White Nationalists Opened J.D. Vance's Eyes to the Opportunity to Fan White Racial Fears

Let's take a look at the timeline around the train derailment in Ohio, with a specific focus on how the state's Republican senator, J.D. Vance, responded.

January 28 - February 4

News coverage was obsessed with the Chinese spy balloon crossing the United States.

February 3

Toxic train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. That day, Vance posted this on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/mkF7DIN43q

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 3, 2023

February 4

Vance tweeted that his team was monitoring the situation in East Palestine and that he was praying for everyone's safety. 

February 7

President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union speech. Here's an excerpt:

My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.

Maybe that’s you, watching at home.

You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away.

I get it.

That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind.

Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back, because of the choices we made in the last two years. This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.

February 12 

A political group named American Virtue posted this video on Twitter: 

There is currently an ecological disaster in Ohio, and no one in the media is speaking about it. pic.twitter.com/8yzBf7cXCB

— American Virtue (@AmVirtueOrg) February 12, 2023

American Virtue is a project of the far-right American Bull Moose Foundation, and, according to the nonprofit group Political Research Associates, appears "to be a venue for young White nationalists to curry favor with a new crop of MAGA-aligned political figures" (emphasis mine). It is meant to be, that organization reported, a more mainstream version of Nick Fuentes' far-right white nationalist group, America First.

All of the sudden, right wingers switched from balloon mania to lighting their hair on fire about the train derailment.
 

February 13

After not mentioning the situation in East Palestine for nine days, Vance issued a statement and paid a visit to Tucker Carlson, where he claimed that "we are ruled by unserious people" (ie, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg) who are focused on whether we have too many white men in construction jobs instead of the (white) residents of East Palestine - who are "our people."

You may wonder why I inserted that excerpt from Biden's State of the Union speech into this timeline. It's because two conservative pundits referred to it when writing about the response of Republicans to the train derailment. For example, Sohrab Ahmari (a prominent National Conservative) introduced his column in praise of Vance and Rubio with this:

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Joe Biden sounded about as populist as he ever has. “My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten,” he declared. “Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.” Turning to the home viewer, he added: “Maybe that’s you, watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it.”

Good stuff. The train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, was an opportunity for Biden to show that he really “gets it,” by coming to the rescue of America’s forgotten men and women, and holding accountable the market and governmental elites responsible for their misery. But the president utterly flubbed it—giving an opening to two of the GOP’s most serious populist rising stars to step into the breach.

What we can see from this is that "pretend populists" like Ahmari and Vance were seriously threatened by the success of Biden's focus on "a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America." When a white nationalist organization like Virtue America made them aware of the opportunity to stoke white working class racial fears as a result of the train derailment in Ohio, they jumped on it.

On a side note, during Obama's presidency I wrote a lot about the way he used "conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy" and often included this quote from Mark Schmitt:

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Take a look at Buttigieg doing exactly that in response to Senator Rick Scott. 

Here are some examples of what Congress can do to help (along with immediate steps we've been taking and what we demand rail companies do). If you're serious, I'll work with you on this. https://t.co/cihnMCBUJq

— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) February 21, 2023