The opening paragraphs of JD Vance speech should not surprise! It is the usual Trump strategy of causing intentional disequlibian, in sum putting American Allies on the defensive. It’s the Trump Political Speciality: Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada, the Gulf of America! But note that JD Vance iteration of that strategy, is a more modulated than Trump’s, but still manages to cause upset/consternation in European Officialdom!
JD Vance has said Europe’s “threat from within” is graver than that posed by Russia and China in a confrontational speech that hit out at alleged infringements of democracy and provoked a furious response from the continent’s officials.
In an address to the Munich Security Conference, the US vice-president criticised the cancellation of a recent election in Romania, the prosecution of an anti-abortion protester in the UK and the exclusion of far-right and far-left German politicians from the event itself.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” Vance said. “And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
Editor: Does JD Vance manage to convince The Reader that his performance as moderate scold, in lieu of Trump has patency? Or that Vance has suceeeded in any way with his auidence? These quotations will supply possible answer?
European officials were alarmed by what they saw as Vance’s attempts to link US security backing for the continent to his comments about freedom of speech and democracy.
Speaking after Vance in the same forum, Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius labelled the criticism as “unacceptable”, adding he had no choice but to respond.
“I had a speech I prepared today,” Pistorius said. “It was supposed to be about security in Europe. But I cannot start in the way I originally intended . . . This democracy was called into question by the US vice-president.”
The German defence minister added: “He compares the condition of Europe with what is happening in autocracies. This is not acceptable.”
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, said she was surprised by Vance’s “lecturing”. “I think we can deal with our own domestic issues,” Kallas told the FT.
Friedrich Merz, Christian Democrat leader and favourite to be the next German chancellor, accused the Trump administration of “interfering quite openly in an election”.
He told broadcaster Deutsche Welle he was irritated by Vance’s remarks, adding: “It is not the job of the American government to explain to us here in Germany how to protect our democratic institutions.”
As dozens of European leaders, corporate executives and senior diplomats watched on grimly, Vance painted a picture of a continent where democracy was under threat from a disconnected elite.
“If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” he said.
Editor: Further revelitory Vance Speak:
…the US vice-president said there should be “no room for firewalls” in European politics.
Editor: Vance and AfD:
Though he did not explicitly refer to Alternative for Germany, his comments were hailed by the far-right party, which polls suggest will claim second place in the February 23 election. “Excellent speech!” Alice Weidel, AfD co-leader, wrote on X.
Parts of the AfD have been designated as rightwing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency and the group has been blacklisted from this week’s Munich conference, as has a populist leftwing party.
Vance met with Weidel on Friday, a big step in normalising a party seen as toxic by mainstream German parties and most of their western allies.
…European leaders were blindsided by the Trump administration’s announcement that it would begin bilateral talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine.
Vance said European allies planned to brief him on how they would increase their commitments to the continent’s collective defence. However, he said security would only come through addressing the array of social challenges he described.
“I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people.”
European officials in Munich were horrified at what they saw as Vance’s unfair and untrue claims, and his linking of US support to the allegations.
“It was mad, totally mad,” said one senior European diplomat. “And very dangerous.”
Some officials compared the speech with Vladimir Putin’s address at the same event in 2007, where the Russian president warned that Nato expansion risked conflict with Moscow.
“He lectured us, he humiliated us,” said a senior EU diplomat. “The mood in the room was exactly like the Putin 2007 speech . . . it was outrageous.”
A 24-year-old failed Afghan asylum seeker pleaded guilty to carrying out the attack, authorities said on Friday, as they suggested a likely Islamist motive.
Editor: The Vance diatribe continued as reported in The Financial Times:
Vance said: “More and more all over Europe, they are voting for people who promise to put to an end uncontrolled migration.”
He added: “Dismissing their concerns . . . shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure-fire way of destroying democracy.”
The US vice-president attacked “EU Commission commissars” for warning “citizens that they intend to shut down social media . . . the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content’,” and, “perhaps most concerningly . . . our very dear friends, the United Kingdom”.
Vance criticised the UK’s handling of a case in which a man was convicted last year after praying near an abortion clinic. The man was within a buffer zone around such centres in which abortion-related campaigning is banned.
Note that Vance’s literary debut ‘Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis’ reviewed here by Nancy Isenberg :
J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy borrows from the traditional formula of the American Dream, celebrating grit and self-actualization. Looking in the rearview mirror as he moves ahead, Vance—who was raised in a middle- and working-class community in southern Ohio, served in the Marines, went to Yale Law School, and became a venture capitalist—revels in the proven possibility of individual uplift. He simultaneously tells two stories: those of outsider and insider. He is at once a fugitive from his dysfunctional family and the anointed prophet tasked with translating rural Appalachia into words that the American media can process with knowing satisfaction. He is a believer in the “corny” American Dream and feels that he lives in the “greatest country on earth.” (Yeah, he actually writes that.)
Vance writes about a troubled childhood with an abusive mother who is battling alcohol and drug addiction. He endures a long list of stepfathers and a remarried father whose religious extremism he eventually finds empty because it “required so little” of him except hating gays, evolutionary theory, Clintonian liberalism, and extramarital sex. Vance’s childhood trauma centers around one very dramatic event, in which his mother threatens to kill them both in a car crash; but we never really see it from his perspective as a child. He survives the ordeal, and is forced to lie in court so that his mother, who is tried for a domestic violence misdemeanor, can retain custody and avoid jail time. He had made a pact with his grandmother, Mamaw: he could stay with her whenever he wanted, and “if Mom had a problem with the arrangement, she could talk to the barrel of Mamaw’s gun.”
…
Mr. Vance’s ‘Elegy’ was re-written and edited by many hands, as Vance was/is ambitious, and had powerful friends, mentors and other canny self-publicists.
Editor: The Self-Made Man had help on The Way Up, from another Self-Made Man!
Editor: The American Mythology of The Selfmade Man :
27 Facts About J.D. Vance, Trump’s Pick for V.P.
Mr. Vance spilled scores of details about his life in his coming-of-age memoir. We’ve collected the highlights.
Editor: Consider number 6 and how handily it fits Peter Thiel. ‘A mentor, a former boss, an intellectual and spiritual advisor, a friend and a major donor.’!
6. He was taught to accept gay people. Mr. Vance wrote that he would “never forget the time I convinced myself I was gay.” Not yet old enough to feel attracted to the opposite sex, he worried something was wrong. “You’re not gay,” his mamaw told him, and even if he were, she reassured him, “that would be OK. God would still love you.” As he wrote, “Now that I’m older, I recognize the profundity of her sentiment: Gay people, though unfamiliar, threatened nothing about mamaw’s being. There were more important things for a Christian to worry about.”
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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