JD Vance's "Intellectual" Spin on the Racist Great Replacement Theory

[Celerity]

As the Trump administration advances its draconian immigration schemes, the vice president is doing his part—by polishing ideas from the far-right gutters with an Ivy League sheen.

https://newrepublic.com/article/198347/jd-vance-great-replacement-theory

https://archive.ph/N4t04


Drew Hallowell/Getty Images

Trump’s latest proposal to expel asylum-seekers to the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau continues the pattern of performative cruelty already well established by the illegal deportations, the establishment of a grifty concentration camp on American soil, the declaration that people previously granted legal entry are no longer entitled to be here, the grotesque mistreatment of foreign visitors and former aides to the U.S. military, and other outrageous actions by the present administration. It is already evident that Trump’s interlocking immigration schemes will drive up inflation in the United States and reduce economic output. In spite of Trump’s vow to go after “the worst of the worst,” most of those being deported and incarcerated have never been accused of any crime in the U.S. or elsewhere. Meanwhile, the need for a genuine, long-term policy to deal with immigration, asylum, and the existing undocumented population goes almost entirely unmet. So what is really behind the needless and public exercises in sadism that pass for immigration policy?

The short answer is a version of the “great replacement theory”: the idea that immigration is part of a deliberate plot to destroy the United States by replacing “real” or “true” Americans with aliens. The point of Trump’s immigration policies is to satisfy the desire, on the part of Trump’s base as well as nativist ideologues in his administration, to see pain inflicted on undesirables and their supposedly malevolent supporters—liberals, “the woke”—within the country.

The great replacement theory and its variants have a long history, and they have always been in the wrong. The nineteenth-century physician Horatio Robinson Storer, an early anti-abortion campaigner, lamented that “abortions are infinitely more frequent among Protestant women than among Catholic” and wondered whether America’s western and southern territories would be “filled with our own children or by those of aliens?” The sociologist and eugenicist Edward Alsworth Ross argued that Japanese immigrants should be banned from entering the country and coined the term “race suicide.” In Charlottesville in 2017, the neo-Nazi crowd chanted, “The Jews will not replace us.”

But this idea does have a polite version, an intellectualized variant, articulated at the kind of think-tank gatherings where people in suits and ties with advanced degrees from highly respected institutions can pretend that their dehumanizing and racist ideology is not, in fact, dehumanizing and racist. By virtue of his Yale law degree and his apparent desire to make the “intellectual” case for a corrupt, kleptocratic, cronyist regime based on nationalist demagoguery and unhinged conspiracism, JD Vance has now presented himself as an exponent of the “thoughtful” version of replacement theory that now underpins the immigration policies of the present government.

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[peggysue2]

1. There is no intellectual argument for . . .,

The Grand Replacement Theory/Conspiracy. Just faux-intellectuals willing to put a shine on Bullshit and those willing to accept the BS as reasoned, rational and true to assuage their own consciences and racist beliefs.

JD Vance isn't thoughtful; he's merely an opportunist with a taste for power and money. He believes this drumbeat will put him in the Oval Office.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[alwaysinasnit]

3. Tsf or Vance; it is a choice between the devil or the deep blue sea.

[Biophilic]

4. This makes me sick.

[chouchou]

5. Ah..Mr. Vance? You're not helping "The Pool" by coming up with this total unscientific Bullshit.

You're welcome.