Pet-eaters, Rusty Dog Whistles, and the Long History of Replacement Fear in the U.S.
Image by Jon Tyson
BY Alex Hinton
October 2024
“25 million illegal aliens!” “13,000 illegal immigrant murderers!” “It’s an invasion!”
For much of the time I have been listening to J.D. Vance -- GOP nominee Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate and his MAGA, or Make America Great Again, heir-apparent -- at a September 28, 2024 Newtown, PA campaign rally, he has been harping on immigrant danger.
Halfway across the country, at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, a town at the center of an immigrant crime controversy, Trump has been doing the same while standing in front of photos of convicted immigrants and a sign that reads, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW.”
It’s nothing new. At every campaign rally, Trump harps on immigrant danger, casting the threat in apocalyptic terms. His populist and polarizing message is built on instilling fear and hate of “them,” a term he uses often and that slides between menacing “illegals” and “radical left Marxists” who control the nefarious “deep state” and “fake news.”
These political enemies are, Trump underscores, “enemies from within.” I am quite familiar with this phrase from my study of the Cambodian genocide, which was perpetrated by a totalitarian regime that, like Maoist China and Stalinist Russia, often invoked it to legitimate the suppression of – and sometimes violence against – “suspect” groups and individuals.
Only his MAGA agenda, Trump underscores, can save country from these internal enemies.
Compared to Trump, Vance is a flat speaker. But the MAGA crowd around me, many sporting red MAGA caps and shirts emblazoned with flags and pro-Trump slogans, doesn’t care. They are primed to bite on his red-meat MAGA border message. In response, they cheer, wave red and blue “Trump-Vance” signs, and chant “Build the Wall!”
As they do, I keep thinking of pet eaters, rusty dog whistles, replacement fear, and an dark side of U.S. history that has been amplified to new heights by digital technologies – like the social media ecologies that drove rumors about pet eating immigrant “invaders” and were used by Vance.
Pet Eaters and the Social Ecologies of Hate Speech
On September 9, Vance made headlines when he tweeted, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” Vance was referring to a recent social media rumor that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were stealing pets and eating them.
Days later, Trump, who famously named Haiti as one of a number of “shithole” countries, repeated this rumor in front of 67 million people during his presidential election debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, claiming, “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country.” The rumor, which was debunked, appears to have originated in the dark web.
I’m not surprised. I have been monitoring far-right extremists on the dark web for years. It is part of my on-going research on the far right and (de)polarization in the U.S. that, in part, informs a related 2021 book, It Can Happen Here and more recent publications on MAGA and the Trumpiverse.
Indeed, a year ago, I watched as a New England neo-Nazi group, National Socialist Club 131, or NSC-131, posted a choreographed video of an “emergency mobilization” it held outside three “invader hotels” to protest the “hundreds of Haitian invaders being housed . . . with taxpayer dollars.” The group, video text explains, “will always reject racial replacement.”
Set to a fast-beat French electro house song about gang violence, the video shows over a dozen NSC-131 members -- wearing sunglasses, skull masks, and black caps and t-shirts with the group’s logo -- protesting in front the hotels at night. Holding a banner that says “INVADERS : GO HOME,” the group screams and chants “Go! Home!” “NSC-131” “Whose Streets? – Our Streets” and “New England is Ours!” At the last hotel, several members hold flares, arms outstretched in a Nazi salute.
Similarly, just last month, members of Blood Tribe -- another neo-Nazi group led by ex-Marine Christopher Pohlhaus, who wanted to set up a white power compound in rural Maine –carried rifles and raised swastika flags as they held an anti-Haitian march in Springfield, which has had a large influx of Haitian refugees in recent years.
At an August 27 Springfield City Commission meeting, the Blood Tribe march organizer warned that “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.” On the one hand, this statement illustrated how anti-immigrant attacks have often been justified by dehumanizing language that associates them with savagery, a connection I discuss below and that has a history in the U.S.
On the other hand, the remark illustrates the social ecology of inflammatory language that circulates from the far reaches of the dark web to the rhetoric of political leaders – including in this case both a Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate. And indeed, shortly after Trump mentioned the pet-eating controversy during the debate, Blood Tribe members claimed credit, with one saying “This is what real power looks like.”
Even if they may not know the origin of such rumors, populists and politicians are quite aware that inflammatory, anti-immigrant rhetoric has political capital and can inflame the passion of their followers. Here in Newtown, I have watched as Vance has repeatedly done this while suggesting immigrants are to blame for violent crime and economic problems.
Trump, in turn, has been using anti-immigrant rhetoric from the moment he became a presidential candidate. And indeed, his political fortunes surged after, in partnership with anti-immigrant ideologues like Steve Bannon, Trump began harping on immigration in 2015. While his anti-immigrant rhetoric ebbed and flowed, it never stopped.
Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, for example, Trump warned of “infestation” and immigrant caravans and invasions. As soon as the election was over, these anti-immigrant attacks sharply declined.
Now, as the 2024 election approaches, he is playing the anti-immigrant card again. He warns the immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” And he is hammering on the dangers of illegal immigrant criminals right now in Wisconsin, warning that they are a danger to “the fabric of our society.”
Image by Sawyer Sutton
A Rusty Dog Whistle, Replacement Fear, and a Dark Side of US History
If immigration is a 2024 election issue that concerns voters on the left and, especially, the right, politicians and influencers chose how to speak about it. Some use the issue as a coded “dog whistle,” or indirect message meant to appeal to given groups, often by playing upon identity-based grievances and worries.
At the moment, one of the most salient concerns of voters, especially the predominantly white voters who are a key part of Trump’s base, is the fear of replacement. Indeed, white replacement fear has become a dangerous fault line of U.S. politics. It fuels resentment and sparks anger – even violence as the Capitol insurrection underscores. Replacement fears, however, are also as old as the USA.
What is white replacement fear?
It’s apprehension about group diminishment. Most recently, this fear centers on the worry that demographic change threatens the wealth, traditions, and power of whites, who will become a minority in two decades.
Many see conspiracy. In a 2022 poll, over half of Republicans believe that this trend, driven by unchecked immigration, is a plot. Right wing media pundits like Tucker Carlson blame Democrats. So do GOP politicians.
Some see an existential threat. For them, replacement is leading to a white genocide orchestrated by nefarious and often Jewish actors, a point I detail in It Can Happen Here.
This line of reasoning -- which, as illustrated by NSC-131 and Blood Tribe, circulates widely in white power extremist circles and the dark web -- informed the 2017 chants of “You will not replace us!” in Charlottesville. It was also a motivation for the 2021 Capitol insurrectionists and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue, 2019 El Paso Walmart, 2022 Buffalo Tops supermarket, and 2023 Jacksonville Dollar General store mass shooters.
But the threat is broad. Tens of millions of Americans believe violence may be necessary to save “the traditional American way of life” and civil war is in the offing. Given this volatile situation, understanding the roots of replacement fear is critical.
Where did the idea come from?
Many commentators point to Europe, where authors like Jean Raspail and Renaud Camus warn that immigration is resulting in a “great replacement.” Others suggest it emerged on the dark web and far-right extremist fringes.
There is truth to both claims. Ideas about replacement circulate globally, including among white power extremists. And this global circulation of racialized fear has been amplified by digital technologies like social media, AI, imageboards, and web forums. These two origins stories, while compelling, locate the roots of replacement theory outside of mainstream U.S.A.
But replacement fear is not an un-American fringe aberration.
It’s the latest name for a worry that, in varying forms, dates to the 1607 founding of Jamestown and involves several historical strands. To understand why replacement conspiracy theory has become so widespread and divisive in the U.S., then, it is necessary to examine how these U.S. roots of replacement discourse inform the present as well as what is distinct about the current moment.
The original replacement fear centered on “savages.” In response to settler colonial encroachments, Native Powhatans launched a surprise attack that nearly destroyed the Jamestown colony. The Jamestown settlers counterattacked, part of a slow but steady process in which the Powhatans -- like so many indigenous groups that followed -- were destroyed through displacement, assimilation, disease, and violence.
Such encounters with “merciless Indian savages,” as the Declaration of Independence put it, were thus intertwined with replacement fears in two ways. On the one hand, the Anglo-Protestant settlers feared being annihilated by Indigenous Americans. On the other, the settlers observed their own annihilation and replacement of the Native Americans.
A second replacement fear soon emerged: Black menace.
As the settlers appropriated Indigenous territory, they gradually established a system of chattel slavery to cultivate the lands. The Anglo-Protestant population began to worry about being attacked and massacred during rebellions, particularly in states that had large numbers of enslaved.
These concerns date back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. It was a catalyst for the creation of slave codes and racial demarcations between Blacks and whites. The 1791 Haitian revolution and Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion heightened the fears.
Turner’s rebellion coincided with the emergence of a third strand of replacement fear –anti-immigrant nativism.
In the mid-nineteenth century, immigration – much of it Catholic and driven by political upheaval in Germany and Ireland – dramatically increased. Some suspected a Vatican plot.
By the 1850s, the xenophobic American, or Know-Nothing, Party gained popularity as it promoted the principle that “Americans shall rule America” – code for maintaining White Protestant Anglo power. “Nativists” warned about the dangers of pestilent “foreign swarms” of Catholic immigrants while seeking to limit access to political power and wealth.
When immigration later spiked, xenophobia and fears of diminishment often ensued. Targets included Chinese and other “Asian Peril” groups (late 19th century), South and Eastern European immigrants (early 20thcentury), and Mexicans and other Latin Americans (mid-20th century).
By the early twentieth century, replacement discourse was being framed in terms of scientific racism, eugenics, and social Darwinism, which suggested a “struggle for existence” and the possibility of “race suicide.” Meanwhile, the nativist Ku Klux Klan gained millions of members following World War I.
Replacement discourse spiked again after the 1960s, when extremists began speaking of “white genocide.” This idea dovetailed with growing anti-immigrant sentiment, especially that directed against Mexican “illegal aliens.”
These developments laid the groundwork for Trump’s “America First” campaign, as he warned about Mexican criminals and “rapists” and immigrant “invasions.”
Replacement fears remain center stage according to recent polling. A 2022 poll, for example, found that sixty-one percent of Trump voters agreed that “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color.”
Four Drivers of Contemporary Replacement Narratives
Examining the deep roots of replacement fear, then, enables us to see the antecedents that shape it. Such understanding also reveals how replacement fears connect to the present and provide a potent issue that politicians, populists, and influencers continue to invoke in their messaging, including rusty anti-immigrant dog whistles. From this perspective, the “dog eater” dog whistle is an iteration of an idea that has a long history and global scope. There are four drivers that inform contemporary manifestations of replacement discourse.
First, the idea of replacement is self-implicating and affectively resonant. At its core, replacement fear plays on the existential anxiety, suggesting a threat – ranging from diminishment to annihilation -- to self, family, community, and group. This threat is cast in Manichean binary terms that juxtapose a pure, innocent, “us” against a contaminating and predatory “them” that is scapegoated.
On a more granular level, the idea of replacement offers a simplified explanation for complicated issues people and communities face, such as anomie, unemployment, the opioid epidemic, suicide, a sense of diminished freedoms, hopelessness, and uncertainty in a tumultuous and changing world. Belief in ideas like replacement can therefore provide meaning and purpose.
This is especially true when replacement fear is being pushed by populist pundits and leaders -- a point related to the second key driver behind the surge in replacement fear, right-wing populist polarization. Influential populists, ranging from Trump to Tucker Carlson, whip up support by stoking replacement fear. Their efforts have helped mainstream replacement discourse and increase factionalism. Indeed, replacement was a concern of over half the Capitol insurrectionists and remains so for over a third of American adults, especially Republicans.
Third, populist polarizers are able to do so in part because the idea of replacement is also polysemous, which gives give it rhetorical flexibility and ease of use. Capacious and elastic, replacement fear be intertwined with the aforementioned themes of apocalypse, conspiracy, xenophobia, anti-white revolt, nativism, extinction, and savagery – as the Haitian immigrant dog eater trope underscores.
Similarly, it can be reworked and adapted to the flashpoint topics of the day. In our current moment, these issues include not just immigration but Jewish or deep state conspiracy, race, gender roles, gun rights, Covid-19, and culture wars controversies over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, book bans, critical race theory, transgender identity, education. If replacement discourse was, just years ago, an idea considered fringe, it is now mainstream. As such, it provides resonant fodder for populist demagogues to stoke fear and anger.
These first three dimensions of the power of replacement narratives have been amplified by a fourth driver, new digital technologies ranging from social media to internet forums. These technologies have greatly increased the speed, scale, and scope of replacement fear messaging – and disinformation and hate speech more broadly. New digital technologies have enabled people to connect and interact in new ways, including with those living in other parts of the country and globe.
This situation has created new paths for messaging about replacement fear and for radicalization – as illustrated by the 2022 Buffalo Tops shooter, whose manifesto detailed his radicalization on the dark web. The Haitian dog eater trope was promoted by a wide range of far-right figures, including Elon Musk, who has a recent history of tweeting about replacement to his more than 200 million followers on X.
“Pack your Bags!” -- MAGA Messaging and Echoes of the Anti-Immigrant Past
“So here's our message to Kamala Harris and the 25 million illegal aliens she has let park in the United States of America in 6 months,” J.D. Vance now tells the rally crowd around me. “Pack your bags, cuz you're going home!”
If Vance, who, like Trump’s sons, sports a beard and short, combed-backed hair, is giving remarks that sound canned, the MAGA crowd once again responds.
I stand next to a group of women who, like most of the attendees, are older and white. One has a shirt that reads: “PRO-LIFE, PRO-GUN, PRO-GOD, PRO-TRUMP.” Another raises a blue “Trump-Vance” as they join the crowd in loudly cheering Vance’s anti-immigrant remarks.
Soon they are chanting “Build the Wall!”
Glancing around the room, Vance smiles and confirms, “That's right. We're going to build the wall. We're going to reimplement deportations. And we're going to go to war against the Mexican drug cartels.”
As I listen to Vance and the MAGA supporters around me, I think of how philosopher George Santayana’s famous adage might be rephrased for the current moment to: those who ignore the history of replacement fears are doomed to repeat the errors of the “Know-Nothing” past.
Acknowledgement: Research for this article was supported by grants from the Rutgers-Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America and the Rutgers Research Council.
Alex Hinton (@AlexLHinton) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University. He is the award-winning author or editor of seventeen books, including, most recently, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU, 2021), Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell, 2022), and Perpetrators: Encountering Humanity’s Dark Side (Stanford, 2023).
Cite this article as: Alex, Hinton. October 2024. 'Pet-eaters, Rusty Dog Whistles, and the Long History of Replacement Fear in the U.S.' Today's Totalitarianism. https://todaystotalitarianism.com/pet-eaters-rusty-dog-whistles-and-the-long-history-of-replacement-fear-in-the-us