White nationalist bodybuilders and liberal elites: Here’s who JD Vance is following on X

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.

The 39-year-old Ohio senator, who rose to fame with his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy and was named as Donald Trump’s running-mate this week, follows 1,132 people on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Among them are two of the most popular figures in the Right Wing Bodybuilders scene — an online community in which many share a worldview that combines white nationalist ideas with anti-globalism, weight-lifting and nutrition.

One of them is Raw Egg Nationalist, an account that has shared Adolf Hitler memes, quoted Mein Kampf and promoted the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy — a theory positing that Western elites are intentionally replacing White populations with migrants — to its 200,000 plus followers.

Vance also follows Bronze Age Pervert, believed to be run by far-right bodybuilder Costin Alamariu. That account has also promoted the racist Great Replacement theory and eugenic breeding. His self-published book, Bronze Age Mindset’ is considered a foundational text for the scene, and was said to be circulating among younger members of the Trump White House.

He wrote in a 2021 essay: “I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a military caste of men who would be able to guide society toward a morality of eugenics.”

Joshua Farrell-Molloy, an extremism researcher at the Accelerationism Research Consortium, described the two accounts as belonging to a “post-alt-right movement” that is “pretty much at the vanguard of white nationalism.”

“They are one of the main centers of gravity within the contemporary far right in the US,” he told The