Until recently J. D. Vance was best known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” which critics have called “poverty porn” (see article here).
Trump’s pick of Vance as his 2024 running mate, and potentially Vice President of the United States, has brought more scrutiny of the 39-year-old senator from Ohio. What’s emerging from the background check the Trump campaign failed to perform is unsettling.
The book alone didn’t propel Vance into the Senate; it helped, but rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel’s money and backing was essential. After law school, Vance had gone to Silicone Valley, where he hooked up with Thiel and became the latter’s protégé. It was Thiel who introduced Vance to Trump back in 2021 (see story here).
About a week ago, the New Republic ran a story (here) about Thiel’s and Vance’s ties to Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley reactionary with frightening ideas. A few days later Mother Jones ran a story (here) about Vance endorsing a new book (published July 9, 2024) by Jack Posobiec. That’s another eyebrow-raiser, and not just because of who Posobiec is.
Wikipedia describes Posobiec (here) as an alt-right figure who “has promoted many falsehoods, leading to Philadelphia calling him the ‘King of Fake News’ in 2017. He was one of the most prominent promoters on social media of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory” (details here).
The book, called Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), with a foreword by Steve Bannon, portrays progressives, civil rights activists, and Black Lives Matter protesters as civilization-destroying monsters. It also calls them communists. Mother Jones describes its contents as “modern-day McCarthyism.”
Mother Jones says, “Vance’s thumbs-up to Unhumans is an indicator of how deep his roots are within the conspiratorial alt-right. … [His] approval of this dreck is yet another indicator of how this politician … has come to embrace the extremism of the … far right.”
What all these guys — Thiel, Yarvin, Posobiec, Bannon — have in common is they embrace fascism over democracy. J. D. Vance has strange friends.