J.D. Vance Endorses Book That Calls for Dismantling Democracy
J.D. Vance wrote a blurb praising "Unhumans," a new right-wing book that calls for dismantling democracy as part of an ideological war.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance endorsed a book that labels liberals as “unhumans” and calls for the dismantling of democracy to “crush” the spread of left-wing ideas.
Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) was written by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec. Lisec is a professional ghostwriter, and Posobic is a well-known far-right influencer who promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory alleging that Democrats were running a child-trafficking ring out of Washington, D.C.’s Comet Pizza.
In Unhumans — which contains a forward written by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon — Posobiec and Lisec argue that the history of left-wing movements shows they are driven by hate and that adherents of such movements wish to “rob” and “kill” conservatives in order to achieve their larger goal of dismantling societal institutions.
The two call those on the political Left — regardless of how they identify, including progressives — “unhumans,” whom they alleged are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” against American society, claiming they “want an excuse to destroy everything.”
“With power, unhumans undo civilization itself,” Posobiec and Lisec write. “They undo order. They undo the basic bonds of society that make communities and nations possible. They destroy the human rights of life, liberty, and property — and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.”
In a blurb provided by Vance endorsing the book, the Republican vice presidential nominee writes, “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”
As David Corn at Mother Jones writes, “In [the authors’] view” — and presumably Vance’s — “the dangerous unhumans are everywhere. The Civil Rights movement? Mounted by unhumans. Critics of hate speech? Unhumans. The Black Lives Matter protests? Organized by unhumans.” Corn even quotes them as writing that leftists and progressives “simply hate those who are good-looking and successful.”
The authors defend the people who took part in the unrest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in protest of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
According to Posobiec and Lisec, Capitol Hill police “fired on the peaceful crowd with nonlethal munitions and flash-bangs,” in order to provoke “well-meaning patriots” into storming the Capitol building. They claim that the intent behind such actions was meant to punish election-deniers for expressing their views and to “begin a purge of Trump supporters from the military and from public life.”
The book also delves into conspiratorial beliefs that “Big Tech” is working covertly with leftists to help them achieve their aims of fundamentally reshaping society — often by promoting “woke” ideas or causes.
Lastly, the authors argue that conservatives must “stop playing by rules” by disregarding institutional norms — and even democracy itself — to protect society from the political Left’s dangerous ideas. They call for a new, revived form of McCarthyism, an ideological war in which conservatives would weaponize the power of the state and law enforcement agencies to carry out retribution against anyone who advocates for left-wing principles or ideas.
Michelle Goldberg, writing in The New York Times, notes how extreme such ideas are.
“The word ‘fascist’ gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for Unhumans, which came out last month,” she writes. “The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped.”
Goldberg notes that the two political leaders praised by Posobiec and Lisec in the book are former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who discouraged the free exercise of voting because allowing a multitude of opinions might run counter to his ultra-nationalist views of Spain as a conservative, authoritarian state; and Augusto Pinochet, the leader of the Chilean military junta who overthrew a democratically-elected government and ushered in a reign in which political prisoners were tortured, imprisoned, and even thrown to their deaths from helicopters.
Critics of Vance say the vice presidential nominee’s decision to write a blurb praising the book is indicative of how deeply steeped in conspiratorial “alt-right” culture he is.
Vance has previously echoed running mate Donald Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was rigged and that the January 6 insurrectionists were unjustly prosecuted.
He has also said that if he had been vice president in 2020, he would have recognized slates of phony Trump electors from states won by Joe Biden.
That means that, should Trump win in 2024, there’s a very likely possibility that Vance, as the sitting vice president in 2029, might singlehandedly invalidate election results he didn’t like and install a Republican president — possibly even himself — against voters’ wishes.
It stands to reason that Vance should perhaps be asked whether he read the book, why the authors’ thesis resonates with him, and, most importantly, whether he endorses overturning democracy in order to “save” society by imposing conservative groupthink onto the American populace.
“[I]t is always possible that Vance recommended Unhumans without actually reading it, a practice that’s not unheard-of in book publishing,” Goldberg writes. “But unless and until he credibly distances himself from it, we should take him at his word that he shares the book’s analysis. After all, some of the language in Unhumans resembles his own rhetoric.”
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