A neo-Nazi group headed by two ex-Marines took credit for helping spread unfounded claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, after former President Donald Trump said the residents were "eating the dogs" during a presidential debate last week.
Christopher Pohlhaus, a neo-Nazi and former Marine, wrote on social media following the debate that the group, Blood Tribe, "pushed Spingfield into the public consciousness" after sharing a clip of the former president spreading the pet-eating story on national television.
Armed and hidden behind masks, aside from its leaders, Blood Tribe marched under swastika flags in Springfield weeks prior to the debate in an effort to instigate anti-immigrant sentiment in the small city and demonize the Haitian population there, according to social media and videos posted by the group, which were reviewed by Military.com.
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As the claims have swept across the country, the city along with its Haitian community have received at least 33 bomb threats, according to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. The threats forced evacuations of local schools last week and Monday, as well as the closure of City Hall last week. The threats and security concerns also forced the city to cancel its annual "CultureFest" celebration that was slated for the end of September.
And DeWine announced Monday that the bomb threats against area schools prompted him to send a contingent of 36 Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers "to provide added security at each of the district's 18 school buildings" by sweeping the facilities.
The false rumors about the Black Haitians in Springfield were fueled and celebrated by Blood Tribe, a self-proclaimed white supremacist group that pushes racist Nazi propaganda aimed at stoking violence and discord in local communities -- all under the swastika flag, extremist experts told Military.com.
Days and weeks before the debate, the group shared social media posts claiming Haitians ate "the ducks out of the city parks," as well as an AI-generated image of what was meant to depict a Haitian man cooking a cat.
Local law enforcement; some of the state's Republican leaders, including DeWine; and the city's mayor have denounced the claims as false.
One Blood Tribe post said that the group will "always be at war" with the Haitian community. The group's motto is "there will be blood," and Pohlhaus later claimed that "Springfield, Ohio, belongs to Blood Tribe."
Pohlhaus leads the group alongside his number two, Drake Berentz, also a former Marine, who claimed that the country was given away to "savage n---ers" during an armed march in Springfield last month.
While it appears the group did not originate the false pet-eating rumor, it pushed it in an effort to take advantage of an already-reeling city by attempting to insert its own racist ideologies into the fray, the experts said.
"It is a Nazi organization," Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq War veteran and founder of the Task Force Butler Institute, which investigates extremist groups and their illegal activities, told Military.com on Friday.
"That's not something that they hide," he said. "They fly the swastika when they march through these towns and do these flash mob publicity events, and their goal is to ultimately destroy American democracy."
Goldsmith said that the group looked to spread its ideology by "helping to amplify disinformation to the point that Donald Trump is repeating it in front of 67 million people watching live."
Pohlhaus served for four years as a combat engineer between 2005 and 2009, and Berentz served in the Marine Corps for less than three years until 2022 as a ground electronics transmission systems maintainer, according to their service records, which were provided to Military.com.
Outside of a six-month stint in Japan for Berentz, neither deployed, and their awards reflect common accolades for their period of service.
"We have gotten our fill of violence; we're done with it," Goldsmith, a combat veteran, said. "As we have withdrawn from our nation's two longest wars in history, we have a generation of young men who grew up watching soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, etc. head into war zones and come home as heroes, as combat veterans. And they're not getting that."
Instead, they're trying to bring home a war they never fought, Goldsmith said.
Previous Military.com reporting showed that extremist groups often try to recruit veterans to legitimize their causes. Military.com found that troops and veterans are not more or less likely to join extremist organizations than the average American, but the few who do are often targeted by extremist gangs so they can capitalize on their social status and training.
Military.com asked Blood Tribe whether it recruits veterans; what its overall goal is -- which experts said is to create a white ethnostate through violence; and if it was concerned that its rhetoric is endangering Springfield residents. The group did not answer those questions after repeated inquiries.
Instead, Blood Tribe told Military.com that it had been "monitoring" Springfield since a Haitian man without a valid license killed an 11-year-old boy, Aiden Clark, in a car accident last year. When the father of that child spoke out last week denouncing the politicization of his son's death and about his regret over an immigrant being responsible for it instead of a white man, given the vitriol cast on the Haitian community, Blood Tribe said the father deserved the death penalty.
"I've come to bring a word of warning," Berentz said at a Springfield City Commission meeting late last month before being kicked out for being threatening. "Stop what you're doing, before it's too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in and with it public frustration and anger."
Despite cheerleading Trump's use of the trope on air and taking credit for it, Blood Tribe seemed to shy away from the acclaim when Military.com asked it about the narrative being debunked by law enforcement and state officials. The group instead pointed the finger at Springfield residents.
"The origin of these stories about the Haitians which 'reporters' claim we have mainstreamed come from the citizens of Springfield themselves," the gang said in an email to Military.com on Monday.
The woman who spread initial claims of pet-eating on Facebook told NBC News that she had no firsthand knowledge of such accounts and regretted sharing the narrative. A Springfield city website also noted that a local game warden with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says there is no evidence to support claims that immigrants were killing geese in the city's parks for food.
Still, Blood Tribe doubled down and said, "We have every intention of continuing to uncover the financial corruption behind the Haitian invasion there, making sure they are all repatriated, and ensuring those who are responsible are held accountable for their actions against the citizens of Ohio."
Goldsmith and Luke Baumgartner, an Army veteran and research fellow at the George Washington University's Program on Extremism, both told Military.com that it is common for extremist groups to try to portray themselves as good-faith representatives of the communities they terrorize, when in reality they seek only to amplify their ideologies before moving on to the next town.
"Blood Tribe doing this isn't anything new, and what they try and do is create this veneer of respectability politics," Baumgartner said. "It's really hard for a group like Blood Tribe to convey this sort of thinly veiled racism when they're just marching around with swastikas and Runic tattoos all the time. ... But they utilize the same structure or appeal to the masses as trying to be this community defense organization."
"These propaganda campaigns don't hide the fact that they are vile racists," Goldsmith added.
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump's vice presidential pick -- whom the gang called a "f--got" and "race traitor" for being married to a woman of Indian heritage -- also spread the narrative.
Experts whom Military.com spoke with said that the spread of the story is an important case that spotlights extremist groups trying to foment white supremacism in local communities in the hope it will gain national attention and cause violence.
Springfield has seen a major increase in immigration over the last several years, placing a strain on the city's resources, raising concerns and stirring anti-immigration sentiments.
A city website said that the influx of between 12,000 and 15,000 legal immigrants over the last several years has created "challenges" for health care, housing, school and public safety resources that are inadequate to handle the new population growth. Extremist experts said that Blood Tribe flocked to Springfield to push violence and racism amid those challenges.
"Blood Tribe and these groups identify these already fractured towns [where] they feel that the locals will be sympathetic toward their ideologies," Kate Ross, an extremism researcher who has studied Blood Tribe, told Military.com on Monday. "They're opportunists," and they conduct marches "for attention and recruitment purposes to accelerate what they want: a race war."
The pet-eating claims align with a long history of thinly veiled rhetoric meant to fuel anti-immigrant fears, ones that go back to at least the 1800s in the U.S., The Washington Post reported Saturday.
"Hate groups coming into Springfield, we don't need these hate groups," DeWine said in an interview last week debunking the Haitian pet-eating claim. "Springfield is a good city. They are good people. They're welcoming people. We have challenges every day. We're working on those challenges."
Last week, DeWine also announced that he was sending $2.5 million in state funds to the city to expand health care access, and he ordered the Highway Patrol to help local police with traffic enforcement.
