So Much For A Harvard Education

J.D. Vance is a graduate of Harvard Law. He is also the author of Hillbilly Elegy, an account of what it's like to grow up poor in Appalachia. Ron Howard turned the book into a movie. These days, Vance -- an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump -- is running for the Senate in Ohio. He has been saying some pretty vile things. Greg Sergeant writes:

J.D. Vance wants you to know that only one invasion should overwhelmingly preoccupy your attention right now. It’s not the invasion of Ukraine, where war crimes are mounting and we’re seeing horrifying imagery of murdered civilians littering the streets.

No, you must not get distracted by that distant skirmish between foreigners. The invasion that truly matters is occurring at our southern border. You see, President Biden is permitting desperate adult migrants to apply for refuge again, after using a bogus public health rationale to keep them out. That’s the real emergency.

Vance introduced a new version of this idea at a debate among Ohio Republican Senate candidates on Tuesday night. Vance declared opposition to a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which he’s correct about, but then sank into some absurdly tendentious claims.

“However tragic we find these images of what’s going on in Ukraine, this is not our fight,” Vance said. He insisted Ukraine is a “massive distraction” from domestic problems, ranting that the U.S. media “spends way more time on Ukraine than it does on the southern border.”

Vance is spouting white replacement theory:

The claim that migrants represent “Democrat voters” is a form of “great replacement theory” rhetoric. This idea, which posits a nefarious elite scheme to replace native-born Americans with outsiders via migration-enhanced demographic change, comes in various forms.

One version is explicitly race based, envisioning “white genocide,” which Vance isn’t necessarily employing. Another version is more overtly partisan: It posits that immigration is really a plot by liberal and Democratic elites to replace conservative voters with “more obedient voters from the Third World,” as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson heinously puts it.

Vance’s formulation is in line with Carlson’s, albeit with a twist: He suggests “Democrat voters” in the form of migrants are one factor “killing Ohioans.” That’s partly a reference to drugs crossing the border, but the hint at an apocalyptic demographic threat is obvious.

“He’s clearly saying migrants will vote Democratic and will be the functional equivalent of toxic drugs,” David Neiwert, author of numerous books about the right, told me.

“This is fundamentally the same thing that White nationalists pushing the great replacement theory have argued,” Neiwert continued. “Vance clearly is now regurgitating this theory.”

So much for a Harvard education.

Image: rollingstone.com