This Land is Mein Land

J.D. Vance's Blood and Soil Nationalism

J.D. Vance’s convention speech, with a few moments of performative pugilism aside—a clenched fist, a set jaw, a raised voice—could appear anodyne and normal. It even tried to be sweet: They clearly wanted Vance to soften his image by his references to being a loving husband and dad. It was not nearly as steely or menacing as Pat Buchanan’s 1992 “Culture War” speech. It hit the requisite populist notes: all the stuff about fighting Wall Street and multinational corporations, poses that are somewhat belied by a recent mass defection of Silicon Valley capital to Trump’s G.O.P. (Perhaps those are the good “American” businesses not the evil globalist ones.) But the thing that struck me most was the nationalism. You might say, “Well, it’s a convention speech of course it’s gonna be patriotic.” No, not patriotic. Nationalist. Far more than Buchanan’s speech 32 years ago, Vance openly embraced “America First”—a slogan Pat still dared not say at the podium in Houston—and the type of nationalism championed by the paleoconservatives. Here was the pivotal moment of the speech for me:

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Softened somewhat, this is the heart of entire paleocon ethos: Contrary to the notion that America is an idea, a creed, a set of self-evident propositions of the Declaration of Independence, first and foremost “that all men are created equal," we are a specific people with a specific past. Notice that Vance didn’t include any part of the Declaration, egalitarianism or even freedom as the “brilliant ideas,” just vaguely gesturing to the “Constitution,” religious liberty and the rule of law: His speech doesn’t mention “freedom” or “equality” once.

For the paleocons, in the words of Samuel Francis, conservatism “the defense of a way of life, a concrete and historical manner of thinking and living, rather than on an adherence to various abstract ideals and principles…” Their quarrel with what was then the mainstream of Republican party and the conservative movement was that it accepted the creedal interpretation of American patriotism, a view they felt had been imposed upon real Americans by alien, elite liberalism and, in the final analysis, by Lincoln’s “second founding” and distortion of Jefferson’s words. Now, posthumously, the paleos have won the factional war. Make no mistake: this is no longer even notionally the “party of Lincoln.” Just compare the beginning of the Gettysburg address, where Lincoln speaks of a nation “conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” to what Vance said in Milwaukee.

Still, one might object that we really do have a shared past as a country and not just a set of principles and that ought not to be particularly offensive. But just whose past is it? Who gets to share this shared history? And who else is just visiting, a “newcomer” who must accept “our terms,” as Vance puts it. That’s also clear in his speech. Speaking of his kinfolk buried in that cemetery in Kentucky, he says:

…they love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.

That is the source of America’s greatness.

As a United States senator, I get to represent millions of people in the great state of Ohio with similar stories, and it is the great honor of my life.

Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

Now. Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.

He represents those with “similar stories.” America is their homeland. This is what the French historian Michel Winock once called “mortuary nationalism.” There’s the soil one’s ancestors are laid to rest in. And the continuity of the blood: The “seven generations of people” of people who built and fought for this country. The country they feel “in their bones.” Usually in a convention there’s at least lip service to the other types of people who also built and fought for this country, with other images and vistas of being American. But Vance’s view is parochial; he makes it clear it’s about his type of people. To be sure, this is softened by a dose of cosmopolitanism: his “immigrant” wife and mixed kids. His wife’s family might be “great people,” but they come second, not first.

Vance surely knows , like other educated people who manipulate these symbols, that race is not real thing but rather a useful reactionary mythology. As John Thomason pointed out back in 2016, Vance has always had a strange preoccupation with blood. Race science lurks throughout Hillbilly Elegy. So maybe he believes the mythos a little bit. And it’s likely that Vance’s version of American völkisch just too watered down for the real hard core. But the smarter ones of them know about him what they knew about Trump: he’s singing their type of music.

To step back again, we have a “populist” movement with a phony anti-capitalist rhetoric that deploys nationalist myths, lead by a charismatic leader, and that is now rallying a reactionary big business elite to its cause. Call it what you will.