First, some required viewing:
If you’re like me, your response to Vance and his pseudo-intellectual guru Curtis Yarvin will be:
OVER MY DEAD FUCKING BODY.
THESE PEOPLE ARE TALKING DICTATORSHIP. LET’S BE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR ON THIS. THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IMPOSING A FORM OF RIGHT-WING MAOISM, A “CULTURAL REVOLUTION” FROM THE RADICAL RIGHT THAT WILL MEAN THE DEATH OF AMERICA.
So who is this Curtis Yarvin character? Vox had an excellent article on him in 2022:
In September 2021, J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for Senate in Ohio, appeared on a conservative podcast to discuss what is to be done with the United States, and his proposals were dramatic. He urged Donald Trump, should he win another term, to “seize the institutions of the left,” fire “every single midlevel bureaucrat” in the US government, “replace them with our people,” and defy the Supreme Court if it tries to stop him.
To the uninitiated, all that might seem stunning. But Vance acknowledged he had an intellectual inspiration. “So there’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things...”
Yarvin argues that a creative and visionary leader — a “startup guy,” like, he says, Napoleon or Lenin was — should seize absolute power, dismantle the old regime, and build something new in its place.
To Yarvin, incremental reforms and half-measures are necessarily doomed. The only way to achieve what he wants is to assume “absolute power,” and the game is all about getting to a place where you can pull that off. Critics have called his ideas “fascist” — a term he disputes, arguing that centralizing power under one ruler long predates fascism, and that his ideal monarch should rule for all rather than fomenting a class war as fascists do. “Autocratic” fits as a descriptor, though his preferred term is “monarchist.” You won’t find many on the right saying they wholly support Yarvin’s program — especially the “monarchy” thing — but his critique of the status quo and some of his ideas for changing it have influenced several increasingly prominent figures.
As you know, Peter Thiel is the common denominator with Vance and Yarvin. Thiel is an odd bird, a gay libertarian who has made complicated and intermittent alliances with the viciously anti-gay Radical Right. Thiel gave $10 million to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign. Thiel is not a fan of American democracy, and women in general seem to irritate him.
As he built his companies and grew rich, he began pouring money into political causes and candidates—libertarian groups such as the Endorse Liberty super PAC, in addition to a wide range of conservative Republicans, including Senators Orrin Hatch and Ted Cruz and the anti-tax Club for Growth’s super PAC.
But something changed for Thiel in 2009, the first of several swings of his political pendulum. That year he wrote a manifesto titled “The Education of a Libertarian,” in which he disavowed electoral politics as a vehicle for reshaping society. The people, he concluded, could not be trusted with important decisions. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote.
It was a striking declaration. An even more notable one followed: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” (He elaborated, after some backlash, that he did not literally oppose women’s suffrage, but neither did he affirm his support for it.)
It should be said that Thiel has serious doubts about the feasibility of Yarvin’s proposals, but they seem to both agree that radical change is necessary. Thiel is a sharp critic of diversity efforts. And you might say Yarvin is as well:
Courting wealthy elites is key here. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and their fellow billionaires are more than happy to spend ungodly sums of money to bend the rest of us to their will and worldview. Yarvin simply played to what they already believe about themselves: that they’re smarter than us and actually, they should rule the world. Vance is more than happy to do the same on his own path to power.
These folks claim again and again that neoreactionism isn’t racist, but Yarvin is on the record defending slavery and endorsing racist pseudoscience. (Vance is in a mixed-race marriage and has endorsed the same racist pseudo-science.) There’s a direct line from billionaires believing DEI and the existence of trans people are oppressing them to Yarvin and neoreaction. [My emphasis.]
Here’s the good news. As I’ve said time and time again, most Americans don’t want to live in a fascist hellscape. There are more of us than there are of them, and we can beat them just as we have in every election since 2016. I won’t pretend that’s going to be an easy task this time around, but I was heartened at how Project 2025 has broken into the political conversation this summer, so much that Trump falsely claimed it wasn’t his agenda. JD Vance’s nomination gives us a chance to sound the alarm on Project 2025, the folks behind it, and the future MAGA wants from now until Election Day. It’s on all of us to make the most of these next few months to do so.
Vance adds to all of this a disturbing, unbending religious fanaticism. Displaying the fervor of the recent convert he is, he is a full Christian Nationalist, Right-Wing Catholic division. Vance is an adherent of the teachings of Catholic zealot Patrick Deneen. Here are some of Deneen’s harrowing views:
“I don’t want to violently overthrow the government,” [Deneen] said. “I want something far more revolutionary.” Deneen proposes an “aristopopulism,” in which the virtuous elite provide order and structure to public life in order to ensure the flourishing of the ordinary citizens who cannot provide it for themselves. The benevolent oligarchs are thus tasked with keeping the common good intact so that hoi polloi can enjoy the good life — even if they don’t know or believe or experience it as such…
Deneen’s view of the common good doesn’t include everyone. He opposes gay marriage, wants stricter laws on divorce, denounces CRT, and mocks health care for trans people as absurd. Deneen lauds authoritarian Viktor Orban’s Hungary as a place where the state actively cultivates political and moral order. “The role of the government,” writes political scientist Chelsea Ebin about Deneen and other postliberal Catholics, “is not to preserve individual rights and manage competing interpretations of the good but to impose and enforce a singular conception of the good through the regulation of social relations.” [My emphasis.]
Vance has also reached out to the evangelical Protestant Right:
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Geoff Bennett:
When Donald Trump himself uses violent rhetoric, when he engages in demagoguery, saying, for instance, as he did at a rally over this past weekend, that allowing police to have one really violent day, that that would help end crime, despite violent crime being at a near 50-year low, how do his supporters, how do his white Christian nationalist followers hear that?
How do they interpret it?
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Matthew Taylor:
Well, this is a movement that is already steeped in a rhetoric of violence. Now, they will often frame it and say, this is about spiritual violence. We're talking about battling back demons, battling back Satan.
But they're also pointing at real people. Lance Wallnau has said that Kamala Harris is a manifestation of demons, that you can't even listen to her because it's just demons speaking through her. He accused her of using witchcraft to present herself in an appealing way in the most recent debate.
So they're pointing at their political opponents, their enemies, and saying, they are filled with demons. The demons are in them. We need to fight the demons.
And this was a lot of the rhetoric that fueled January 6, this belief that we were coming to this culmination of American history, this belief that it was God versus Satan, and that the election itself was a realm of cosmic combat.
DEMONS?? WITCHCRAFT?? GOD VERSUS SATAN?? Madness. Sheer, utter insanity. This is what we’re up against. Vance epitomizes everything that is worst in the Christian Nationalist worldview.
ABORTION
ON THE RECORD: JD Vance is an anti-choice extremist who said “two wrongs don’t make a right” when asked about abortion law exceptions for rape and incest.
The Hill: “‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ [Vance] said in 2021 when asked whether abortion laws should allow for exceptions for rape and incest.”
Washington Post: “Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance argues against need for rape and incest exceptions in abortion laws”
Daily Beast: “J.D. Vance suggested he would support prohibiting abortion even in cases of rape and incest—and dismissed those catalysts as ‘inconvenient.’”
Vance’s anti-choice record also includes saying he’d like “abortion to be illegal nationally,” celebrating when Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, comparing abortion to slavery, and more.
CNN: “JD Vance said in 2022 he ‘would like abortion to be illegal nationally’”
JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.
“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”
The US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022. Vance’s statements echo a common anti-abortion talking point accusing abortion providers and their supporters of targeting people of color.
Black women did seek abortions at a higher rate before Roe fell, but public health experts say that this is far from proof of a racist conspiracy. They point to a number systemic factors – for example, Black women are more likely to live in areas where it’s harder to access contraception. They are also disproportionately harmed by abortion bans.
I would urge everyone to take a look at one of my previous diaries about Vance, emphasizing his support for menstrual monitoring:
GAY MARRIAGE
Ohio Capital Journal, from 2022:
Republican Ohio U.S. Senate nominee J.D. Vance would oppose legislation to codify the right to marriage for same-sex couples, according to Mission: America, a Columbus based non-profit which bills itself as a ministry.
In a joint statement with Ohio Value Voters, Mission: America president Linda Harvey criticized the Ohio Republican congressmen who voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act in the House.
“Homosexual couples embrace an ancient sin often involving high risk practices,” Harvey wrote. “These couples are never blessed with their own children, just one of the many limitations of such relationships. But homosexuals in America are often quite willing to corrupt other people’s children.”
Harvey went on to insist it’s actually the LGBTQ movement that is “intolerant,” and that they are responsible for everything from porn to “unnatural identities.” Separately, Harvey is concerned about witchcraft invading the church.
IVF
From Northwestern Now
Former president Donald Trump’s vice president pick U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance in June voted against the Right to IVF Act, which would have protected accessibility and affordability of in vitro fertilization (IVF) services nationwide. Northwestern University fertility expert says IVF should be the one thing all politicians can agree on.
“The fact that he voted against the Right to IVF Act is very telling and very worrisome. IVF is fundamentally ‘pro-life’ in that it helps couples have children that would otherwise not be born,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg, associate professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, a Northwestern Medicine physician and is a director at large on the board of directors for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
And you all know about Vance’s attack on people who are childless.
Please take a look at my diary on that subject as well:
Finally, remember this folks:
TRUMP IS 78 YEARS OLD, BATSHIT CRAZY, AND IN POOR HEALTH.
As Fly Sistah on Twitter put it:
Republicans are watching Trump make the case to invoke the 25th Amendment on January 20th. Peter Thiel didn't pluck JD Vance from obscurity for nothing.
