One of the most laughable moments of the Presidential Debate was when Trump asserted that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Anybody with half a brain can see this is an obvious racist hoax and I’m sure you can find many who can pick it apart.

But I want to look at it from another angle, from a vegan’s perspective, in particular, one who follows Gary Francione’s theory of animal rights.

So why is this racist? Obviously it is because only a horrible person would eat a cat, right? Why is it so bad that someone eats cats? Why are cats any different than chickens or pigs or cows or any of the other multitude of animals some of us eat? An adjacent hoax was that they were eating geese; have these people not heard of eating “Christmas Goose”?

There is no moral difference between eating a cat or a cow or a human. None of them want to be eaten, all are sentient and want to avoid pain and continue living. So trying to claim some moral superiority with someone else based on which animals they choose to eat is absurd.

The only way to distinguish between these cases is with speciesism, choosing some arbitrary (and in the end, meaningless) difference and use that to justify different treatment. There is no essential difference between speciesism, racism, or sexism, or any other ism you can think of. Combining the two only makes it worse.

Maybe instead of worrying about imaginary injustices caused by immigrants, you should do something about the real injustice on your plate.