Spawn of Authoritarians
Spawn of Authoritarians
The Dark Gleam in JD’s Eyes
Scapegoating Redux: Blame the Haitians
Relax. We’re not going to talk about cats, cat ladies, or cat-napping. We’re not taking that path. It’s more infuriating than that. While cats are being valorized, Haitians are being vilified—again—by racist scapegoating from the far right.
We’ve seen this before. In the early 1980s, during the outbreak of AIDS in New York, Haitians were conveniently lumped into the 4-H demonization loop of Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin users. President Ronald Reagan, basking in his "Morning in America," was in no rush to confront the crisis. In fact, it took him nearly four years to even acknowledge the epidemic. Among his remarks:
“Maybe the Lord brought down this plague” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
That was 1987, but it sounds like Project 2025 rhetoric. Demonizing the “other” still characterizes policy and philosophy of the extreme right—JD Vance and his chief influencers included. Racist tropes are a pattern. Vulnerable minorities are the punching bags of political cruelty. As a political expedient, Vance is scapegoating Haitians for bringing crime, disease, and pestilence to small town Springfield Ohio.
And it’s all a lie.
Political Distortion
JD Vance admitted as much. This week he told CNN’s Dana Bash:
"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."
And that’s precisely what the American media did. It chased the Haitians-eating-cats story like cats chasing red laser beams. American media ran after those beams toward the bright shiny objects JD was pointing toward in order to distract from the real stories:
The flailing Republican campaign, and
the authoritarian figures behind it.
Who Is JD Vance?
What JD Vance did not do is explain the dark gleam in his eye. He does not explain his motivations. And while no one can get into anyone’s head [except maybe Trump’s just to mess with him], we would be remiss not to try. After all, Vance is but a heartbeat away from the presidency if Trump is elected. Let’s face it. Ultimately, Trump will be sidelined for one reason or another—his age, his cognitive decline, his utter lack of utility. At 39 years old, Vance would be heir if Trump wins. We should know more about this guy. And what is behind him.
Ian Ward of Politico writes frequently about the influences behind American conservative thought. In his most recent article, he is shining a bright light on what’s influencing JD Vance. His piece, “Is There More to JD Vance’s MAGA Alliance Than Meets the Eye?” won’t make it on most cable news shows because it’s too complex—too long to tell. It took months for Project 2025 to break through. But we don’t have that luxury of time until the next election. The biggest news story of the moment is not about cats and Taylor Swift and the latest polls. It's about exactly who JD Vance is and how JD Vance got this way. We can’t afford not to know.
The New Right’s Mantra
We start here. All of JD’s intellectual idols have one thought in common.
Liberal Democracy Sucks
That common thought is the result of a nexus of staunch right wing thinking— theocratic, tech monarchism, and elite billionaire ideologies. Autocratic regimes would be proud. “Liberal Democracy Sucks”—is syllogistic:
Democracy is self-destructive
Expansion of individual rights undermines authority
Autonomy is the enemy of the preferred social compact
Therefore, the “right” social compact must be constituted of:
Heteronormative families
Blind adherence to organized dogma
Silence to protest and dissent
Homogeneous, non-diverse communities
There you are. The gateway steps to authoritarianism.
Dark Echoes Past & Present
We’ve seen these step before. Pick your version of grim.
Hobbes' Leviathan
In which the 17th Century philosopher argues that the chaotic state of nature can only be escaped when individuals consent to form a commonwealth governed by an absolute sovereign to ensure order in exchange for freedoms.
Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor
“Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves but feed us.’”
Hitler’s Führerstaat
Where greatness, pride, and dignity are achieved by cracking down on Jews, Communists, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Roma people, Slavs and other groups considered racially inferior according to Nazi supremacy.
Orbán’s Ethnonationalism
At the May 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in Budapest, Orbán’s keynote address claimed that his suppression of LGBTQ+ rights, academic freedom, and the media is a model for the world.
Putin’s Kleptocracy
The “Politics of Eternity” loops back to an imagined or idealized past, often one that never truly existed or cannot be regained. Putin will continue to spill blood while concentrating personal treasure and justifying expansionist land claims.
Common themes
There are common themes among these versions of authoritarianism and glimmers of our current state of affairs. We need not worry that authoritarianism could happen here. It’s already happening. It started long before Trump incited the treasonous January 6 insurrection. It has been developing over decades. Just recently it has all come together with policy, training, personnel and a handy rollout playbook. It’s called Project 2025. Proponents are just waiting for the right time to spring the trap. JD Vance is one of them.
JD’s New Right Influencers
Notre Dame’s Patrick Deneen. Deneen is drawn to non-liberal forms of democracy that prioritize community and shared values over individual rights. The key to transforming people’s unhappy lives is through the power of the gospel.
Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug is known as the high priest of the dark enlightenment. No democracy liberal, illiberal, nor non-liberal is acceptable. Yarvin’s gospel is all about the need for an American Caesar.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, Inc. and JD Vance backer, has remarked that freedom and democracy are not compatible. He preaches a gospel a stateless techno-libertarianism devoid of any rights except property rights.
Kevin Roberts, Project 2025 guru, writes about a second American Revolution that could be bloodless if the left allows it. Roberts is talking about the overthrow of the current democratic system, not working within established democratic processes. His Project 2025 has been outed as a shadow government, not an innocent presidential transition plan. Transition plans don’t include entire chapters on the subjugation of women and the marginalization of vulnerable communities.
In any mix of these diverse intellectual roadmaps, individual rights are trampled. Autonomy and agency take a back seat to an autocrat. And the country that we were born into becomes an unrecognizable goon-state run by elites who think they know better than you how to live your life.
An Action Plan
The next time you hear a moderate or independent or undecided voter mutter: “but I need to know more about Kamala,” give these a try.
She’s not Donald Trump.
She has no authoritarian plans to subjugate women and suppress vulnerable minorities.
And “you don’t know squat about JD Vance. Now sit down. Let me tell you…”
How the lies are born and expand like true stories for many. Thanks, Harry…for keeping it real for us.