US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s candidate for Vice President, Senator JD Vance, has a hawkish history of dealing with the European Union, frequently criticising governments on the continent for their perceived attacks on free speech.
Vance, a Republican politician born and raised in a poor Rust Belt family, is associated with the US “New Right”, a movement that disparages modern liberalism and globalism. He is particularly critical of mainstream politics in Europe.
First elected as a Senator in late 2022, Vance has repeatedly rebuked EU governments over freedom of speech issues, attacking Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier in 2024 for his attempt to shut down critical voices within government-funded news outlets.
“The firing of personnel … raises questions about this new government’s commitment to media freedom and the rule of law,” he wrote in a letter sent to US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
“Some have wondered whether appeals to press freedom and the rule of law are used as a reminder of values which must be committed to or as cudgels with which to call down the wrath of international institutions and non-governmental organisations upon political opponents.
“It is my hope that it will always be the former, but I fear the reaction to Prime Minister Tusk’s handling of the media may suggest otherwise.”
Vance had previously threatened the Irish Government with possible sanctions in the future over the country’s proposed hate-speech bill, warning that the US had frequently punished other, larger states for enacting similar legislation.
“Ireland senator wants to criminalise speech that causes too much ‘discomfort’ for people. If this were happening in Russia or China or many other nations we would call it totalitarian and threaten economic sanctions,” he wrote in another letter to Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States.
“Indeed, earlier this year, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions on Iranian Government officials believed to be involved in censoring peaceful protestors and ‘inhibiting their rights to freedom of expression [and] peaceful assembly’.
“I am alarmed that one of our closest friends, a democracy dedicated to upholding cherished freedoms, should undertake such legislation,” he added.
“What is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon?
And we were like, maybe it's Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts.
And then we sort of finally decided maybe it's actually the UK.”
Senator @JDVance1 at NatCon 4: pic.twitter.com/sDxqqrhpvR
— American Moment (@AmMomentOrg) July 11, 2024
The Ohio politician has also taken on the growth of political Islam within the UK, warning at a National Conservatism conference in Washington DC earlier in July that the nation could become the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons if trends continued.
“One of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though of course the Biden administration doesn’t care about it,” he said.
“What is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon?
“Maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts.
“Maybe it’s actually the UK, since [the Labour Party] just took over,” he concluded.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has been slammed by U.S. Senator @JDVance1 over its “silence” regarding Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s anti-media clampdown in Poland. https://t.co/TaPxgtSqRs
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 12, 2024
Vance has also taken an apathetic position on the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying he did not particularly care about the future of the Eastern European country and did not believe the US — with its reduced manufacturing capacity — was able to provide it with arms in perpetuity.
“Last year, Ukraine’s defence minister estimated that the country’s base-line requirement for these shells was over four million per year but that it could fire up to seven million if that many were available,” he wrote earlier this year in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
“Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimetre shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 per cent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025.
“This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.”
The politician instead has advocated that a stronger position on China should be adopted, describing the Asian country as the “biggest threat” to the US.
That is likely to cause further conflict with Europe as the continent remains highly reliant on the Communist State in terms of both imports and exports.
Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz admitted he was “moved to tears” by the novel Hillbilly Elegy, written by a US politician and supporter of former US President Donald Trump. https://t.co/MkSyDVIozY
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 2, 2023
Culturally, Vance is also likely to be seen as a hostile actor in Europe.
He initially rose to prominence in 2016 with his seminal autobiography Hillbilly Elegy, painting a picture of a white working-class that had been abandoned by their own country.
Unlike many Republicans, the 39-year-old views himself as being “plugged into a lot of weird right-wing subcultures”, many of which are judged with hostility by EU politicians.
Vance was influenced by right-wing entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel during his time at Yale, coming under the influential businessman’s wing and being hired by his San Francisco-based Mithril Capital investment fund in 2015.
He has also in the past cited Curtis Yarvin as an intellectual influence. Better known by his pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin is a key philosopher within the so-called “Dark Enlightenment” that questions some of the core assumptions of modern Liberal thought.
Vance views himself largely as a social outsider, saying in the past that he identified closely with his Scots-Irish ethnic background and emphasising that the current culture war had much to do with the conflict between working-class Americans and the country’s elite.
While his values will likely put him at odds with most EU government officials, he has nevertheless been on the receiving end of complimentary comments in the past.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz openly praised Hillbilly Elegy last year, saying during an interview that the book was “a very touching personal story of a young man who overcomes difficult circumstances” that ended up moving him to tears.
Scholz went on to criticise Vance, though, accusing the former member of the anti-Trump “Never Trumper”- a moderate Conservative movement – of having “turned into a fiery supporter of this right-wing populist in order to gain his support”.
Threatened with death, Trump roars out, ‘Fight, fight’, writes @Raphfel.
Read the full article 👉🏽 https://t.co/TDRgJEqxU6 #trump #donaldtrump pic.twitter.com/P6fDI4T1wM
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 15, 2024
