I can’t necessarily speak on the history of Vietnam accurately except I know around that time there were certain parts of Vietnam that were under famine. I cannot accurately speak on the truth of that however. The pet eating scare in the US right now however is a radical scare tactic. There’s been an uptick in pet ownership in the US and a downtime in child birth meaning people are putting more stock in their pets than putting stock in having children. So with that being said, how do you scare people into your corner, you tell them their stock is threatened? That’s right. The Trump brigade is using lies as a scare tactic
Dehumanising people makes it easy to hate and persecute them, and to blame them for a bunch of stuff which isn’t their fault. It really is a classic move with a rich history.
Nothing to do with pets, but in Korea there are places that serve dog. At least it was the case when I was there 20+ years ago. But, of course they're not pets, they're farmed like any other livestock I would expect, and these places were not exactly commonplace even then, so maybe now they're just not a thing? I've not really looked into it.
Now, saying "x" people eat pets is likely just what others have said, a slur used against whichever subset of people is the target of the month. Maybe it once had roots in facts like those I've mentioned, but they're far removed from them now.
Because racism is learned. It’s the same tired tropes they heard from their parents. Today’s racists are racist against Central American and Caribbean immigrants. Twenty years ago it was the Middle East. In the 1970s it was southeast Asians. Before that were… everybody else. This is America. There’s always some new cultural group to demonize.
Yes! Eggcorns is by far the superior term for “alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context.”
Boneappletea is also an excellent term for a similar thing, where the "new" word or phrase makes no sense and is not plausible when used in the same context.
There will certainly be reasonable disagreements about which description is more apt in a given situation. One that comes to mind is Joey Tribbiani's use and explanation of "a moo point."
Cats are/were eaten in Vietnam. I have no idea about Haiti and it’s impossible to search it currently. So, this is people jumping to conclusions that immigrants are eating pets.
I used to work at a Chinese restaurant an the number of people who came in there blithely asking me if we “really” cooked and served cats was astounding.
I got tired of answering the question so often that towards the end I gave up and my standard response was, “No, we only cook and serve idiots who go around saying we cook cats.”
I think the very low percentage of lost business was worth it. And this only because my boss told me that this kind of thing did not meet the criteria wherein I was allowed to roundhouse kick patrons in the teeth. If you’re going to be a dumbass, at least try to be original.
These rumors/stories, whatever you want to call them, is all new to me, but its just a way to dehumanize a certain group and therefore helping to justify labelling them the new boogieman.
ELI5 Its a way to make a group of people appear less human and different from yourself. This makes it easier to not relate to them and use them as a bad/ evil example of something you want to avoid.
Your question is confusing, but I think the answer is…
Racist people heard something. Racist people think it’s a fact. Racist people extrapolate from that thing they heard and assume the extrapolation is also a fact.