The right-wing campaign targeting Somali daycares isn't really about fraud

[irisblue]

https://matternews.org/community/the-right-wing-campaign-targeting-somali-daycares-isnt-really-about-fraud/


snip-"And yet, the viral nature of the video has since spawned a series of copycats, including in Columbus, which is home to an estimated 60,000 Somali American residents – the second largest Somali population in the United States behind Minnesota.

Extremism expert Kate Ross compared the current daycare fraud outrage with previous right-wing campaigns targeting trans people and Haitian immigrants in nearby Springfield, Ohio, who were accused of eating pets in a smear so pervasive that President Donald Trump repeated the false claims during a presidential debate in September 2024."


snip-"Gov. DeWine, for his part, has repeatedly defended the systems already in place within the state to deter financial fraud, while also debunking claims spread online that a Somali-run nonprofit had registered 40 daycare providers on the same day, as reported by the Columbus Dispatch. “There has been some connection I’ve seen on social media from people who say, ‘Well, there’s a lot of [Somalis] in Ohio, too. There are [Somalis] in Minnesota. Therefore, Ohio probably has a huge problem,'” DeWine said in an early January press conference. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

Dewine’s stance hasn’t deterred would-be influencers from trying to capitalize on the issue within the state. In late December, one user on X created a since-deleted thread, screen shots of which were preserved by Matter News, in which they accused a number of Columbus-area daycare centers of perpetrating fraud, including 161 Child Care, the site of which they said was actually a vape shop, citing as evidence an outdated Google Maps photograph. In a subsequent post, Gov. Mike DeWine wrote that the building hadn’t operated as a smoke shop since 2022, and that 161 Child Care, which opened earlier last year, had not yet received any public money."

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