J.D. Vance and the Grim Rise of Rightwing Standpoint Theory
Increasingly, the forces of reaction and ethno-nationalist violence are using liberal rhetorical framing against liberals.
In response to J.D. Vance’s ongoing blood libel media campaign against Haitian immigrants, the press has finally—and belatedly—provided pushback against the GOP vice presidential candidate. The fact of Republican incitement campaigns against a defenseless immigrant group is, unfortunately, not a new development, nor is the weak response from center-left media. What is novel and worth highlighting is the shift in right-wing response when called out for spreading racist lies.
In the past, Donald Trump would simply triple down, completely disinterested in whether or not what he was saying was true or had any relation, at all, to reality. He occupied a different dimension, and would act accordingly. But Trump’s heir apparent, J.D. Vance, takes a different tact when confronted with his racist lies—one more calibrated for modern sensibilities, more subtly sinister, and, worst of all, more grating: that of right-wing Standpoint Theory.
Standpoint theory—or standpoint epistemology—is, broadly speaking, a framework that emerged from feminist theory that says there is special and useful authority rooted in a person’s personal experience and perspectives. In its domain of applicability, the theory works and makes intuitive sense: Obviously personal experience informs our knowledge base and gives authority to oppressed people to comment on the nature of nuances of their oppression. But as a pop messaging tactic, as a rhetorical gimmick, it’s becoming increasingly common among reactionaries to claim to be speaking for an allegedly neglected or oppressed group—regardless of whether the group in question is oppressed in any useful sense. This type of standpoint discourse, when fused with faux populist advocacy, takes on a uniquely dishonest and cynical flavor.
See recent media appearances by J.D. Vance as he defended his racist lies targeting Haitian migrants. Note how he begins every discussion of his incitement campaign by offsetting the moral burden for it on some faceless cohort of “constituents”:
Rather than defending his lies on their merits, Vance, being the slick former Yale law student and liberal media darling he is, is relying on the framing that he is merely reflecting the will of faceless constituents. He knows this framing exposes a flaw in liberal discourse: the unwillingness for Serious Reporters to say that someone, or some cohort, that is supposedly marginalized is simply wrong or full of shit. In both videos, it’s against the unwritten media rules for Bash or Alcindor to say, “Well, okay, but even if it is true that your ‘constituents’ are crying out for you to do something about the blight of pet-stealing immigrants, sometimes people are ill informed or malicious or outright stupid.”
In other words, people often lie, or they are deluded, or their personal ‘experiences’ are filtered through layers of warped ideology. So, who cares?
This is something we routinely acknowledge for overtly outlandish or loaded claims. We don’t defer to the personal experience of people who claim to “know” the 2020 election was rigged, or the Earth is flat, or lizard people occupy the highest positions of power. People’s personal experience is important and provides essential context for how oppression manifest and harms, but—and this is essential—it must be tethered, in some way, to an underlying objective and shared reality. It does not, in itself, constitute definitive proof of an empirical claim.
Vance is very aware of this and is attempting to exploit a flaw in this culture of professional deference, which is why “I’m just looking out for the put-upon poor folk of rural Ohio” is his preferred smol beans defense. It’s one he’s done for so long I noted it over four years ago.
Indeed, this Working Man ventriloquizing is how Vance rose to prominence in liberal media in 2016. He confirmed the neoliberal consensus that poor whites were axiomatically bigoted, backwards, and unmoveable by left-wing populism. He evoked “culture of poverty” cliches that were popular among the Clintons. (Recall: Bill Clinton praised Charles Murray’s racist, anti-poor arguments in 1993, saying Murray’s “analysis is essentially right.”) And he used his position as an alleged Authentic Appalachian to confirm the priors of rich liberals.
As Chris Lehmann brilliantly details in The Nation this week, JD Vance’s entire career has been this type of power-flattering standpoint epistemology for poor whites harmed by 1990s globalization:
[Vance, like Obama before him, argues that] retrograde cultural attitudes and mores were holding these stubbornly unassimilated groups back—and, importantly, redistributive policies could do nothing to alter this set of self-undermining behaviors, steeped as they are in what Senior called “fatalistic belief.” It’s the same fable of cultural determinism that shaped Obama’s signature race initiative, the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, an ostensible response to the racist Trayvon Martin shooting that was, in reality, a multibillion-dollar, corporate-backed effort to revive the culture-pathologizing handiwork of the Moynihan Report for the 21st century.
Vance is just doing a warmed over version of this bit, but pivoting from soft Moynihan racism and classism to outright fascistic incitement against migrants.
Vance’s approach is not dissimilar to the strategy pro-Israel groups and pundits have employed since the genocide in Gaza got underway in earnest last October, using what I call Crybullyism to defend Israel against meaningful criticism and protest. Powerful institutions and groups like the Anti-Defamation League routinely invert power relations and rely on the supposed personal experiences of a handpicked cohort of pro-Israel students to become the face of a wave of racial hatred. While there are obviously instances of anti-semitism in the U.S., scanning the New York Times or CNN, one would come away with the impression that the true victims of Israel’s “War in Gaza” were largely Columbia undergrads, not the over 15,000 children killed by Israel.
This isn’t, of course, the first time right-wing demagogues have claimed to speak for the silent majority, the silenced Every Man—indeed, supposedly doing so is a key element of fascistic messaging and has been for 100 years. But demagogues historically position themselves among the people, as part of the alleged masses and championing their message—defending their xenophobic paranoia on its merits—not positioning themselves as a mere civil servant reluctantly responding to their organic demands. By framing his incitement campaign as something he’s only doing because his “constituents” are demanding he do so, Vance is putting himself apart from the unwashed masses. He is engaging in the most liberal of pastimes: avoiding ideological debate and painting himself as a helpless and reluctant messenger. Vance has neither the courage nor the honesty to defend his racist lies as such. He can only shrug and start every conversation defending them as something he’s simply responding to. Just as Democrats insist they have to go right on “border security,” Gaza and a host of issues because the public is allegedly demanding they do so, Vance is taking the easy and cheap cop-out of couching his reactionary position as a bottom-up reflection of democratic pressure.
Without, of course, any evidence supporting this claim. Presumably, as a senator of state with 11.8 million people, Vance gets hundreds of emails every week, why he chose to listen to—and make central to his campaign—these “dozen emails” (assuming they actually exists) and not the hundreds of others is never explained. Because the whole framing is cynical and fake.
And that’s the underlying issue: No one in politics wants to do ideology anymore. No one has the integrity to defend, on first principles, the ugly, violent policies and media campaigns they support. Everyone’s hands are tied, no one has any power or agency, and the voters are simply forcing electeds to be nasty, petty bigoted middle managers. Rather than indulging Vance’s phony Standpoint Theory for Racists, our media should call it out, ask him to say who these constituents are, why Haitian migrants aren’t his “constituents,” and demand he defend his words and actions as such, rather than letting him pass the buck to these alleged senders of anonymous chain emails.