Animal sacrifice does seem to exist in Haitian culture, but not in the way racists are portraying it. I see no evidence that cats and dogs have ever been used. From what I understand, more common in some pockets of their culture would be sacrificing a chicken, and then cooking it and eating it. Which is the same thing anyone can do, just with extra religious steps...
I don't know about Haitian Voodoo, but Santeria, which comes from nearby Cuba and was similarly inspired by traditional African religions, definitely involves sacrificing a chicken for some rituals.
Santeria is practiced by many Cubans in Florida. Trump's Florida. DeSantis' Florida.
I don't hear anyone screaming about immigrants killing the chickens.
What I think is funny about this is that food is most often (or probably always) used, and then you're still allowed to cook and eat it. Basically anyone that eats meat complaining about animal sacrifice is completely lacking in self awareness.
Which also led to the "Lukumi Bar", an actual legal term that sounds like the name of a tiki bar.
Basically, the city of Hialeah tried to ban the Lukumi church (alternate name for Santeria). The language of the law was neutral on its surface (banned slaughtering of animals in the city, but made exceptions for kosher, hunting, fishing, etc.). However, the transcripts of the town meetings around the law revealed it was pointed straight at the Lukumi church, like applauding the fact that they were banned in Cuba. Which maybe should have been a red flag to everyone at the time.
Since the Supreme Court hadn't yet been taken over by knaves, they told the city of Hialeah to go pound sand. You can't make a "neutral" law that carves out enough exceptions that it targets one specific group. And if you do, don't be so obvious about it at your city council meetings.
I’m an American, and I work in a bakery in Germany. Marianne Williamson got a weird amount of press here, roughly equivalent to Nikki Haley. For some fucking reason, they never talked about any of her woo, which means I had customers trying to talk to me about her for weeks. When I mentioned the crystals or astrology or anything, they all thought I was just really politically biased and listening to rumors from trump or something. It was infuriating.
Please, please someone tell Trump about the Voodoo angle right before he goes on stage at a rally. Or right before he does one of those cringy call-ins to Fox News.
I think it's important that we realize that people are doing this kind of thing in the Midwest though. They may not be eating them, but Republicans have written books about shooting dogs and dumping them in gravel pits, so we'd be blinding ourselves if we didn't recognize that these kind of people exist. I think she shot a goat she "hated" as much as her dog too.