Right-wing extremist attacks target the Indian origins of JD Vance’s wife Usha

“When JD met me, he approached our differences with curiosity and enthusiasm,” Usha Vance said of her relationship with the Ohio senator. “He wanted to know everything about me, where I came from, what my life was like.”

Usha Vance said that while her husband is a “meat-and-potatoes guy,” he has “adapted to my vegetarian diet” – a statement that drew some gasps at the convention. Her husband, she added, even learned to cook Indian food from her mother. In his own remarks, JD Vance referenced his wife’s heritage when he spoke of the United States’ tradition of “welcoming newcomers into our American family.”

“We allow it on our terms. In this way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years ago and hopefully into the next 250 years. And let me illustrate that with a story, if I may,” he said. “I am, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people. People who have truly enriched this country in so many ways.”

But while JD Vance made it clear that he was proud of his wife and her heritage, some right-wing agitators on the Internet immediately began denigrating the couple, their mixed-race family and Usha Vance’s immigrant background.

The attacks underline the Tensions that the vice presidential candidate must overcome during the election campaign There, Trump called for tough measures against immigration and used violent rhetoric to describe migrants, including suggesting that they should be put into fights for fun.

After Vance was named Trump’s vice presidential nominee, far-right activist Jaden McNeil shared an undated photo of the Vances and their newborn child on X with the caption, “I’m sure this guy will be great on immigration issues.”

In a podcast attacking the Vances, Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist, repeated rhetoric often associated with the racist “Great Replacement Theory” – a line of argument popular among right-wing white nationalists that falsely claims there is a plan to “replace” native-born white Americans with immigrants. Fuentes – who is also known for his anti-Semitic remarks and attended the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 – said he did not expect “the guy who has an Indian wife” to “support white identity.”

“What exactly are we getting at here? And this is not a dig at him because I’m a racist or anything like that,” Fuentes said. “White people are being systematically replaced in America and Europe by immigration and, to a much lesser extent, by intermarriage. This guy has a non-white wife.”

Fuentes – who visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022 with rapper Ye – made similarly inflammatory remarks about the Vances on X.

A spokesman for JD Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance wrote that he fell in love with his wife during her first year of law school and that she “seemed to him like a kind of genetic anomaly, a combination of all the positive qualities a human being should have: intelligent, hardworking, tall and beautiful.”

Usha Vance, he said, was his “Yale spirit guide” who “instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask, and she always encouraged me to look for opportunities I didn’t know existed.” Usha Vance was on his side when he ran for Senate in 2022 – and when he, like Trump, adopted a more right-wing, inflammatory rhetoric during the campaign.

As a candidate for the Senate, Vance seemed to repeat some of the rhetoric behind the “Great Replacement Theory” when he claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson said Democrats hope to win the 2022 election by replacing American voters and “recruiting large numbers of new voters to replace the voters who are already here.”

He did not address that naturalization – the prerequisite for voting – is a lengthy process and that any new immigrant eligible to vote in the 2022 election had likely spent years working on their naturalization process.

Brian Hughes, a professor at American University and a researcher on extremism and radicalization, said the attacks on the Vances by these extremists showed that “anti-immigrant rhetoric and the very basic ideology of white supremacy often overlap.” Hughes said McNeil’s post questioning JD Vance’s views on immigration based on the makeup of his family was “indicative of white nationalism” and the “idea that the United States is and should be an exclusively white country.”

Nevertheless, he noted that views such as those of these extremists “are fringe within the broader extreme right.”

“That’s where these attacks will continue to come from,” he said. “I think the vast majority of the conservative movement in America doesn’t think that way. And I think that speaks for them.”

Ohio State Senator Niraj Antani (R), the first Indian-American senator in Ohio’s history, rejected the notion that Fuentes, McNeil and other far-right agitators who attacked the Vances represent any faction of the Republican Party. The two are “attention-seeking hate preachers,” and Fuentes, Antani said, is a known anti-Semite who is “extremely racist and bigoted.”

“Racism is not partisan, it is not on the partisan spectrum,” Antani said. “I don’t think Fuentes’ comments reflect any mainstream position. I think this is an extremely small, vocal racist.”

Antani, who is serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention and is supporting Vance’s nomination for vice president, also pointed out that Trump’s wife, Melania, is an immigrant. He added that the fact that the country can have an immigrant as first lady and the daughter of immigrants as second lady is “testament to the greatness of America.” If Republicans win in November, Usha Vance would be the first non-white second lady.

But some Republicans Usha Vance celebrated after her husband was named Trump’s vice president. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a hard-line conservative, praised her in a post on X as “extremely impressive”.

“Mother of three, graduated from Yale Law School, holds degrees from Yale and Cambridge, has been a corporate litigator, and has clerked for Supreme Court justices,” Luna wrote.