In search of power How J.D. Vance became a conspiracy theorist
If Trump wins the election, he'll bring along a conspiracy theorist as his No. 2 - who just a few years ago wanted nothing to do with such a thing. How did J.D. Vance's change of attitude come about?
26.09.2024, 04:00
26.09.2024, 08:53
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- J.D. Vance is the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party.
- Vance used to describe conspiracy theories as the fevered fantasies of "crackpots writing about every kind of idiocy."
- Now the senator himself is floating one conspiracy theory after another.
It wasn't long ago that J.D. Vance described conspiracy theories as fevered fantasies of "crackpots writing about every kind of idiocy". That was before he became a rising star in Republican politics. Since then, the senator from the US state of Ohio and vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party has declared that the government in Washington deliberately allowed the drug fentanyl into the country to kill conservative and rural voters. He praised Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy theorist who called the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre that left 20 children dead a fabrication, and adopted Donald Trump 's completely unsubstantiated claim that his 2020 election victory was stolen from him by fraud.
In the most recent example to date, Vance adopted the absurd narrative that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, kidnapped and ate pets.
Longtime Republican strategists and other pundits say Vance's evolution in conspiracy theories can be traced back to his efforts to advance in Trump's Republican Party. The ex-president himself has a long history of unsubstantiated allegations: Barack Obama was born in Kenya, doctors performed "after-birth abortions", wind turbines cause cancer and elections cannot be trusted - these are just a few examples of many.
Vance has "completely reinvented himself", says Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and an expert in the history of conspiracy theories. Even 20 or 30 years ago, Vance would probably have been considered "a lunatic", but now, given what Trump has done to the party, "it's sort of par for the course".
Nothing wrong with unsubstantiated allegations
Indeed, dismissing conspiracy theories does not seem to be a recipe for electoral success. Mike Pence and Liz Cheney are examples of what can happen to those who dare to do so. Trump's former vice president refused to go along with the machinations to overturn the 2020 election result, virtually guaranteeing his flop in the 2020 Republican primaries. Former Congresswoman Cheney ended up on the hit list of Trump and his allies because she was instrumental in the House of Representatives investigation into his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She lost to a Trump-backed candidate in the next Republican congressional primaries.
A spokesman for Vance's campaign team said Democrats had distorted some of his remarks, but that he otherwise stood by many of his claims - including the one about Haitians eating cats and dogs. The potential next US vice president himself recently indicated that he doesn't mind spreading unsubstantiated claims if they draw attention to an issue.
"If I have to create stories to get the American media to really pay attention to the suffering of the American people, I'll do it," he told CNN. His claims about kidnapped pets, for example, helped bring immigration issues into the media's "spotlight," he said.
Vance's former characterization of conspiracy theorists as crazies is contained in his bestselling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy", published in 2016, which deals with the problems in rural America. The now 40-year-old had previously expressed similar thoughts in conversations with friends. Cullen Tiernan was deployed with Vance as a marine in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. As he recounts, his comrade routinely dismissed conspiracy theories that came up in discussions - including one that the US government was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.
A look at Vance's published work and speeches shows that he first dipped his toes into the swamp of conspiracy theories himself after announcing his candidacy for an open seat in the US Senate in 2021. He defended Jones in a speech that same year, declaring that "believing in crazy things" was "not the measure of whether you should reject someone". A spokesman for Vance's campaign team told the AP news agency that the running mate disagreed with Jones over his comments about the school massacre.
After the storming of the Capitol, the senator repeatedly questioned the seriousness of the riot. Several times he repeated Trump's claim that participants in the Capitol storming who were sentenced to prison were "political prisoners". Vance also wrote a sympathetic blurb for a book published in July by Jack Posobiec, a political operative perhaps best known for spreading the "Pizzagate" theory - accusing Democrats of being pedophiles who held kidnapped children in pizzarias.
And the vice presidential candidate is among the promoters of the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, which holds that Democrats sought to use immigrants to replace white Americans and thereby gain control of the nation. Many supporters of the theory, which is rooted in anti-Semitism and racism, claim that the alleged conspiracy is orchestrated by powerful Jews such as George Soros, the Jewish banker, billionaire and mega-donor to progressive causes, as well as other "globalists" and "elites."
"We have an invasion in this country because very powerful people are getting richer and more powerful because of this," Vance said on a Fox News program in 2022. "It's evil."
Not long ago, major candidates would have rejected such theories, even if only out of fear that voters would categorize them as racist or anti-Semitic, said Amy Spitalnick of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. That is no longer the case. "It's becoming increasingly status-appropriate (...)."
