I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
While I don’t follow Hanania or (the social media platform formerly known as) Twitter closely, it seems to me that this kind of ambiguity is strategic. He wants to expand what is acceptable to say publicly, and one way of doing this is to say things which can be read both in a currently-acceptable and a currently-unacceptable way. If challenged on any specific one you just give the acceptable interpretation and apologize for the misunderstanding, but this doesn’t do much to diminish the window-pushing effect.
He used to publish racist stuff under a pseudonym, right? Calling for deportations based on skin colour iirc correctly. Why shouldn’t I think he probably dislikes black people, given this track record?
He says he now finds the ideas he had when he was younger repulsive. Here are some quotes from it:
“My posts and blog comments in my early twenties encouraged racism, misogyny, misanthropy, trolling, and overall bad faith. Phrases like “racism” and “misogyny” get thrown around too easily, but I don’t believe there’s any doubt many of my previous comments crossed the line, regardless of where one thinks that line should be. Below, I’ll offer an explanation for why I wrote such things, and why I no longer hold such views.”
People know that what I think is reflected in my corpus of work over the last several years, rather than embarrassing takes in my early 20s about the 2008 election. Fifteen years is long enough to graduate junior high, go through all of high school and college, earn a PhD, and get a third of the way towards being a tenured professor. If that’s not a long enough time to be beyond the statute of limitations for holding repugnant views one later renounces, then there’s really no hope for us ever moving beyond cancel culture.
We appear to be moving past the worst of the cancellation trend. Most outside of a certain echo chamber realize this kind of reporting is contemptible. The goal is not to engage with ideas, but to simply silence a person and remove them from polite company. To not have to discuss their ideas on account of other ideas they put forward at a different time of their life and which they may no longer even believe in.
which is why such a large portion of my current work involves attacking right-wing collectivism and illiberal beliefs (see here and here). The truth is that part of it is self-loathing towards my previous life. I all too clearly notice the kind of sloppy thinking, emotional immaturity, and moral shortcomings that can lead one to adopt a quasi-fascist ideology, and am hard on others because I’m hard on myself for once holding such views.
One of the most dishonest parts of the Huffington Post hitpiece is the argument that I maintain “a creepy obsession with so-called race science” and talk about blacks being inherently more prone to crime. I do no such thing, and ultimately believe that what the sources of such disparities are doesn’t matter.
Should you think less of me for my previous writing? I can definitely see the argument for that. Many are tempted into becoming political extremists at an early age, but those who never feel that pull, or who refuse to succumb to it, should probably get some credit for that. At the same time, if you think my writing now shows any degree of wisdom or good judgment, consider what a miracle it is that I’ve come this far.
I judge things on track records. If I post a load of racist things, then apologise then post another probably racist thing, I think you should think I’m racist, not that the apology was like a magic spell that made all the previous bad behaviour disappear.
I am willing for hanania to do some work and convince me he isn’t racist, but he has to actually convince me. You seem to think I should just believe him. I don’t believe him.
I’ve actually read probably over 100 of his articles, and that’s what’s convinced me he’s not racist.
How much of his original content have you actually read? You can just check if you want. His writing is out there.
I think most of people thinking he’s racist have looked at one or two cherry-picked tweets and read articles written by other people about him and what he said, instead of looking at what he actually said.
I think the other thing that makes people think he’s racist is that he does talk about differences in outcomes between racial groups and talks about alternative theories to “it’s just because certain racial groups are oppressed”.
Some people think that considering that is racist itself. I doubt you’re one of those people, but if you are, then you’ll totally think he’s racist.
I’m surprised. You just found out that one of the worst things you thought he said was wrong.
Are you not going to update and maybe think that maybe he’s not the villain you originally thought?
I know you’re usually quite good at updating based on new evidence. It’s hard to convey over text, but I genuinely recommend taking a step back from this and reflecting on your views.
I’ve seen in one other thread as well you realizing that what you’d heard about Hanania was wrong, so that’s twice in one day. Consider that maybe the other things were also not as bad as you originally thought.
I don’t think you have remotely conclusively proved that this tweet wasn’t racist.
Edit: I don’t think TheAthenians should have to conclusively prove a tweet isn’t racist. I think I more wished to say “I am pretty confident and you have done little to move that” since this discussion has started several other non-aligned people have reached out to say that they too didn’t read the tweet as racist. I am now less confident.
The claim is that the tweet said he called all black people animals.
It’s a separate but overlapping claim about whether the tweet was racist.
For the first claim, shouldn’t it update you massively that he said he was talking about specific other people, that totally make sense in the context?
What do you think is more likely:
Person who consistently criticizes crime apologists, criticizes crime apologists
Person says he dislikes crime apologists, but secretly hates all black people and is lying
Assuming people don’t mean what they say and that your interpretation of their internal state is more accurate than their explanation of it seems pretty suboptimal to me.
I think our community would be better off if they updated based on misunderstandings, rather than insisting that people have hidden bad intentions and are liars about their own lived experience.
Can you ask him to reply to his tweet with that clarification? I don’t think that is the common sense understanding of the tweet, which is very racist. Until he publicly clarifies, I’m pretty happy to continue my common sense understanding of that tweet.
I don’t know why he didn’t delete it. I don’t think it’s particularly important to his main causes and points. If I were him, I’d totally delete it.
My guess is that he feels pretty constantly attacked and he probably has a set of principles/rules he follows for when to delete stuff, and it’s not “delete it if a lot of people are mad at me online”, since people on the left and the right are often quite mad at him online.
FWIW, I immediately assumed he was talking about woke activists (and apparently he was talking about crime apologists, a subset of woke activists).
The context makes total sense to me. A person he thinks was just preventing crime is being sent to prison for life. He’d obviously be talking about the people who did that to the person
I have no opinion on the particular event. I’d never heard of it till just yesterday and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. Just purveying how Hanania likely saw the situation.
I’ve also read a lot of Hanania’s stuff, so it’s even more clear to me than to somebody who hasn’t. He’s an anti-speciesist who equally angers the right and the left. It’d be pretty surprising to me if he hated black people. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he felt a lot of anger towards woke activists.
The first one he wasn’t calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
Which, you know, not great. But very very different from calling black people animals.
The second one is him saying that if we were to genuinely reduce crime, it would involve increasing policing of black people, which he thinks would be politically infeasible given the current climate.
This seems like the sort of thing where reasonable people could disagree. Like, does policing and surveillance actually reduce crime? Are black people disproportionately likely to commit crimes or is that over-reporting due to racism?
If somebody said the exact same thing but said it about men in general (who do commit more violent crime) I don’t think most people would call that sexist and vile.
I think this is not true, at least not in my view. Dehumanising people is really bad, (mostly) independent of which group you’re dehumanising. I think that’s an extremely good social norm to have, and it should be costly to break.
(You seem to argue this specific point a lot, which repeatedly gets downvoted. I thought I’d explain my perspective on why I think that’s the case. I don’t believe your counterpoint works well. “Not great“ is also a serious euphemism for dehumanisation.)
What’s your source for that? Is the original quote the same as the one I wrote about in this comment?
here and here.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
While I don’t follow Hanania or (the social media platform formerly known as) Twitter closely, it seems to me that this kind of ambiguity is strategic. He wants to expand what is acceptable to say publicly, and one way of doing this is to say things which can be read both in a currently-acceptable and a currently-unacceptable way. If challenged on any specific one you just give the acceptable interpretation and apologize for the misunderstanding, but this doesn’t do much to diminish the window-pushing effect.
There is some possibility that this is strategic.
But I think the hypothesis that he unthikingly posted an ambiguous tweet while he was feeling emotional is more likely.
Your prior should be on people occasionally posting unthinking emotional tweets.
Your prior should be that he has a strong dislike of crime apologists, which is one of his big hobby horses.
Especially if you’ve read more of his work, like I have.
He doesn’t hate black people.
He definitely strongly dislikes crime apologists.
He used to publish racist stuff under a pseudonym, right? Calling for deportations based on skin colour iirc correctly. Why shouldn’t I think he probably dislikes black people, given this track record?
He responded to that.
He says he now finds the ideas he had when he was younger repulsive. Here are some quotes from it:
I judge things on track records. If I post a load of racist things, then apologise then post another probably racist thing, I think you should think I’m racist, not that the apology was like a magic spell that made all the previous bad behaviour disappear.
I am willing for hanania to do some work and convince me he isn’t racist, but he has to actually convince me. You seem to think I should just believe him. I don’t believe him.
I’ve actually read probably over 100 of his articles, and that’s what’s convinced me he’s not racist.
How much of his original content have you actually read? You can just check if you want. His writing is out there.
I think most of people thinking he’s racist have looked at one or two cherry-picked tweets and read articles written by other people about him and what he said, instead of looking at what he actually said.
I think the other thing that makes people think he’s racist is that he does talk about differences in outcomes between racial groups and talks about alternative theories to “it’s just because certain racial groups are oppressed”.
Some people think that considering that is racist itself. I doubt you’re one of those people, but if you are, then you’ll totally think he’s racist.
It’s pretty interesting that Hanania just happens to frequently make these kinds of accidents, right?
I’m surprised. You just found out that one of the worst things you thought he said was wrong.
Are you not going to update and maybe think that maybe he’s not the villain you originally thought?
I know you’re usually quite good at updating based on new evidence. It’s hard to convey over text, but I genuinely recommend taking a step back from this and reflecting on your views.
I’ve seen in one other thread as well you realizing that what you’d heard about Hanania was wrong, so that’s twice in one day. Consider that maybe the other things were also not as bad as you originally thought.
I don’t think you have remotely conclusively proved that this tweet wasn’t racist.
Edit: I don’t think TheAthenians should have to conclusively prove a tweet isn’t racist. I think I more wished to say “I am pretty confident and you have done little to move that” since this discussion has started several other non-aligned people have reached out to say that they too didn’t read the tweet as racist. I am now less confident.
The claim is that the tweet said he called all black people animals.
It’s a separate but overlapping claim about whether the tweet was racist.
For the first claim, shouldn’t it update you massively that he said he was talking about specific other people, that totally make sense in the context?
What do you think is more likely:
Person who consistently criticizes crime apologists, criticizes crime apologists
Person says he dislikes crime apologists, but secretly hates all black people and is lying
Assuming people don’t mean what they say and that your interpretation of their internal state is more accurate than their explanation of it seems pretty suboptimal to me.
I think our community would be better off if they updated based on misunderstandings, rather than insisting that people have hidden bad intentions and are liars about their own lived experience.
We have already followed the rest of this line of argument here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34pz6ni3muwPnenLS/why-so-many-racists-at-manifest?commentId=gj53zXi5k4SEdh3Rh
Again, I’m willing to change my mind, but it would actually involve some behaviour change on his part, which so far I haven’t seen.
Neither were accidents? It was just people misinterpreting what he was saying or interpreting things uncharitably.
People interpret people uncharitably all the time on the internet, especially if you ever mention race.
Can you ask him to reply to his tweet with that clarification? I don’t think that is the common sense understanding of the tweet, which is very racist. Until he publicly clarifies, I’m pretty happy to continue my common sense understanding of that tweet.
He publicly clarified on the Blocked and Reported podcast.
I got his permission to publicly share the quote I shared with you.
He’s already been asked a million times to clarify on Twitter, so I doubt he’ll listen to me.
Yeah but why not. The least he could do is delete it.
If he is only doing cheap actions and not costly ones.. maybe he in fact does mean the thing it looks like he means.
Or maybe he really likes annoying people. But I don’t like annoying edgy “maybe I’m being racist maybe not” either.
Edit: I do get why he doesn’t delete things in general. I feel that way too. But if I said anything that unclear I’d delete it.
I don’t know why he didn’t delete it. I don’t think it’s particularly important to his main causes and points. If I were him, I’d totally delete it.
My guess is that he feels pretty constantly attacked and he probably has a set of principles/rules he follows for when to delete stuff, and it’s not “delete it if a lot of people are mad at me online”, since people on the left and the right are often quite mad at him online.
FWIW, I immediately assumed he was talking about woke activists (and apparently he was talking about crime apologists, a subset of woke activists).
The context makes total sense to me. A person he thinks was just preventing crime is being sent to prison for life. He’d obviously be talking about the people who did that to the person
I have no opinion on the particular event. I’d never heard of it till just yesterday and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. Just purveying how Hanania likely saw the situation.
I’ve also read a lot of Hanania’s stuff, so it’s even more clear to me than to somebody who hasn’t. He’s an anti-speciesist who equally angers the right and the left. It’d be pretty surprising to me if he hated black people. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he felt a lot of anger towards woke activists.
The first one he wasn’t calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
Which, you know, not great. But very very different from calling black people animals.
The second one is him saying that if we were to genuinely reduce crime, it would involve increasing policing of black people, which he thinks would be politically infeasible given the current climate.
This seems like the sort of thing where reasonable people could disagree. Like, does policing and surveillance actually reduce crime? Are black people disproportionately likely to commit crimes or is that over-reporting due to racism?
If somebody said the exact same thing but said it about men in general (who do commit more violent crime) I don’t think most people would call that sexist and vile.
“But very very different“.
I think this is not true, at least not in my view. Dehumanising people is really bad, (mostly) independent of which group you’re dehumanising. I think that’s an extremely good social norm to have, and it should be costly to break.
(You seem to argue this specific point a lot, which repeatedly gets downvoted. I thought I’d explain my perspective on why I think that’s the case. I don’t believe your counterpoint works well. “Not great“ is also a serious euphemism for dehumanisation.)