The woman behind an early Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets told NBC News that she feels for the immigrant community.

The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.

  • @cybervseas
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    2 months ago

    “I didn’t mean to be a terrible racist person and (possibly) get people killed. I just wanted to be casually racist.”

    Edit: added (possibly)

    • @[email protected]
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      732 months ago

      She actually said:

      “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

      Lee said she pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse.

      “I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”

      These aren’t the words of some MAGA devotee, she seems pretty genuine on this and I don’t see any reason not to believe her. I instead blame those who have purposefully worsened and spread this rumor for racist ends. Imagine if you made an offhand post on Lemmy that inadvertently spun up a rumor that reached a fucking presidential.debate, I bet you’d be caught pretty off guard by that.

      • @[email protected]
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        582 months ago

        “I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”

        None of that means you can’t be racist.

        • @[email protected]
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          82 months ago

          It certainly doesn’t. But in the absence of evidence in either direction, I think it’s most reasonable to not assume the worst of people.

            • @[email protected]
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              -22 months ago

              Evidence which wasn’t available to the participants of the conversation at the time. With only what we see in the article, there’s no reason to believe that this post she made was racist.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 months ago

            But in the absence of evidence in either direction, I think it’s most reasonable to not assume the worst of people.

            The human world is based on purposefully creating and maintaining inequality to enable exploitation. This is empirically verifiable. It is therefore reasonable to assume that most humans do not act based on morality, but instead out of convenience and/or apathy.

            Get back to me when there are no hungry children, then I will be ready to reassess the evidence.

            • @[email protected]
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              22 months ago

              You can believe what you want about human nature, but consider how well society would function if it was acceptable to make baseless accusations and act on them as if they were facts.

          • @redisdead
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            12 months ago

            There is evidence of her being a racist piece of shit though.

              • @redisdead
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                12 months ago

                You’re trying to save face in the same way this racist piece of shit is trying to save face: badly.

                • @[email protected]
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                  02 months ago

                  Your comment is a great example of the kind of biases I’m telling everyone to avoid. You misunderstood my initial message, then decided to cling on to that interpretation despite clarifications.

                  In any case, if you have feedback (e.g. what made the comment unclear, or how you interpreted it), I’d appreciate hearing about it so I can improve my writing. I’m not always aware of the hidden meanings non-autistic people pull out of words that weren’t intended to have any.

      • andyburke
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        462 months ago

        Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

        Nah, someone who wasn’t racist would have known not to spread your crazy neighbor’s theories that are.

        • Rhaedas
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          152 months ago

          If she had left off the Haitian part, it would just be typical crazy Nextdoor stuff. That she felt that had to be included suggests something. Maybe not MAGA level, but there’s some specifics not being said. Hell, she may not even consider herself biased, yet she sees those Haitians as different enough to single them out.

      • @almar_quigley
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        212 months ago

        Sorry but are you excusing a person who literally made up the racist shit for no reason just because her apology didn’t sound republican to you and other people blew her lie up further than she “claims” to have not wanted it to be?

        That’s like sorry I set this building on fire, I was just trying to burn this one desk but didn’t mean for it to spread and kill a bunch of innocent people.

      • Rhaedas
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        262 months ago

        We shouldn’t wait until it gets to that point. Look at the past, plenty of racism examples to work from that became violent. What really makes it worse is that Trump, Vance, and others are doubling down on the mistake, fanning flames that should have just been a one day “that’s stupid”. They want violence, it helps their cause, excites their base.

        • @Valmond
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          42 months ago

          And somehow it will make trump right instead of wrong, at least in his own mind.

      • @cybervseas
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        182 months ago

        Not yet, and I hope not. I’m worried this will (figuratively) explode into something like the recent UK protests/riots.

    • @TropicalDingdong
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      42 months ago

      “I didn’t (allegedly) mean to be a terrible racist person and (possibly) get people killed. I just (allegedly) wanted to be casually racist.”

      ftfy

    • @[email protected]
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      242 months ago

      Expressing concern for a missing animal in a local post is not the same as spreading false rumours with racism. I’d want to see her post before judging. I also respect her talking to the media about regret and misuse of it.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        Her post is incredibly racist hearsay from 3 people removed (her neighbor’s daughter’s friend). It describes a vile act that casts fault on 20k people in her local community.

        Shes expressing remorse because she did something vile and racist and now has everyone in the world looking at her and her actions.

        She doesn’t have anything to gain like Trump/Vance, so shes afraid she will have consequences in her life now that her racism and hate is so public. After the multiple days of bomb threats that have cleared local schools and city Hall, the fear has set in.

        That’s it. She didn’t apologize out of a sense of decency or remorse. Her apology is:

        “Well I’m biracial and gay, so I can’t be racist.”

        “I also didn’t realize this hate would go national, and now that the world is attacking these people and might attack me, I realize what I did was wrong.”

        “I’m so scared what I did will affect me, please don’t let it.”

        That’s not remorse. That’s someone running from the ugly thing they did, hoping to escape any consequence.

        • @[email protected]
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          72 months ago

          Agreed.

          This sounds more like “sorry I got caught” than “I acknowledge it was wrong to have thought or said that”.

        • @[email protected]
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          162 months ago

          Yeah, that appears pretty racially motivated. Still, the article dances around it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was clickbait. I assume that is her post?

          The story about neighbours daughters friend just reads as plausible deniabikity to post horrid stuff. She had to type all this out purposefully. Its not a retweet ir share or a sentence. Its a narrative shes creating.

  • @[email protected]
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    672 months ago

    Just want to point out that this woman made a mistake and expressed remorse.

    The guy who’s trying to be pres, deliberately and knowingly stoked this fire for his own benefit.

    • @BambiDiego
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      392 months ago

      She’s not expressing remorse, she’s selfishly scared for herself.

      Remorse requires accountability, not excuses and projection.

      She made a racist, hateful, hearsay statement and now that it might affect her she says she can’t be hateful because she’s “gay and biracial.” That’s the definition of dodging accountability.

      • @ikidd
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        2 months ago

        “But I’m gay and biracial”

        “Oh, I had no idea. Do whatever you want all of the time.”

      • @TheLadyAugust
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        92 months ago

        Out of curiosity, what would accountability look like to you, in this case. Since she’s admitted guilt she’s likely to be held at least partially responsible for the crimes of others if it’s found her racist claim played a part in the crimes motivation. I assume she’s likely to lose her job as well, but we’ll have to wait and see i suppose.

        • @BambiDiego
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          92 months ago

          I like your question! To me it starts with a real apology without excuses. Real apologies are generally short and put one in a vulnerable situation, like

          “I’m sorry for spreading these lies, they aren’t true and I did it from a place of ignorance”

          No “I didn’t mean to,” no “I’m not racist, I’m mixed,” and so on.

          • @TheLadyAugust
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            2 months ago

            I agree with your analysis of her apology. I don’t think I’ve ever considered what makes an apology sound genuine. I’ve always thought of it as a gut instinct. Thank you!

            Do you think that the publicity from this statement, would make a second, more genuine attempt at an apology sound like attention seeking? I wonder what kind actions she could actually take to mitigate some of the damage she’s caused. That’s a rhetorical question, I think.

        • @stoly
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          52 months ago

          She needs to at least apologize believably.

    • @stoly
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      132 months ago

      She got caught in the act and is scared for her own self. She’d keep posting this stuff otherwise.

  • @RoidingOldMan
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    222 months ago

    Damage already done. But I’m happy to see she’s sorry.

  • Rentlar
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    172 months ago

    Imagine communicating something to a former President but through a misinformation party apparatus of thousands and thousands of people.

    • @nomous
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      142 months ago

      THEY’RE EATING, THE PETS.

      I hope she was watching. I’d love to have seen her reaction.

  • @[email protected]
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    122 months ago

    If only there was a way to have prevented this - perhaps thinking before posting would have helped.

  • @exanime
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    52 months ago

    “I never meant to spark false rumours when I literally spread false rumours”

    • this lady