MAGA: The battle over ‘Heritage Americans’

An elderly woman holds up a red MAGA hat

Proponents of “Heritage Americans” believe those who can trace their family tree back to the nation’s earliest days deserve special status

(Image credit: Emily Elconin / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

If your ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, are you more American than someone whose grandparents landed at Ellis Island in 1920? asked Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch. A growing contingent of
“Very Online right-wingers” thinks so, claiming that “Heritage Americans” who can trace their family tree back to the nation’s earliest days deserve special status. This blood-and-soil nationalism—in which Jews, Asian Americans, and others are second-class citizens—has been popularized by white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes. But a softer version is
being peddled by top Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, who in a speech this summer claimed “America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place with a particular people.” Not all Republicans agree, said Nicholas Mitchell in MS.now. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy infuriated MAGA last month by denouncing the heritage movement as a right-wing spin on “woke” identity politics. Born in the U.S. to Indian parents, Ramaswamy argued Americanness “is based on
ideals”—including a belief in the Constitution and color-blind meritocracy—and “isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry.”

This argument is not about ancient bloodlines but rather “immigration today,” said Daniel McCarthy in the New York Post. Creedal nationalists who emphasize America as an idea are suggesting the country has “nothing to fear from immigration on any scale,” and that those who oppose large-scale immigration “are really un-American.” But the concept of a “Heritage American” is also damaging: “It needlessly alienates newer Americans while mindlessly elevating older ones.” Just consider how many progressive New Englanders are “descended from Puritan forefathers.” Vance actually has the right view. He stated in a recent interview that all Americans—including those who naturalized “an
hour ago”—are equal, but noted that Americanness is a multigenerational project.

“Vance’s argument is defensible in a vacuum,” said Michael Strain in the Financial Times. But it’s coming as the administration that he’s part of threatens to denaturalize American citizens, targets largely dark-skinned immigrants in a mass-deportation campaign, and “plays footsie with racists, bigots, and antisemites.” Conservatives have long regarded the “centrality of the American creed as one of the most important things we seek to conserve.” We can’t let extremists and their allies destroy American exceptionalism by “redefining American identity” as a matter of “race and lineage.”