I've been hesitant to respond here, but your demonization of white people and your ridiculous abuse of statistics make me wonder if you're a troll. The FBI stats you cite do not show white people committing a disproportionate share of crimes. Whites make up 75% of the population but account for 44% of arrests for murder, 67% of arrests for rape, and 62% for aggravated assault. If you're going to focus on white *men*, those are statistical shenanigans that conflate race & sex (the disproportion for black men will be far greater). As for whites getting away with crimes because of "white privilege," a look at the National Crime Survey (where crime victims report the race of the offender) shows that the demographics of arrests are very similar to those of offenders. No one except racists argues that the differences in crime rates are due to innate black criminality, but your denialism is just helping people like Hanania.
This is incorrect vis a vis FBI crime stats. For the purpose of crime reporting, whites make up 57% of the population because FBI crime stats treat Hispanic as an ethnicity not a race, spreading the Hispanic population throughout the races (Afro-Latino people do exist).
Add to that the fact most criminals are men, and yes, according to FBI crime stats, white men are disproportionately criminal. To say nothing of comparing American white men's historical record of death and destruction -- inclusive of chattel slavery, colonialism, warmongering, serial killing, mass murdering, and financial calamity -- with that of American blacks. There is no question the American white male body count swamps that of American blacks.
Why is it "demonizing whites" when I point this out to counter Spencer, the racist commenting here about allegedly inherent "black criminality," yet you won't call him out for demonizing blacks? Double standard much?
Singling me out for defending black people, instead of calling Spencer out for his white supremacist lies -- like him repeatedly lying that blacks are responsible for 60% of murders -- is what helps people like Hanania.
Per the link you provided, the white population in terms of total arrests is presented as 68.9%, but this includes Hispanics, as you can see from the tables. When you subtract the Hispanic arrests, disproportionate white crime no longer exists. I claimed *one time* that blacks commit 60% of murders--that was off the top of my head. When I calculated based on the FBI stats, it was 52%. That is wildly disproportionate.
Nope. Because you can also subtract Hispanics from black crime. Disproportionate white male crime exists no matter how you slice it.
White men ages 15-45 are responsible for nearly all white crime and are only ~15% of the population. So unless you are going to falsely claim that whites are only responsible for 15% of crime (which you may because you're a racist and a liar) then you're denialism of wildly dusproportionate white male crime just makes you look foolish.
Yes, possibly a troll, a liar, or just plain stupid.
“No one except racists argues that the differences in crime rates are due to innate black criminality...”
Unless your argument is that all criminals are victims of circumstance, this view is incoherent. How would it even be possible to show that black person X committed his crimes because of his circumstances, but black person Y living in the same neighborhood committed his crimes for innate reasons? This is as absurd as arguing that whites commit more crime than Asians solely because of their circumstances. Many Asians are as poor as white criminals but commit no crimes. To argue that blacks commit disproportionately more crime than whites because of innate reasons is not a slight against all blacks anymore than it would be a slight against all whites to argue that they commit more crimes than Asians for innate reasons. Many conservatives (and others) will argue that blacks commit more crime because of fatherlessness caused by the welfare state (e.g. circumstances), but as Bo Winegard (and others) points out, this just leads one to ask why blacks are so prone to fatherlessness.
Crime rates in the same ethnic and racial groups have varied tremendously in different locations and different periods of time. Irish people in America were an extremely high-crime group in the 19th Century. They aren't today.
To ignore the impact of the very particular history of blacks in America is bizarre.
I'm not saying that "all criminals are victims of circumstances," but circumstance certainly does contribute to crime.
Thank you for your reply. I agree that crime rates have varied over time. But we are still faced with the challenge of distinguishing criminally-prone blacks from those allegedly “burdened by history” (whatever that might mean for a black gang member/murderer born in 2008--metaphors can’t do all the heavy lifting here). Again, unless genetics plays virtually no part in criminality, it seems absurd to commit to an a priori view that all groups are equally criminally-prone. When the environment is near equal for most poor people and one group commits vastly disproportionate crime, then genetics is likely a factor. In addition, a much larger cohort of blacks have very low IQs, which correlates strongly with criminality. See Bo Winegard’s recent essay on equalitarianism for Aporia. (PS--I own your book about growing up in Moscow, which I enjoyed very much.)
You repeatedly, falsely claimed that blacks were responsible for 60% are murderous, and you want to call me a liar? Lol. You hate blacks, you're a liar, and you're a hypocrite to boot.
Funny how Cathy Young won't dare call out your lies and your "demonization of blacks," but has all the time in the world to attack me for doing what she won't in fighting white supremacy.
LOL. I hadn't seen any of Spencer's posts when I replied to you. I did just respond to him on the question of "innate" factors in crime rate differentials.
I don't have all day to read every post in this thread. I skimmed a couple of posts. Your bizarre claims about FBI stats leaped out at me. And yes, they're bizarre.
Maybe she hasn’t seen my reply. Or maybe she’s just another “depraved” white. But it’s not a demonization of all blacks to argue they commit more crime than other groups--anymore than it’s a demonization of all whites to argue they commit more crime than Asians. (Although you seem to be demonizing all whites.)
It is demonization of blacks because it's a lie. White men commit more criminal acts than any other group in America, and have historically been responsible for more death and destruction through depraved events than blacks have. You just can't admit that because you're a racist and a liar.
We get your point--white people are depraved. But we were discussing the FBI stats, not history. And the stats show disproportionate black crime, not white. Don’t forget: we live in a white supremacist nation and there is no way a white supremacist FBI would show whites in a negative light. Right?
Wrong. My point is you are depraved and only a racist concern troll like you will pontificate about allegedly inherent black criminality while ignoring that history is littered with the victims of white men.
I'm discussing FBI time stats and history. And the stats and history disproportionate white crime.
You make a lot of good points. I was especially disturbed by Hanania’s writings about Russia and Ukraine early in the war. I found his takes so offensive that I stopped reading him for awhile. He has since seemingly changed his mind on the war completely, although it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t write about it much.
He seems intellectually very peripatetic, often driven seemingly by a desire to be shocking and by contempt for both mainstream liberal and mainstream conservative opinion, but not very grounded in his views. Anyway, I’m really glad his book publisher didn’t bail because I think his takes on civil rights law are interesting and deserve a hearing.
We need someone who meets your arbitrary moral standards to write the exact same book Hanania did. Then, and only then, will you be willing to consider its arguments.
Sorry, Cathy; I was responding to DK. I suppose it could also be interpreted as a response to you, but the reason I phrased it as condescendingly as I did is that I was matching DK's level of condescension. I posted a different comment that responds to you directly.
My point of both comments is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. There is nothing I want more than a liberal colorblind society, but the only action that seems likely to bring us closer to this goal is getting rid of the disparate impact doctrine. The respectable, stuffed shirt right cares more about avoiding accusations of racism than stopping wokeness, and the vulgar right is chasing fascism and other illiberal solutions that are no better than the thing they want to fight. Anyone who can direct attention to something productive is an ally to me. It's why I've bought five copies of Hanania's book (one for me, one for a family member, three for friends). The content is important to me.
Redemption requires contrition and penance. It’s not really up to any person to decide whether another’s trying to be sorry or if they’re just faking it. Deprogramming can take time.
What really tells me this is an act is that he seems quite ready to delve straight back into politics without even the slightest time-out. How exactly do you go from card carrying Nazi to small-l liberal apologist, especially when some of your opinions haven’t really changed?
This is like a recovering alcoholic who drank a bottle of whiskey a day deciding to head to a pub for a beer ten minutes after finishing rehab.
Thanks Cathy. People like Hanania deserves to be exposed so thanks for this piece. I understand why Matt Yglesias wanted to cover him but I disagree. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I al sure Matt could find good sources from good faith writers and journalists.
1) viewing half of your fellow citizens as moral troglodytes is deforming to the soul. See “Young Goodman Brown” by Hawthorne.
2) if 50% of people hold a repugnant position, you cannot shame them into changing because by definition you cannot credibly threaten half the country with ostracism. You have to persuade. And Vox does precious little of that.
1) Again, beliefs and actions that are morally repugnant do not suddenly and magically become tolerable and acceptable simply many people fall for them. See the Third Reich.
2) Not that I hold the view that "40% of the country are moral troglodytes," but if someone is a moral troglodyte, they are a moral troglodyte, and that's that. I'm not going to say 1+1 = 4 just because 40% of the country does, claim walking off a cliff is good just because 40% of the country does, or whitewash fascism and white supremacy just because 40% of the country might.
3) Change them? That's not my job. Whether on not they change is on them; I'm not their unpaid therapist and I don't parent grown adults. I'm going to tell the truth about their amorality. Their shame or lack thereof in response their problem.
Are they immoral simply because they disagree with you? Having a preference for your own kind is not immoral. If that were the case, then e.g. Orthodox Jews would be immoral.
So you agree that white supremacy, book banning, and fascist attacks on American democracy are moral?
I disagreed with my best friend last night over what to get to dinner. Him preferring fast food to Italian does not make him immoral.
So what makes them immoral is not mere disagreement, its their unethical actions and belief. You want ignore the substance of the disagreement so you can downplay and whitewash the rightwing extremism, fascism and bigotry behind the disagreement.
Cathy, I appreciate your good faith criticism of Hanania, and I'm hoping you'll take the time to read my defense of him. I cannot say with absolute certainty that Hanania has changed, but I can tell you why it's in the best interests of the American right (or whatever you want to call the movement against wokeness) for us to support him regardless.
People who are psychologically vulnerable to white nationalist arguments, but not smart or educated enough to counter them on their own, need to be guided away from them. This can only be done by addressing their arguments and the underlying assumptions of said arguments. There are few people willing to do that, and even fewer people who know how to do that. No one else in that subgroup has Hanania's aptitude, and I know this because he played a major role in my own deradicalization.
To be clear, I've always been a "small-l liberal", so my extremist phase wasn't quite as extreme as Hanania's, but throughout my early-to-mid 20's, I could accurately be described as a white nationalist, because I fully believed in the Great Replacement and thought that the left’s domination of American culture was the result of changing racial demographics. I knew that the people in charge of woke institutions were white, but I reasoned that they gained their power through the support of non-whites. I could not think of any better explanation for what was happening, and even if someone provided me with one, I wouldn't have accepted it unless it came with a plan of action to stop wokeness.
Most writers on this beat say that wokeness won fairly in the marketplace of ideas, but also that it can also somehow be defeated in the marketplace of ideas. It should be obvious why many people don't believe that a strategy that's been failing for at least fifteen years will suddenly start working. And once you reject the idea that you can argue wokeness into submission, your only options are to go with Peter Brimelow, who says Making America White Again will solve the problem, or Curtis Yarvin, who says installing a dictator would solve the problem. I chose white nationalism because it was the more liberal of those two options.
But now we have a third option: Hanania. He has provided an explanation for America's leftward march that isn't related to the increasing number of brown people. His book, The Origins of Woke, argues that wokeness is the result of little-known government policy, and that once Republican politicians are aware of the policy, they can change it. This seems much more liberal than a racially discriminatory immigration system or a dictatorship, no?
As I understand, you don't want to promote Hanania or his book because you fear he might still be racist, and associating with racist people makes you feel icky. But what is the alternative? Do we push for someone without Hanania's ickiness to write the exact same book, so that people like you feel comfortable reading it? Do we invent an entirely new strategy to fight wokeness and hope that whoever writes the book on it doesn't get exposed as a racist?
One more thing: The recent comments that you attack Hanania for are what Scott Alexander would describe as s scissor statements. When Hanania says that reducing crime would require surveilling black people, it is possible that he is saying we should target people for their race, but it's also possible that he's saying we should target people because of their criminal history, which carries with it a disparate impact. Disparate impact may not be a legitimate concept to you, me, or Hanania, but it's literally written into the law and taught in every university! When people talk about “systemic racism” or “white supremacist institutions”, they're talking about disparate impact! He could just be acknowledging that this is how people think. It is the subject of his book, after all.
“Sometimes, even denial of access to high-reputation platforms is appropriate—not to punish but to maintain a cordon sanitaire around things that, by overwhelming consensus, are beyond the pale because they are connected to historical atrocities.”
Who decides what ideas should be cordoned? Anything outside of woke boundaries can be “connected” to “historical atrocities”. For example, if someone argues in good faith about group IQ differences, crime differences, etc. that will automatically be connected to historical atrocities (coupled with gratuitous references to Nazi race science, flat earthism, etc.).
One is left with the impression that he's an intelligent if amorally vacuous bootlicker who loves nothing more than to be seen and accoladed for backing the winner
I cannot imagine what would happen to me if, as a scientist and educator, I was found to have written anonymously in support of a flat Earth. Then, on top of that, to perhaps act all Joe Rogan-y and throw subtle shade on the Earth being genuinely spherical. He is clearly trying to be a provocateur.
On another note, I found myself following Hanania on Twitter. His tweets were coming in on my Following (I am a bit of a Twitter newbie although I've had it for ten years). A couple of the examples in this article were on my timeline. It seems this association was created by my reading of The Free Press by Bari Weiss.
You know what would be really impressive? A right wing publication criticizing the right while the left wing publications criticize the left, because from what I can see all you guys are doing are infomercials for your favorite parties.
I love the Unpopulist**, but I'm not sure how or why it counts as being a "A right wing publication criticizing the right", which is how I parse your response to RD. Do I misread you? I find the Unpopulist to be relatively near the hollowing-out liberaltarian-inflected middle, like Niskanen for example, or the Economist. And there is nothing wrong with that!
** Probably too much, since it does not cause me to revisit my priors nearly as often as any challenging reading should.
If an organization can't remain objectively critical of itself it will necessarily veer off into corruption and irrelevance. We're there for both the Left and the Right at this point. It's just a race to zero at this point.
I've been hesitant to respond here, but your demonization of white people and your ridiculous abuse of statistics make me wonder if you're a troll. The FBI stats you cite do not show white people committing a disproportionate share of crimes. Whites make up 75% of the population but account for 44% of arrests for murder, 67% of arrests for rape, and 62% for aggravated assault. If you're going to focus on white *men*, those are statistical shenanigans that conflate race & sex (the disproportion for black men will be far greater). As for whites getting away with crimes because of "white privilege," a look at the National Crime Survey (where crime victims report the race of the offender) shows that the demographics of arrests are very similar to those of offenders. No one except racists argues that the differences in crime rates are due to innate black criminality, but your denialism is just helping people like Hanania.
"Whites make up 75% of the population."
This is incorrect vis a vis FBI crime stats. For the purpose of crime reporting, whites make up 57% of the population because FBI crime stats treat Hispanic as an ethnicity not a race, spreading the Hispanic population throughout the races (Afro-Latino people do exist).
Add to that the fact most criminals are men, and yes, according to FBI crime stats, white men are disproportionately criminal. To say nothing of comparing American white men's historical record of death and destruction -- inclusive of chattel slavery, colonialism, warmongering, serial killing, mass murdering, and financial calamity -- with that of American blacks. There is no question the American white male body count swamps that of American blacks.
Why is it "demonizing whites" when I point this out to counter Spencer, the racist commenting here about allegedly inherent "black criminality," yet you won't call him out for demonizing blacks? Double standard much?
Singling me out for defending black people, instead of calling Spencer out for his white supremacist lies -- like him repeatedly lying that blacks are responsible for 60% of murders -- is what helps people like Hanania.
Per the link you provided, the white population in terms of total arrests is presented as 68.9%, but this includes Hispanics, as you can see from the tables. When you subtract the Hispanic arrests, disproportionate white crime no longer exists. I claimed *one time* that blacks commit 60% of murders--that was off the top of my head. When I calculated based on the FBI stats, it was 52%. That is wildly disproportionate.
Nope. Because you can also subtract Hispanics from black crime. Disproportionate white male crime exists no matter how you slice it.
White men ages 15-45 are responsible for nearly all white crime and are only ~15% of the population. So unless you are going to falsely claim that whites are only responsible for 15% of crime (which you may because you're a racist and a liar) then you're denialism of wildly dusproportionate white male crime just makes you look foolish.
Yes, possibly a troll, a liar, or just plain stupid.
“No one except racists argues that the differences in crime rates are due to innate black criminality...”
Unless your argument is that all criminals are victims of circumstance, this view is incoherent. How would it even be possible to show that black person X committed his crimes because of his circumstances, but black person Y living in the same neighborhood committed his crimes for innate reasons? This is as absurd as arguing that whites commit more crime than Asians solely because of their circumstances. Many Asians are as poor as white criminals but commit no crimes. To argue that blacks commit disproportionately more crime than whites because of innate reasons is not a slight against all blacks anymore than it would be a slight against all whites to argue that they commit more crimes than Asians for innate reasons. Many conservatives (and others) will argue that blacks commit more crime because of fatherlessness caused by the welfare state (e.g. circumstances), but as Bo Winegard (and others) points out, this just leads one to ask why blacks are so prone to fatherlessness.
Crime rates in the same ethnic and racial groups have varied tremendously in different locations and different periods of time. Irish people in America were an extremely high-crime group in the 19th Century. They aren't today.
To ignore the impact of the very particular history of blacks in America is bizarre.
I'm not saying that "all criminals are victims of circumstances," but circumstance certainly does contribute to crime.
Thank you for your reply. I agree that crime rates have varied over time. But we are still faced with the challenge of distinguishing criminally-prone blacks from those allegedly “burdened by history” (whatever that might mean for a black gang member/murderer born in 2008--metaphors can’t do all the heavy lifting here). Again, unless genetics plays virtually no part in criminality, it seems absurd to commit to an a priori view that all groups are equally criminally-prone. When the environment is near equal for most poor people and one group commits vastly disproportionate crime, then genetics is likely a factor. In addition, a much larger cohort of blacks have very low IQs, which correlates strongly with criminality. See Bo Winegard’s recent essay on equalitarianism for Aporia. (PS--I own your book about growing up in Moscow, which I enjoyed very much.)
You repeatedly, falsely claimed that blacks were responsible for 60% are murderous, and you want to call me a liar? Lol. You hate blacks, you're a liar, and you're a hypocrite to boot.
Funny how Cathy Young won't dare call out your lies and your "demonization of blacks," but has all the time in the world to attack me for doing what she won't in fighting white supremacy.
LOL. I hadn't seen any of Spencer's posts when I replied to you. I did just respond to him on the question of "innate" factors in crime rate differentials.
I don't have all day to read every post in this thread. I skimmed a couple of posts. Your bizarre claims about FBI stats leaped out at me. And yes, they're bizarre.
Maybe she hasn’t seen my reply. Or maybe she’s just another “depraved” white. But it’s not a demonization of all blacks to argue they commit more crime than other groups--anymore than it’s a demonization of all whites to argue they commit more crime than Asians. (Although you seem to be demonizing all whites.)
It is demonization of blacks because it's a lie. White men commit more criminal acts than any other group in America, and have historically been responsible for more death and destruction through depraved events than blacks have. You just can't admit that because you're a racist and a liar.
We get your point--white people are depraved. But we were discussing the FBI stats, not history. And the stats show disproportionate black crime, not white. Don’t forget: we live in a white supremacist nation and there is no way a white supremacist FBI would show whites in a negative light. Right?
Wrong. My point is you are depraved and only a racist concern troll like you will pontificate about allegedly inherent black criminality while ignoring that history is littered with the victims of white men.
I'm discussing FBI time stats and history. And the stats and history disproportionate white crime.
You make a lot of good points. I was especially disturbed by Hanania’s writings about Russia and Ukraine early in the war. I found his takes so offensive that I stopped reading him for awhile. He has since seemingly changed his mind on the war completely, although it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t write about it much.
He seems intellectually very peripatetic, often driven seemingly by a desire to be shocking and by contempt for both mainstream liberal and mainstream conservative opinion, but not very grounded in his views. Anyway, I’m really glad his book publisher didn’t bail because I think his takes on civil rights law are interesting and deserve a hearing.
Are there any people who don't hate blacks with interesting takes on civil rights law?
We need someone who meets your arbitrary moral standards to write the exact same book Hanania did. Then, and only then, will you be willing to consider its arguments.
My moral standards are not "arbitrary."
Sorry, Cathy; I was responding to DK. I suppose it could also be interpreted as a response to you, but the reason I phrased it as condescendingly as I did is that I was matching DK's level of condescension. I posted a different comment that responds to you directly.
My point of both comments is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. There is nothing I want more than a liberal colorblind society, but the only action that seems likely to bring us closer to this goal is getting rid of the disparate impact doctrine. The respectable, stuffed shirt right cares more about avoiding accusations of racism than stopping wokeness, and the vulgar right is chasing fascism and other illiberal solutions that are no better than the thing they want to fight. Anyone who can direct attention to something productive is an ally to me. It's why I've bought five copies of Hanania's book (one for me, one for a family member, three for friends). The content is important to me.
Redemption requires contrition and penance. It’s not really up to any person to decide whether another’s trying to be sorry or if they’re just faking it. Deprogramming can take time.
What really tells me this is an act is that he seems quite ready to delve straight back into politics without even the slightest time-out. How exactly do you go from card carrying Nazi to small-l liberal apologist, especially when some of your opinions haven’t really changed?
This is like a recovering alcoholic who drank a bottle of whiskey a day deciding to head to a pub for a beer ten minutes after finishing rehab.
One more horror example of right-wing collectivism
Thanks Cathy. People like Hanania deserves to be exposed so thanks for this piece. I understand why Matt Yglesias wanted to cover him but I disagree. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I al sure Matt could find good sources from good faith writers and journalists.
Matt comes from Vox, a place that routinely treated ideas held by 40-50% of Americans as beyond the pale. It’s understandable that he over corrected.
A repugnant view is not made magically acceptable just because a bunch of people hold it.
1) viewing half of your fellow citizens as moral troglodytes is deforming to the soul. See “Young Goodman Brown” by Hawthorne.
2) if 50% of people hold a repugnant position, you cannot shame them into changing because by definition you cannot credibly threaten half the country with ostracism. You have to persuade. And Vox does precious little of that.
1) Again, beliefs and actions that are morally repugnant do not suddenly and magically become tolerable and acceptable simply many people fall for them. See the Third Reich.
2) Not that I hold the view that "40% of the country are moral troglodytes," but if someone is a moral troglodyte, they are a moral troglodyte, and that's that. I'm not going to say 1+1 = 4 just because 40% of the country does, claim walking off a cliff is good just because 40% of the country does, or whitewash fascism and white supremacy just because 40% of the country might.
3) Change them? That's not my job. Whether on not they change is on them; I'm not their unpaid therapist and I don't parent grown adults. I'm going to tell the truth about their amorality. Their shame or lack thereof in response their problem.
Are they immoral simply because they disagree with you? Having a preference for your own kind is not immoral. If that were the case, then e.g. Orthodox Jews would be immoral.
So you agree that white supremacy, book banning, and fascist attacks on American democracy are moral?
I disagreed with my best friend last night over what to get to dinner. Him preferring fast food to Italian does not make him immoral.
So what makes them immoral is not mere disagreement, its their unethical actions and belief. You want ignore the substance of the disagreement so you can downplay and whitewash the rightwing extremism, fascism and bigotry behind the disagreement.
I don’t see how anyone can be an “intellectual racist.” The term itself seems to be a contradiction.
Part of being an intellectual is to see the value in cultural differences.
Must we continually trudge backwards Into differences being objects of distrust and hate?
How do we get to that place where we see cultural differences as an enriching thing?
Heidegger? Schmitt?
Some “cultural differences” can be negative.
Cathy, I appreciate your good faith criticism of Hanania, and I'm hoping you'll take the time to read my defense of him. I cannot say with absolute certainty that Hanania has changed, but I can tell you why it's in the best interests of the American right (or whatever you want to call the movement against wokeness) for us to support him regardless.
People who are psychologically vulnerable to white nationalist arguments, but not smart or educated enough to counter them on their own, need to be guided away from them. This can only be done by addressing their arguments and the underlying assumptions of said arguments. There are few people willing to do that, and even fewer people who know how to do that. No one else in that subgroup has Hanania's aptitude, and I know this because he played a major role in my own deradicalization.
To be clear, I've always been a "small-l liberal", so my extremist phase wasn't quite as extreme as Hanania's, but throughout my early-to-mid 20's, I could accurately be described as a white nationalist, because I fully believed in the Great Replacement and thought that the left’s domination of American culture was the result of changing racial demographics. I knew that the people in charge of woke institutions were white, but I reasoned that they gained their power through the support of non-whites. I could not think of any better explanation for what was happening, and even if someone provided me with one, I wouldn't have accepted it unless it came with a plan of action to stop wokeness.
Most writers on this beat say that wokeness won fairly in the marketplace of ideas, but also that it can also somehow be defeated in the marketplace of ideas. It should be obvious why many people don't believe that a strategy that's been failing for at least fifteen years will suddenly start working. And once you reject the idea that you can argue wokeness into submission, your only options are to go with Peter Brimelow, who says Making America White Again will solve the problem, or Curtis Yarvin, who says installing a dictator would solve the problem. I chose white nationalism because it was the more liberal of those two options.
But now we have a third option: Hanania. He has provided an explanation for America's leftward march that isn't related to the increasing number of brown people. His book, The Origins of Woke, argues that wokeness is the result of little-known government policy, and that once Republican politicians are aware of the policy, they can change it. This seems much more liberal than a racially discriminatory immigration system or a dictatorship, no?
As I understand, you don't want to promote Hanania or his book because you fear he might still be racist, and associating with racist people makes you feel icky. But what is the alternative? Do we push for someone without Hanania's ickiness to write the exact same book, so that people like you feel comfortable reading it? Do we invent an entirely new strategy to fight wokeness and hope that whoever writes the book on it doesn't get exposed as a racist?
One more thing: The recent comments that you attack Hanania for are what Scott Alexander would describe as s scissor statements. When Hanania says that reducing crime would require surveilling black people, it is possible that he is saying we should target people for their race, but it's also possible that he's saying we should target people because of their criminal history, which carries with it a disparate impact. Disparate impact may not be a legitimate concept to you, me, or Hanania, but it's literally written into the law and taught in every university! When people talk about “systemic racism” or “white supremacist institutions”, they're talking about disparate impact! He could just be acknowledging that this is how people think. It is the subject of his book, after all.
“Sometimes, even denial of access to high-reputation platforms is appropriate—not to punish but to maintain a cordon sanitaire around things that, by overwhelming consensus, are beyond the pale because they are connected to historical atrocities.”
Who decides what ideas should be cordoned? Anything outside of woke boundaries can be “connected” to “historical atrocities”. For example, if someone argues in good faith about group IQ differences, crime differences, etc. that will automatically be connected to historical atrocities (coupled with gratuitous references to Nazi race science, flat earthism, etc.).
https://open.substack.com/pub/aporiamagazine/p/equalitarianism-and-its-consequences?r=b5zww&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
One is left with the impression that he's an intelligent if amorally vacuous bootlicker who loves nothing more than to be seen and accoladed for backing the winner
What “winner” is he backing? What evidence is there that he’s amoral?
I cannot imagine what would happen to me if, as a scientist and educator, I was found to have written anonymously in support of a flat Earth. Then, on top of that, to perhaps act all Joe Rogan-y and throw subtle shade on the Earth being genuinely spherical. He is clearly trying to be a provocateur.
On another note, I found myself following Hanania on Twitter. His tweets were coming in on my Following (I am a bit of a Twitter newbie although I've had it for ten years). A couple of the examples in this article were on my timeline. It seems this association was created by my reading of The Free Press by Bari Weiss.
You know what would be really impressive? A right wing publication criticizing the right while the left wing publications criticize the left, because from what I can see all you guys are doing are infomercials for your favorite parties.
You are at the right place for the right
I love the Unpopulist**, but I'm not sure how or why it counts as being a "A right wing publication criticizing the right", which is how I parse your response to RD. Do I misread you? I find the Unpopulist to be relatively near the hollowing-out liberaltarian-inflected middle, like Niskanen for example, or the Economist. And there is nothing wrong with that!
** Probably too much, since it does not cause me to revisit my priors nearly as often as any challenging reading should.
If an organization can't remain objectively critical of itself it will necessarily veer off into corruption and irrelevance. We're there for both the Left and the Right at this point. It's just a race to zero at this point.