than that of other animals. Nevertheless, it is clear that what is considered "wild" is always, invariably, the other: a cat stew served in a Chinese restaurant may seem monstrous to a Frenchman feasting on rabbit with mustard.
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