J.D. Vance: ‘Populist’ or anti-working-class demagogue?

The author was raised in the “Rust Belt” community of Youngstown, Ohio, and has been a union organizer in Appalachia for more than 15 years.

Donald Trump announced at the Republican National Convention July 15 that he chose J.D. Vance, junior U.S. senator from Ohio, as his presidential running mate. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, the 39-year-old Vance has little political experience.

Why Trump chose Vance to run for vice president deserves examination, along with Vance’s own history. From the latter, one might easily conclude that he is not a “populist,” as much of the media call him, but more an opportunist, right-wing demagogue and servant of the superrich.

Vance became widely known after releasing a personal memoir in 2016 entitled “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis.” The book, later made into a movie, tells a story about growing up poor in the post-industrial Midwest—​commonly referred to as the “Rust Belt”—​and becoming a “venture capitalist.” This autobiography promotes the mythical “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative that falsely argues people can somehow escape poverty and exploitation through “hard work.”

“Hillbilly Elegy” quickly became a New York Times bestseller. While receiving some rave reviews, it faced a fair share of criticism for its controversial and classist conclusions. Starting with the hokey title, “Hillbilly Elegy” reinforces negative stereotypes of workers residing in rural Midwestern and Appalachian communities.

Vance’s memoir was later made into a movie in 2020. Directed by Ron Howard, the film features award-­winning actor Glenn Close as Vance’s grandmother, who he calls “Mamaw.” The movie focuses on the emotional storylines rather than the far-right political undertones of the memoir. Something removed from the movie is how Vance’s book punches down and blames poor people for their own suffering.

Rather than fault capitalism for unemployment and the opioid crisis, Vance contends that workers have only themselves to blame. He wrote, “There is a lack of agency here [in Middletown]—​a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.” (Politico, July 15)

Vance was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, a small town located between Dayton and Cincinnati. Vance served in the Marines from 2003-2007 after graduating from high school. He spent six months in 2005 with U.S. occupying forces in Iraq. He then attended Ohio State University and eventually Yale Law School, where he received a degree in 2013.

In 2015, Vance became a business partner with Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm run by the Silicon Valley far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance, Thiel and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton are all major investors in Rumble, a Canadian video platform.

Rumble is known for platforming racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that are banned from YouTube. Thiel quickly took Vance under his wing and helped fund much of his 2022 senatorial race, reportedly donating $10 million and making Vance his personal protégé.

Discrepancies and racist tropes

Vance’s hometown of Middletown is not located in the Appalachian Mountains. According to “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance did spend some youthful summers in Eastern Kentucky. Vance was raised by his maternal grandparents, and they were originally from the Appalachian coal-mining community of Jackson, Kentucky. Like many of his grandparents’ peers, he wrote, they were pro-union and registered Democrats.

Although he spent most of his youth in the flatlands of Middletown and only a few summers in Appalachia, Vance uniquely chose to describe himself as a “hillbilly” in his memoir.

Vance’s faux Appalachian tale is also filled with racist tropes. Author and middle-school teacher Neema Avashia, the daughter of Indian immigrants who was born and raised in West Virginia, points out the following about Vance: “People like me and my family—​immigrants who neighbor and labor alongside white working-class Appalachians—​don’t exist in Vance’s narrative. Black folks don’t exist in his narrative. Queer folks don’t exist in his narrative.”

Avashia stresses: “And in his campaign rhetoric, we only exist as the root of Appalachia’s problems; never as one of its sources of strength.” (The Guardian, July 16) For oppressed people and people of color like Avashia, who actually did grow up in Appalachia, Vance’s story is completely false.

In Vance’s Eurocentric version of Appalachia, everyone looks and acts a certain way, and nobody else exists. “Hillbilly Elegy” makes the misleading claim that everyone in Appalachia is of Scots-Irish heritage, which ignores people of Indigenous nations whose ancestors pre-date settler colonialism, as well as the historically multinational character of coal miners in the region.

In making an unscientific generalization about people in Appalachia, particularly Scots-Irish descendants, Vance writes, “We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most importantly, how they talk.” (Politico, July 15)

Vance’s description of Appalachia is the opposite of that of the late Kentucky native and “Afrilachian” activist bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins), who authored much prose and poetry about the region. Among bell hooks’ books on the subject is “Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place,” a progressive alternative to Vance’s reactionary memoir.

From “never Trumper” to demagogic grifter

In 2016, Vance publicly positioned himself as an open critic of Trump’s then-presidential campaign. In addition to labeling himself a “never Trump guy” when interviewed by Charlie Rose that year, he called Trump “noxious” and said Trump was “leading the ‘white’ working class to a very dark place,” during an interview with National Public Radio. (Politico, July 15). It was also reported that Vance even called Trump “America’s Hitler,” around the same time. (Politico, July 15)

Just a few years later, Vance took a sharp turn to the right as he ran for the U.S. Senate, taking reactionary and misogynist positions on social issues. CNN reported that “Vance quickly joined the New Right.” Campaigning then, Vance announced, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” (CNN, July 17)

At the same time, Vance inaccurately presents himself as a champion of blue-collar workers. On one rare occasion in October 2023, Vance visited a United Auto Workers picket line in Toledo, Ohio, for a photo-op. Labor activists considered Vance’s appearance to be a misleading spectacle, since Vance also openly opposes and votes against pro-union legislation, such as the PRO-Act—​which would make it easier for unions to organize.

Vance close to Heritage Foundation

In the Senate, Vance’s right-wing drift led him to associate with the Heritage Foundation, a reactionary think tank responsible for “Project 2025,” a 922-page anti-worker and pro-business document listing far-right proposals that corporate and neo-fascist forces aim to implement following the presidential election.

Among some of its recommendations are the elimination of government agencies like the Department of Education and the privatization of Medicare and Social Security, cutting Medicaid, promoting, even indoctrinating children with a hard-right world view, banning abortions and restricting some contraceptives. Its program includes mass detentions, deportations and family separations of immigrants. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has called Vance a “leading voice for the conservative movement.” (ABC, July 15)

During a 2021 podcast, Vance stated that if he could offer Trump one piece of advice, it would be to “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with ‘our’ people.” (Vox, July 18) One of Project 2025’s most controversial proposals is to fire and replace thousands of federal civil service workers with far-right “loyalists.”

Since Project 2025 is unpopular among most voters, Trump has tried to distance himself from it on social media. But his pick for vice president epitomizes the project.

Peter Thiel is rumored to be the person who introduced Trump to Vance. According to various media reports, the three attended a $300,000-a-person dinner of crypto-currency billionaires in San Francisco in May.

Vance is full of contradictions. While claiming to oppose funding to the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine on the one hand, he embraces the genocide in Palestine on the other. He criticizes Joe Biden for backing the U.S. occupation of Iraq—which is true—but omits that a Republican administration planned and executed the war.

Vance cannot be a genuine defender of one segment of the working class while attacking and degrading the rest of our class. In many ways, Vance is Trump’s demagogic “mini me.”