Photo credit; KUNC
An anti-extremism group has been founded over the summer by some people in Ohio in the background of unfounded racist rumours targeting Haitian immigrants in Springfield.
Statehouse News Bureau reports that the rumours started with some far-right content creators and were eventually shared by US Sen. J.D. Vance, US Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, and others.
The group Ohioans Against Extremism said it wants to engage in more grassroots organizing and less direct lobbying to stop potentially dangerous political rhetoric.
Maria Bruno, who used to work for the LGBTQ-rights organization Equality Ohio, is serving as the group’s executive director. She said, “Basically, the short answer is if it targets someone or if it ignores basic evidence.”
However, in an increasingly partisan and polarized climate, Ohioans who hold one political view may see the other as extreme and vice versa. She said the organization’s guiding principle will not be partisanship but instead listening to and elevating field authorities.
She also said, “If people are making decisions because lobbyists are asking them to, rather than they have thought about the facts and that’s where the facts led them, I don’t really take their criticism too seriously because I don’t think that they are following the evidence or anything.”
She said in a text on Thursday that the still-unfolding situation in Springfield fits her organization’s definition of extremism. Western Ohio is home to a sizable population of Haitian immigrants whom GOP politicians have thrust into the national limelight two months from Election Day.
