I Dare You Not To Be Shocked
If you read only one thing before the election, read this
I’m warning you upfront, this column is political.
Part of me wonders: Why am I writing this? For me, there’s no upside. This took a colossal amount of time. It is likely to offend people. I really, really do not want to lose friends.
But here’s the thing. It’s a matter of conscience. Sometimes you have to speak out.
I am both intrigued and repelled by politics. The vast majority of the time, it’s easier not to rock the boat by being outspoken about it. I learned a long time ago that in the American two-party system, there are genuinely good people in both major political parties. I am a moderate who leans left, although not on every issue. I have voted for members of both parties, but don’t identify as either. In fact, one of these days, I’ll write up my own political manifesto, because I don’t actually believe in the concept of political parties at all. I think issues should be addressed individually whenever possible, without ideological consideration.
You and I may have differing beliefs when it comes to the politicians we admire (or don’t), but that doesn’t extend to my feelings for you. I’m always astonished by the grace of people who tolerate me sharing my ideas.
That being said, it’s true I am suffering from a crippling case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. However, I’ll save that topic for an almost-finished article I’ve been working on for several years: a massive compilation of Trump quotes and actions.
Today, it’s not Trump. It’s Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance—and it has nothing to do with childless cat ladies or eating pets.
I’ll acknowledge the good stuff. Vance is brilliant and has overcome a lot of adversity. I personally like his beard. It’s cool. Plus he is an enormously talented writer, which, I think we can all agree, is the highest compliment one can bestow upon a human being.
Vance and I have much in common. We both hail from Appalachian families who’ve been in rural Kentucky for generations. (On a related note, I’m currently almost done with my work-in-progress, a novel set in 1980s rural Kentucky, which I consider sort of the anti-Hillbilly Elegy. Someday I hope you’ll read it. Also, I sincerely hope it does not predict reality.)
Vance grew up in Ohio, but I’ll credit him as an honorary Kentuckian. We’re both rural Southerners who benefitted from excellent educations, moved to cities, and became affluent. We both love the mountains and mountain people. Vance is capable as coming across as compassionate and I honestly wanted to like him.
But: wow. Recently I learned something unfathomable about the man who wants to be our vice president.
If you don’t have time to read the entire (very, very detailed) post, here is the TLDR:
Vance is affiliated with a man named Jack Posobiec.
Posobiec, a notorious internet troll, is known for his use of anti-semitic, neo-Nazi, and white supremacy symbols and slogans, as well as his promotion of insane conspiracy theories. (More on this later.)
Posobiec just published a book called Unhumans, which advocates for the violent subjugation of people on the political left by any means necessary. And by “any means necessary” he means sometimes you just gotta torture and murder people. As an example of pesky liberals getting themselves executed, he lauds the tactics of Francisco Franco of Spain and Augusto Pinochet of Chile, stating in the book that their actions provide a blueprint of what should be done in present day America.
He is especially impressed by Pinochet’s actions against the citizens of Chile. Later in this post I will list the specifics of what Pinochet did to those people, so nobody can gloss over what actually happened. (Please don’t read those paragraphs if you think you would be too distressed by graphic descriptions of torture and sexual abuse.)
In theory, the book is about fighting people on the the far, far left, especially communists. However, book repeatedly conflates people anywhere on the left of the political spectrum with communists, socialists, and Marxists, even when they are none of those things. “Leftists do not have good intentions,” the book tells us. “We cannot vote our way out of this.”
Pinochet in Chile—whom Posobiec repeatedly and lavishly praises for his anti-democratic takeover—mislabeled people too. He claimed to be overthrowing communism, but in actuality, in addition to communists, he tortured and murdered people who were priests, students, mothers, devout Christians, American journalists covering the story, political opponents, and regular citizens. He also exiled hundreds of thousands of regular people from their country and their families.
The book Unhumans specifically advocates for the end of democracy in present-day America. Instead of allowing people to vote, the book quotes Francisco Franco to appeal for the violent military overthrow of government.
Perhaps now you are thinking: Okay. This guy is odious. But just because JD Vance is allegedly friends with him, it doesn’t mean he endorses this book.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to think again— because JD Vance endorsed this book.
He. Praised. This. Specific. Book.
Let me also say: JD Vance did not condemn anything about Unhumans, even knowing:
a) it is authored by a man who has repeatedly posted the Nazi symbol for Heil Hitler,
b) it proposes the end of voting in America, and
c) it explicitly states that the torture and murder of people on the political left is tolerable, as long as their deaths help achieve a hard-right political agenda.
Instead of condemning these ideas, JD Vance praised the book for showing us “how to fight back.”
I’ve read recent articles chastising anyone who believes that the hijacking of the Republican Party by Trump and Vance and their affiliates poses an existential threat to democracy. (Which is exactly what I am doing right now.) So allow me to lay out why we should worry about this. Jack Posobiec was an invited speaker at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (a mainstream Republican event) where he said this:
“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.”
At this point, he raised a clenched fist. Again, he said this—out loud—at a mainstream Republican political conference. Could this be any clearer? We are here to overthrow democracy.
And the response from JD Vance, who could easily become the most powerful person in the world? He gushes about the guy’s book, where these exact ideas are expressed in great detail.
For a candidate for vice president to actively, specifically, and enthusiastically promote someone who posts Nazi crap and calls for the end of voting is so shocking that I think our minds engage some sort of protective defense mechanism when we learn things like this. We think it isn’t true, or there must be some mistake. We focus on the parts of the book that aren’t treasonous and homicidal. We pivot into whataboutism. We rationalize it. Or we ignore it.
Or maybe some of us think: Yes, killing people is terrible, but maybe violence is justified against communists? And then we skip over the fact that Donald Trump routinely refers to non-communist Democrats as communists. This week alone he called Kamala Harris a Marxist, a communist, a socialist, and—weirdly, given that this book advocates for fascism—a fascist.
Read the entire post if you want to know what “killing communists” actually entailed in the regimes Posobiec praises. And please note: Posobiec praised the anti-democracy violence of their methods, not merely the anti-communist outcomes they achieved. He labeled what happened to the Chilean people an “acceptable reciprocal punishment” for their ideas or their resistance to his takeover. JD Vance cannot claim otherwise.
When Vance says a guy who wants to end to voting in America “shows us what to do to fight back,” how is that not a threat to democracy?
These authoritarian values are not traditional Republican values. The party needs a reboot. The Republicans I know would never want to vote for a candidate who was in any way associated with Hitler or white supremacy or ending the right to vote or condoning the execution of political enemies. JD Vance put his name on a book written by a man associated with all of this. We cannot pretend it didn’t happen.
I do not believe Trump and Vance represent the historic values of their party. (And don’t even get me started on Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow, who are, respectively, the candidates for governor and public school superintendent in my adopted state of North Carolina. Everyone knows who Mark Robinson is after he described himself as a Black Nazi pervert who spies on women in showers, described Hitler’s autobiography as a “good read,” “a real eye opener,” and “very informative,” and expressed a longing to reinstate slavery so he could purchase some human beings for himself. Sounds like he’d be a reasonable governor, no? If you aren’t familiar with Morrow, I’ll start with this: she posted that President Obama should be executed in front of a pay-per-view firing squad, adding “We could make some money back from televising his death.” She wants to be in charge of the education of our children.)
Here’s my call to action:
If you are hardcore MAGA, I know I won’t convince you not to vote for Trump. But know this: you’ve been told people like me hate you and want to destroy American society. It isn’t true. People on the left love our country as much as you do. We’re nice. We care about you. I am here if you ever want to talk.
If you are a traditional Republican, I thank you mightily for reading. Please consider: if it were the Democratic candidates for President and Vice-President affiliating with neo-nazis and endorsing books calling for the end of democracy, what would be your reaction? Whatever that reaction is, it should also be your reaction to Vance and Trump. This transcends normal politics.
If you are an Independent or a Democrat, get to know people who love Trump. Plenty of my people love him and while I personally would prefer to stab myself in the eye with a fork than vote for him, I still love my people. Especially the country people I grew up with. I don’t love Jack Posobiec, however, and it’s fine for y’all to mock him.
***And please— share this article so more people know about this.***
Believe it or not, what you just read was the short version. If you want A LOT more context about Jack Posobiec, Auguste Pinochet, and JD Vance, please keep reading. (AND SCROLL TO SEE THE PHOTOS!!!) I’ll warn you again that some of this is incredibly disturbing.
Let’s start with this: Who was Auguste Pinochet and why does Posobiec idolize him? If you don’t consider a long-dead Chilean dictator a topic of burning relevance, I urge you to drop whatever you’re doing in favor of learning everything you can about him.
It’s hard to summarize the full horror of Pinochet’s reign but I’ll give it a go.
First, some background. Pinochet was a general in the Chilean army who, by means of a military coup, overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende in September of 1973.1
Because Pinochet opposed communism—and because he favored opening his economy to foreign capital and investments—he had support from the United States. The CIA aided him as he toppled democracy and consolidated his power as a dictator, especially in the 1970s.
So why in the world should you care about this now?
The answer: because of the new book coauthored by a guy named Jack Posobiec. If you aren’t familiar with Posobiec, you can read his Wikipedia entry HERE, but he’s probably best known for promoting Pizzagate (the demented theory that Democrats are running a secret child-abusing Satanic cabal headquartered beneath D.C.-area pizza parlors). I think it’s safe to say he’s not the most reliable historian. He’s also infamous for the use of antisemitic, racist, and neo-nazi symbols—which we will get to in a moment.
The book is titled Unhumans. As he explains in the book, Jack Posobiac is a big fan of Augusto Pinochet. Here’s an excerpt:
After the coup on September 11, 1973, Chile put in place a new constitution in 1980 “that laid out a path for future elections and a peaceful transfer of power”
Note the gap between 1973 and 1980. This is the period of time after the coup, but before Posobiec says the “path for the peaceful transfer of power” takes place.
So what exactly happened in Chile between 1973 and 1980 to lay out that “peaceful path”?
I’m warning you now: the next part is graphic. It’s beyond graphic, actually. The atrocities I’m going to specifically detail are nauseating beyond anything you were probably expecting, so read with extreme caution. Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to read descriptions of torture, especially grotesque sexual torture. (Do not allow children to read this!) Ordinarily, I would not include such details, but glossing over what Pinochet did and what Posobiec condones is unacceptable.
After taking power, Pinochet wasted no time in persecuting his political critics, mostly people on the left. By “persecute” I mean he exiled, abducted, killed, and/or disappeared them. The gruesome torture of people on the political left included wrenching acts of sadism: crushing limbs by running over them with trucks; sexual torture and rape (including bestiality such as inserting live rats into the bodies of screaming women); forcing male relatives to watch as their wives, sisters, and mothers were raped; electric shocks and live spiders applied to genitals; brutal beatings; perforating eardrums with spikes; forcing people to eat excrement and drink urine; forcing mothers to choose between their own lives and their children’s; waterboarding; tying people up and dipping them headfirst into vats of urine and feces until asphyxiation occurred; and—in a maneuver that is now gleefully lauded by members of today’s American far-right—tossing living people from helicopters. If you want to feel really bad about the state of politics in America, look up how many MAGA supporters on Twitter offer ‘free helicopter rides’ to Democrats. They are glorifying Auguste Pinochet’s treatment of his citizens.
Leftist women under the new regime had it particularly bad. Not only were they targeted if they opposed Pinochet, but also if they failed to embody the new military junta’s expectations of acceptable femininity, which directed women to center their lives around raising patriotic children.2
Among other actions, the government also limited access to contraception (previously granted under Allende) and reenacted a law granting a man legal control of his wife and any of her property.
To sum up: Pinochet was a dictator who revoked women’s rights and tortured and murdered his political enemies.
How do human beings justify the torture and murder of other human beings? We all know the answer: they “other” them.
The author of the book does exactly that, reframing Pinochet’s abuses against the people of Chile as something they deserved, stating:
“Pinochet offered reciprocal punishment to the communist revolutionaries, demoralizing their cause and diminishing their ranks. All allies of anti-civilization were ruthlessly excised from Chilean society. The story of tossing communists out of helicopters hails from Pinochet’s elimination of communism during the mid to late 1970s.
Whatever Pinochet was, there was no communism.
And the global intelligentsia didn’t like that.”
If you’d allow me to speak on behalf of the global intelligentsia, what I object to is not the ideological battle against communism. I’m totally down with that. Communism is bad. Instead, I’m objecting to the “ruthless excision” part—which applied to both communists and noncommunists.
Read this phrase again: All allies of anti-civilization were ruthlessly excised. Then read the paragraph about the torture again. That’s what “ruthless excision” means.
The new Chilean regime tolerated no dissent, no discussion, no democratic debate. Under Pinochet's reign, people on the political left—who encompassed a variety of beliefs, not simply socialism or communism—were portrayed as unhumans who deserved what they got.
So who were these unhuman “allies of anti-civilization”?
They included opposition militaristic guerrillas—people who fought. But they also included peaceful leftwing activists, UN diplomats, ambassadors, Pinochet’s political rivals, United States journalists reporting on the crimes, theology students, devout Christians, a British priest, civilian protestors, and hundreds of thousands of exiled ordinary people who didn’t particularly want a murderous dictator in charge of their country. Thousands of Chileans were “disappeared” and never heard from again.
Posobiec then goes on to justify the overthrow of democracy as something “the people” wanted.
“The mandate that led to Allende’s downfall came from the people of Chile.”
No, it absolutely did not. In political terms, the word ‘mandate’ typically refers to the authority to carry out policies based on having won an election. To be fair, Allende didn’t have much of a mandate either: he was elected in a three-candidate runoff with only a plurality of the vote.
But at least Allende was elected. Chile had been a democracy. Pinochet didn’t bother to run for office. His ‘authority’ came from a coup d’etat carried out by members of the military and the police, not the general public. Furthermore, some in military leadership opposed the coup, believing they should remain apolitical since Pinochet’s takeover was blatantly unconstitutional.
There’s no doubt people in Chile at the time were hammered by hyperinflation under Allende, which led to widespread strikes and protests, most particularly among the upper classes. Allende was not a genocidal autocrat, as Pinochet was. However, many Chileans did support the idea of new leadership—which is not necessarily the same as endorsing the idea of a violent coup that subsequently dissolves Congress and all opposition parties3. It’s also hard to accurately gauge how many people opposed Pinochet’s military takeover, because opposing him publicly was likely to result in your own brutal murder.
There is a very clear distinction I want to make again. The author of this book is NOT expressing support for Pinochet’s economic and social policies while simultaneously condemning his method of achieving and maintaining power. In the sections I read, at least, he’s NOT saying: Hey, communism is bad, but so is murder and torture.
In his blurb of the book, JD Vance makes no such exclusion either. As far as I can tell, he says nothing about condemning murder or torture. He also does not object to the author’s call to overthrow democratically elected governments.
Posobiec explicitly praises Pinochet’s means of maintaining power. The book promotes fascism, labeling Pinochet’s brutal torture as an acceptable “reciprocal punishment” for a population who, please remember, included regular people. Needless to say, there was nothing reciprocal about this.
And remember: they didn’t limit themselves to going after real communists. Anyone who opposed them could be labeled a communist, whether or not they were one. (This should sound very familiar if you’ve been following current politics.) Democracy in Chile was completely disbanded. Congress was dismantled. Any opposing political parties were abolished as the military junta seized control of the lives of ordinary citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of people were also separated from their families and forced into exile, many of whom never saw their loved ones again.
Posobiec and his ghostwriter explicitly state they favor this kind of fascist dictatorship if it means—literally, brutally, existentially—eliminating liberal people.
They are openly advocating for the end of democracy.
Posobiec also swoons over Francisco Franco4, who murdered perhaps hundreds of thousands of his own citizens in Spain. They fawn over him in the book, citing his methods for potential use in present-day attempts conquer the “unhumans” of 2024:
“We’ll tell you what not to do, first and foremost. Actually, we’ll let Generalissimo Franco tell you: We do not believe in government through the voting booth.”
Read that again: We do not believe in government through the voting booth.
Given that he seems to be fine with killing ‘unhumans’, perhaps you are curious: who, exactly, does Posobiec consider to be an unhuman today?
The answer: politically progressive people. In the book, he repeatedly conflates the terms socialist, communist, liberal, and progressive, as if all those people hold monolithic, or even similar, beliefs. Occasionally he makes mention of moderates or centrist liberals or even regular liberals being excluded from the ‘unhuman’category, but then he’ll detail the political beliefs that would qualify someone as an unhuman, and it will be a fairly mainstream non-communist progressive idea.
I’m not saying you have to agree with progressive ideas. What I am saying is that progressives, or leftists, should not be killed for their ideas. Or exiled. Or have their right to vote taken away. Or be labeled as communists.
Posobiec also attributes certain beliefs to all liberals, even though, of course, specific beliefs among liberals vary widely. If you consider yourself to be politically conservative, would you agree that you are also a Nazi and a fascist? Of course not. (I mean, I hope not. As far as I know, none of my readers are Nazis.) I’d harbor a similar guess that the overwhelming majority of progressives are not communists.
But Posobiec goes further than merely opposing the beliefs of progressives. He claims that today’s “leftists” are not human. Therefore, he says, these people deserve not just contempt but actual annihilation.
As you now know, the most notable figure to publicly approve of the message in Unhumans is … Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance. He’s not alone: multiple people connected to Donald Trump endorsed this book, including Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr.
Here’s Vance’s take on the book’s message.
“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”
They … show us what to do to fight back.
There is so much wrong with this statement, it’s hard to know where to start.
Let’s begin with this: Vance must know Jack Posobiec’s history. Even so, he called out “Jack P” as one of his “good friends” during a March 2024 speech to a conservative group.
In addition to Posobiec, Vance has also been aligned with other far-right individuals, such as Holocaust denier Charles Johnson and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts. Consider Richard Hanania, a prominent conservative lecturer and writer who (allegedly, with significant evidence to back it up) published white supremacy blogs under a pseudonym. In these posts, he argued Jews are trying to exterminate white Americans; that women should not be involved in making societal decisions; that Blacks have the lowest intellectual capabilities of any Americans and therefore always wind up at the bottom; that white people are the most moral; that people with low IQs should be forcibly sterilized; and that fat women do not deserve to experience love, respect, and esteem, adding “fat people not only are disgusting to look at; their obesity reflects some ugly personality traits.” Regarding the intelligence of Black people, he stated, “Telling a race with an IQ of 85 that they can do whatever they set their mind to is cruel.”
JD Vance has referred to Hanania as a “really interesting thinker.” He also called him a friend.
Now, let’s talk about the whole Nazi thing. Whether he actually read the book he’s endorsing or not, JD Vance is openly praising the work of someone who frequently displays Nazi symbols in his tweets.
As you’ve seen, the numbers 14 and 88 make multiple appearances together in Posobiec’s messaging. For the blissfully ignorant, in context, 14 refers to the 14-word white supremacist slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” and 88 is code for HH, meaning Heil Hitler.
When a group called the Anti-Defamation League published a piece identifying Posobiec as part of the white nationalist alt-right movement, he responded with this:
He is standing in front of Auschwitz.
That JD Vance would endorse this guy’s book should tell you everything you need to know about JD Vance.
Second, just as Posobiec does, Vance conflates holding liberal ideas with being a communist. I seriously doubt there’s a significant presence of actual communists in America’s HR departments. Instead, the word communist (or socialist, or radical, or Marxist, which are not the same thing) has become sort of a catchall phrase both Trump and Vance employ to describe anyone on the left. Here, I’d guess he’s referring to people who support diversity initiatives and the like. You can be for or against diversity initiatives, or for them in some instances and against them in others, but that does not make you a communist or any of those other words. (For the record, if the actions of their bot farms are any indication, actual communists such as those in Russia seem to fervently wish for Trump and Vance to be elected.)
Third, no American should be subject to the methods of “fighting back” employed by the much-praised dictators cited in this book. Period. I don’t care if you are an actual communist, you should not be held down while someone crushes your limbs. You should not be disappeared. You should not be raped and tortured. This is probably my single strongest belief.
Torture is a contradiction of every tenet of my faith—my belief in the teachings of Christ—but also in my sense of secular morality. I believe in democracy, in the right of citizens to choose their representation, in freedom and liberty to form my own beliefs, in the fundamental equality of human beings, and in the concept of grace.
Fourth—and I feel like this should not have to be stated, but apparently it does—we should anoint our leaders via ballot, not at gunpoint. JD Vance and Trump Jr don’t get to pretend they didn’t endorse this book and the anti-democratic ideas it contains, including the statement that governments should not be elected. What. The. Hell.
Vance has also made other comments advocating for anti-democracy measures. In 2021, he stated that if Trump were elected in 2024, he would ask him to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say — quoting Andrew Jackson — ‘the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
So … he is saying he intends to ignore Supreme Court rulings if he doesn’t like them? Are only Republicans allowed to do that? What happens if Democrats do it too?
JD Vance supports a guy who approves of violent military coups instead of voting. Trump also has been closely affiliated with—and openly praised— numerous antisemites, neo-nazis, authoritarian dictators, and other similar villains. If you promote the actions and ideas of those people, you don’t believe in democracy and you don’t believe in our constitution and you do not deserve the most powerful positions in the world. JD Vance needs to be defeated … via ballot. And for that matter, so does Donald Trump.
Kimmery Martin is an American novelist, physician, mother, wife, columnist, oversharer, and dog owner. She is currently working on her fourth and fifth novels, teaching Narrative Medicine, and offering writing classes.
To understand what happened in Chile, it is important to have some acquaintance with the economics involved. However, I find economics confusing. This is going to get a bit nerdy, so read at your peril.
Pinochet, a devout anti-communist, wanted to decrease economic regulations in favor of private entities. This typically means privatizing government institutions, lowering tax rates on businesses, less government restrictions on trade, etc. Suffice it to say there is debate among economists about the the impact of these kinds of economic policies in general, including who is typically helped or harmed, but it is generally agreed that the overall economy in Chile, which was a volcanic mess under Allende, improved under Pinochet. However, Pinochet’s reign wasn’t all economic roses: under his watch in the 1970s, wages fell and poverty deepened, leading to a widening split between the rich and everyone else.
On the other hand, when Allende had been president, he focused on providing education and adequate nutrition to his citizens, and under his policies, wages rose. There was a big downside, however: ghastly inflation plagued the country. Another of Allende’s policies also caused a mighty furor: the expropriation of copper mines, which included a clause against “excessive profit-taking” by foreign-owned mining companies. Apparently, this really bummed out the U.S. government.
The irony here is extreme. According to research by a Tulane historian, “While the regime promoted rhetoric emphasizing traditional gender roles, their free market economic policies negatively affected many Chilean families. As poverty increased in Chile and government subsidies decreased, more and more women were forced to work outside the home. The regime’s ideal of women staying at home and raising numerous children for the betterment of the country was never achieved. During the seventeen years of the regime, the number of children each Chilean woman had declined while the percentage of women working outside the home increased. Pinochet’s economic policies made it harder for the poor women of Chile to feed and care for their families and fulfill their traditional roles as mothers and wives.”
Pinochet’s legacy is complicated. You’ll see various numbers in various polls, but 36% of Chileans in one recent poll support the idea that the Pinochet regime saved Chile from Marxism, while 42% blame it for destroying their democracy. In any case, not a mandate.
On this note, when it comes to psychology, I have come to believe that tolerance of oppression is not a rightwing or leftwing thing; nor is it a fascist or socialist thing. (Witness Maduro right now, for instance.) It’s an authoritarian thing. Some of us seem to be hardwired to crave strongmen and the abuses they foment no matter what our individual ideology tells us.
Well said! Your father would be proud of you; and appreciate your research, attention to detail, and skillful convincing assertions. To be silent in perilous times like these is to deny that a voice like yours needs to be heard and heeded. Keep at it! Your persuasive words and our actions matter more than ever.
Thank you for your courage and your intelligent writing on the existential threat that Vance poses to our republic.