Editorial: How spreading a lie harmed a peaceful Ohio town

Lies can be lethal.

One of the deadliest examples took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.

The false report of a young Black man trying to assault a white woman incited a mob that murdered as many as 300 Black residents, destroyed more than 1,200 homes, businesses and churches and left some 10,000 people homeless.

The youth was later exonerated. There had been no rape, no attack, no crime.

The lie, though, was the cue for the white mob to try to lynch him. Failing that, it obliterated a thriving community.

The Big Lie in Ohio

That’s what lies can do, especially when amplified by people who hate other people for who they are or where they came from.

Once again, the intended victims of another big lie are Black. They are Haitian refugees who live and work in Springfield, Ohio, a city of 58,000 with a name that sounds quintessentially Middle American.

Haitians are the foil, easy prey as Donald Trump sees it, for his seething racism.

Nobody has died — yet — on account of the lie with which Trump and Sen. JD Vance, his running mate, persist. But it inspired bomb threats that closed City Hall, two schools, two colleges and a local motor vehicle office and caused cancellation of an annual arts festival.

People are scared. Trump doesn’t care.

‘A piece of garbage’

The lethal potential of this lie is so serious that the FBI is involved. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, denounced the rumors as “a piece of garbage,” defended the Haitians as hard workers, and said he would send law enforcement assistance.

Nobody is stealing and eating the town’s pet dogs and cats. That particular lie, which spread on the internet faster than a COVID virus, has been traced to a woman who said she heard it from a neighbor.

Heard it? Hit send!

The mayor and others had conclusively debunked it even before Trump repeated it in his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

And yet Trump and Vance keep at it.

By the Washington Post’s count, Trump was responsible for 30,573 lies or misleading statements in his four years in office.

So one more is no big deal to him.

They knew it wasn’t true

What’s more astonishing is that Vance has virtually admitted knowing that it’s a lie. The Wall Street Journal meticulously traced how city officials told Vance’s staff that it was not true, yet they peddled the falsehood anyway.

In a CNN interview, Vance said he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pay attention.”

The intended objects of that attention are the Black immigrants whom Trump and Vance accuse of burdening Springfield.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said.

Challenged by Bash, Vance tried to walk it back — and failed.

“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he said.

Manipulating the media with lies is what dictators do. It’s how to destroy a democracy by turning its citizens against themselves.

Trump’s toxic talk

Now, Trump is trying to blame the latest attempt to kill him on Democrats who say he’s a threat to democracy. He truly is, but he’s also the last person entitled to complain about anyone else’s unfriendly rhetoric.

From July 22 through Sept. 5, the New York Times documented more than 60 occasions in which he slandered Harris as “crazy” and as a communist. His favorite insult for her, sometimes several times a day, is “Comrade Kamala.”

He insults people as glibly as the late comedian Don Rickles did. But everyone knew Rickles was kidding. It was an act — for entertainment.

Trump isn’t kidding. Lies are his stock in trade.

There’s nothing amusing about persisting in one that has paralyzed an entire American community and, worse, has the potential to get people killed.

As President Joe Biden once memorably told Trump, he should just shut up.

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