It has come to this.
Over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the racist lie Donald Trump amplified about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio was patently false—it came from one ludicrous Facebook post whose author later denounced it—Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and famed right-wing troll, decided that he must uncover the “the truth”: He offered $5,000 to anyone who could provide “hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield.”
Not surprisingly, Rufo didn’t find any evidence. But that didn’t stop him from sharing an “EXCLUSIVE” video last week that showed African immigrants in Dayton … barbecuing chicken. The video was from 2023.
It was really the high-water mark of an absurd and disgusting affair—and even some of Rufo’s own think tank colleagues seemed to think so. On X, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Brian Riedl ripped into migrant-maligning hoax peddlers who “don’t care about the truth and [have] already moved on to inventing 5 more fake stories to demonize other vulnerable communities.” Manhattan Institute graduate fellow Daniel Di Martino proclaimed “the fake news has to stop,” citing “threats against the city leaders and Haitian migrants” in Springfield. (He later denounced “some leaders [who] continue to smear people” in the town.) Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jason L. Riley boosted tweets from an NBC reporter that offered historical context for the fearmongering: reports of racists in the 1980s who similarly weaponized unfounded pet-eating claims against refugees.
Still, none of these fellows mentioned Rufo by name, and it’s unclear if any soul-searching occurred inside the Manhattan Institute’s offices. On X, Rufo’s preferred soapbox, commentators of varying ideological leanings called upon the institute and its president, conservative author Reihan Salam, to answer for Rufo’s persistence in hatemongering and Salam’s tacit approval of the damaging crusade.
But Rufo has only gone further since then, claiming that all the bomb threats reported in Springfield—which occurred after the daily lives of nearly 60,000 people there were upended by the online hate campaign Rufo was part of—were foreign-origin hoaxes. Never mind that a student from a neighboring high school had been arrested for making one of these online threats; that Springfield’s Haitian residents have reported instances of their cars getting broken into and doused with acid; that members of the racist Proud Boys militia have themselves marched upon Springfield in response to the hoax; and that even Ohio’s governor’s office confirmed to Rufo that some of the threats were indeed from domestic sources. Rufo is now essentially harassing the governor of Ohio on X.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementSalam has so far been silent on Rufo’s crusade, although he’s defended J.D. Vance’s amplification of the pet-eating lies on CNN. He did not return a request for comment for this story. (This is also probably a good time to say: He used to be a columnist for Slate.)
To focus the ire on Salam may seem odd, since Rufo didn’t publish any of this commentary on the Manhattan Institute’s website (where at least a couple of contributors have referred to the rumormongering about Haitian migrants as “distasteful” and “undisciplined”). But Salam brought Rufo into the Manhattan Institute fold in 2020 and he has eagerly spotlighted him in the organization’s public materials over the years. And this isn’t the first time this year that Rufo has amplified baseless claims about a minority group that led to a crisis for an American town: Misinformation Rufo published about “Venezuelan gangs” “taking over” Aurora, Colorado, was featured prominently on the Manhattan Institute website........