Ohio senator JD Vance is now the Republican vice presidential nominee and running mate of former president and convicted felon Donald Trump.
Vance rose to fame in 2016 after publishing a memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book was adapted into a 2020 movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
A former never-Trumper, Vance changed his tune during his senate run in 2022 and embraced Trump and his allies, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, widely known for antisemitic outbursts.
During his time running for Senate and as a senator, Vance has consistently repeated and shared tweets that use the great replacement theory. The antisemitic conspiracy theory claims that Jews are using non-white people and illegal immigration to make white people a minority in the United States.
The great replacement theory is what inspired the gunmen in the deadliest attack on American Jews in history in 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Poway shooting in California in 2019.
The great replacement theory has found a home in mainstream Republican politics. Many right-wing figures and pundits have espoused it, including influential former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vance also defended Trump when the former president said that Jews who don’t vote for him are disloyal. This invokes the antisemitic conspiracy theory of dual loyalty, which touts that Jews are more loyal to Israel or each other than to America or the country they are living in.
Like many, including Twitter (now known as X) owner Elon Musk, Vance has made statements claiming that George Soros has been controlling events in the United States. Invoking funding by Soros has become an antisemitic dog whistle over the past several years and has been used by many right-wing politicians in the US.
Vance also defended Greene after she attended a white nationalist conference in 2022, saying, “She did nothing wrong,” Greene has made numerous antisemitic statements as a member of Congress, tweeting that the Jews killed Jesus, and claiming that Jewish-controlled space lasers created California wildfires. Vance also defended Trump dining with Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white supremacist.
