The small Midwestern city of Springfield, OH, has become the newest battleground for far-right anti-immigrant attacks. Instead of focusing on real issues that working class people across the Midwest are facing—scarce access to affordable and adequate healthcare, skyrocketing cost of living, higher than average unemployment—Donald Trump and his campaign are doubling down on their divide-and-rule strategy, with terrifying and dangerous consequences for immigrants.

The discourse on Haitian immigrants is not new in Ohio, and has been a topic of much vitriolic conversation. But it reached a fever pitch recently when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to the debate stage on September 10th and declared, “In Springfield they’re eating dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” This appalling statement was par for the course for the rest of the evening, which all circled back to anti-immigrant and nationalist rhetoric while Kamala responded only to say how much tougher her Democratic Party will be on immigration. 

While both parties use anti-immigrant scapegoating to deflect attention away from their pro-corporate policies, Trump’s Republican Party has kicked this into high gear. Far-right parties around the world are also adopting a sharp anti-immigrant program, utilizing chauvinism (as in, prejudice for one’s own group) to consolidate their bases to win elections.  The key reason that all capitalist parties target immigrants, to one degree or another, is to distract from the fact that they fundamentally have no answers to the many crises of capitalism that are destroying our lives.

While this political posturing is taking place on televised debates, working class people in Springfield, regardless of where they were born, are dealing with the consequences. Hospitals and schools have closed due to bomb threats, endangering the city and throwing working families into chaos. Neo-Nazi and far-right groups like the Proud Boys, Blood Tribe, and the Ku Klux Klan have openly marched in the streets, chanting about “blood and soil” and mass deportation of the Haitian people and “foreigners.” These “foreigners,” who have lived in Springfield for years, no longer feel safe in their own homes. 

Whether or not Trump actually believes this is happening—and all credible evidence points to it NOT happening—Trump and his campaign have deftly shifted attention to a xenophobic hoax that has whipped up his base. These claims are absolutely vile, and we reject them. They are part of a racist campaign to further marginalize a group forced to emigrate from Haiti, a country destabilized in part due to US and other imperialist interference. 

Harris and Walz were quick to denounce these xenophobic attacks and jump on the opportunity to portray themselves as the defender of immigrants, but their policies on immigration can hardly be differentiated from those of the Republicans. The Democratic Party’s rightward march is apparent in the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which implemented new limits on asylum protections and enhanced border security while also sending billions of dollars in aid to key military interests like Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine. Not to mention, the Biden administration continued and expanded Trump’s border policies after the Trump-era Title 42 expired.

On top of their inability to fight for, let alone win, actual change, the failures of the Democratic Party create space for far-right groups to step into the vacuum and falsely claim that they can do more for the working class. The right wing can correctly point to the inadequacies of the Democrats even though their alternative is reprehensible. Far-right groups can ignite deeply held racist and bigoted beliefs promoted by capitalists to explain inequality because many working people feel they have been burned by establishment politicians. In response, these people turn to the right in lack of a left political alternative.

Neither corporate party can unite working class people while also defending billionaires who use divide-and-rule tactics to keep us divided. Labor unions need to boldly and directly take up this fight, building for solidarity protests and even strikes to push back against the racist and xenophobic ideas that threaten the unity of the working class as a whole. Ultimately, racism and xenophobia are deeply rooted in and perpetuated by capitalism, and will require a united movement of both immigrant and non-immigrant workers to defeat.

We need a program of common demands that materially benefit every worker, like a dramatic increase in minimum wage, high quality Medicare for All, and taxing billionaires and corporations to build affordable housing, improve schools, and provide cheap, renewable energy. Common struggle and collective action against our real enemy, the billionaires and their political puppets, is the best way to combat divisive ideas and bigotry amongst our ranks.

The left, and especially Socialists, cannot sit idly by and watch this all happen; people are looking for a left political alternative, and we need to link this to the need to topple the billionaires who benefit from bigotry and rebuild society on a socialist basis.. The section of International Socialist Alternative in England took to the streets as part of the massive anti-racist protests responding to the planned far-right riots; thousands joined them and the far-right was successfully, temporarily, repelled. Our members correctly pointed to the need for unions to build on what the community protests began, organizing protests of hundreds of thousands around strong demands to expose the far-right and the capitalist system as a whole. The German section acted similarly earlier this year, when over one million people marched against the AfD’s (right wing populist party “Alternative for Germany”) deportation plans.

We need a movement-building approach in the United States, and we can do it. We have the experience of the largest protest movement in our country’s history with the George Floyd Uprisings, from which we can draw lessons for what is needed to not just pushback against racism and xenophobia today but to fight for long-lasting change. Socialist Alternative calls for:

• Build a movement that unites immigrants and native-born workers against the billionaire class to fight for good union jobs, social housing, and free high quality education for all.
• No immigrant detentions and deportations! No border wall expansion! Immediate citizenship rights for all undocumented immigrants.
• Break from both corporate parties! The Democrats have betrayed immigrants both at the border and “blue” cities and states. Trump doesn’t offer any alternative.
• No votes for Republicans or Democrats! Vote for independent left antiwar candidate Jill Stein this November.

If you agree with our analysis, and our demands, get involved and join Socialist Alternative!