JD Vance is following white nationalists on X

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance follows several accounts on X that espouse far-right and white nationalist views, according to an analysis by The Independent. Vance has described another controversial figure, political scientist Richard Hanania, as a “friend” and a “really interesting thinker.” A HuffPost investigation revealed Hanania as having written for several white nationalist websites under a pseudonym in the early 2010s — where he expressed support for eugenics, opposed “race-mixing” and cited neo-Nazis — although Vance continues to follow him on X. Hanania later disavowed the views he expressed while writing under a pseudonym, writing in an essay titled ‘My Journey Out of Extremism’ last year: “I truly sucked back then.” Just a couple of months before the publication of the essay, Hanania used his account on X to call for “more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people.” Far-right social media influencer Laura Loomer is also on Vance’s follow list. Loomer has described herself as a “ proud Islamophobe.” Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, and his vice presidential running mate Senator JD Vance attend the second day of the Republican National Convention. Vance also follows podcast host Darryl Cooper, who said that the 2017 Charlottesville ‘Unite The Right’ rally included “a bunch of good people and wrote in a since-deleted tweet that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2,” The Atlantic reported.