(EDIT: I misunderstood this, but I don’t think I misunderstood that Hanania is generally a provacateur who says pretty “edgy” things, like that black people are animals and that we need mass surveillance of black people to lower crime.)
I still think this is hyperbole. Hanania isn’t saying he things they/them pronouns are worse than genocide, he says he gets more upset about they/them pronouns than about genocide, just as (according to him) people on the left get more upset about racial slurs than about genocide:
I’m sure if you asked most liberals “which is worse, genocide or racial slurs?”, they would invoke System 2 and say genocide is worse. If forced to articulate their morality, they will admit murderers and rapists should go to jail longer than racists. Yet I’ve been in the room with liberals where the topic of conversation has been genocide, and they are always less emotional than when the topic is homophobia, sexual harassment, or cops pulling over a disproportionate number of black men.
[...]
When I arrived at my last academic conference at the American Political Science Association in 2019, I stopped at the check-in table and picked up this pin [with non-binary pronouns written on it]. [...] The pronoun pin represented everything I hated about leftists, “experts,” and intellectuals, and I keep it around where I work for motivation. I’m looking at it as I write this.
Of course, this is deranged. Of all the things that can motivate me, why did I pick a stupid gesture that has close to zero direct impact on human flourishing and wellbeing?
I think the answer goes something like this. Our System 2 morality works in a way such that if you put me and an SJW in a room, we would agree that society should punish murder more severely than either using racial slurs or announcing your pronouns. This is despite the fact that emotionally, neither of us has that strong of a reaction when it comes to murder. An exception for an SJW is when say a white racist or a cop murders a black person, while for me it might be mass murder committed by communists.
You could reasonably object that Hanania should be more accepting of nonbinary people (I would agree), but I think you’re meaningfully misstating his position.
Ok, I’ll state for the record that I misunderstood that particular Hanania post. I’m sorry for that. But I still stand by Hanania being a provocateur who I do not want in any community I am a part of.
I would like to disagree and say that I would be excited to attend an event where Hanania was attending.
He makes a lot of really interesting points, writes engagingly, and is an independent thinker.
All of the times I’ve seen somebody saying “he’s super racist!” have turned out to be not actually racist, taken out of context, or the definition of racism where talking about any racial differences is racist, etc.
Wait, I do not think that is the natural reading of that tweet. He is supportive of Penny elswhere. I discussed this with someone yesterday—he seems to be on Penny’s side in these tweets saying it will become clear to people that blacks are a danger to whites. Given his history I do think he was calling blacks animals (which is gross) and were he not to be he could easily have corrected it, which he hasn’t.
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.
He said that woke rhetoric makes it sound like white people kill more black people, and actually, more black people kill white people. (I don’t know if this is true, but it is a matter of looking into the data and is different from how you portrayed what he said)
He corrected the blacks being animals in a Blocked and Reported podcast episode. He was not calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
It almost seems rude to ask but… did you actually read the post you linked? It says the exact opposite of what you claim it does:
Deep down, I know wokeness is not the most important issue facing humanity.
...
Regardless, wokeness is probably not as important as, for example, advancing anti-aging research.
… Of all the things that can motivate me, why did I pick a stupid gesture that has close to zero direct impact on human flourishing and wellbeing?
...
From my perspective, wokeness is very important, I have something new and original to say about it, and the topic inspires me like practically nothing else. But again, I know it’s nowhere near the most important issue I could be focusing on.
This seems at best quite negligent of you—to assume a person is saying something bad just because you dislike them. At worst it seems like you were hoping people would just take your word for it and not actually click the link.
Ok, I’ll state for the record that I misunderstood that particular Hanania post. I’m sorry for that. But I still stand by Hanania being a provocateur who I do not want in any community I am a part of.
I would hold a tighter grip on your horses. The article does not contravene the headline. Hanania talks at length about how much he hates wokeness.[1] He doesn’t mention his views on genocide. He notes that some issues are more important than being anti-woke (as an example, he mentions anti-aging research). So in sum, this article suggests:
he hates wokeness vehemently
he thinks some issues are more important than wokeness.
It seems entirely consistent with the article that Hanania hates wokeness more than genocide, and a straightforward reading of the headline and context would support this. We don’t know whether Hanania puts genocide as one of the ‘5-10’ more important issues.
So we have mildly positive, at best neutral evidence on how Hanania rates genocide compared to wokeness. ‘Thinks is worse’ could mean different things. One reading is that ‘worse = rates as a more important problem’ (on which we should be unsure). Another reading is ‘worse = hates more’ (on which we have positive evidence). Either reading is reasonable.
E.g. “I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it.”
The entire article is about how he hates wokeness the most but recognizes that objectively there are other bigger problems; genocide is an example he mentions of an objectively worse problem.
Could you point me to where he does so? I only see mentions of genocide in the title (which he does not contradict), and in the context of liberals’ relative hatred. And where he says “Emotionally, I don’t identify with the tribe of ‘people who don’t commit genocide.’”
The article reads to me as straightforwardly saying “I know [wokeness] is nowhere near the most important issue I could be focusing on [but I find myself doing it anyways]” and reflecting on why he (and others) feel so much more passionate and outraged about topics like pronouns (for him) and racial slurs (for people on the left), when there are so many things that from a system 2 perspective are much bigger deals that he and others feel much less passionate about when they come up (like genocide).
This feels like an interesting point (though I have disagreements with some of the writing in the essay). I have failed to find a literal sentence with “I think genocide is more important than X”, since he mostly invokes the term when talking about how he is surprised how dispassionate other people are about that topic, but the overall content of the post is the opposite of what I thought he was going to say when Peter linked to it.
It agree he also says it might be in the top 5-10, which I agree seems somewhat incongruent, though like, the whole point of the post is to explore internal cognitive dissonance in him and others, so some inconsistency doesn’t seem inappropriate (though yeah, I think it makes the post worse and the meaning less clear, which is still bad).
Eh, I personally think of some things in the top 10 as “nowhere near” the most important issues, because of how heavy-tailed cause prioritization tends to be.
That’s reasonable. My point is that it’s much less clear and open to contestation that Hanania’s article says the opposite of what the headline is, but given the example is ~retracted anyway my point is not important
Thanks for the context. I think both your initial comment and reply, without further context (I personally did not have more context; I have not been following these discussions), lead to an innacurate picture of Hanania’s views. The title is provocatory, but my understanding based solely on skimming that post would be that Hanania is not “someone who thinks that using they/them pronouns is worse than committing genocide”. Hanania thinks genocide is worse, but then focusses on pronouns due to personal fit considerations? From the post:
Hearing about what the Current Thing in South Korea was [“a man had molested a little girl, a judge gave him a light sentence, and society was outraged”] gave me an idea for an article. I would talk about how deformed liberal morality is. Deep down, leftists care about racial slurs more than genocide, misgendering more than cancer, fake gender income gaps more than factory farms and torturing children. But it didn’t take long for me to realize I’m not all that different. As Scott Alexander recently wrote,
“sometimes pundits will, for example, make fun of excessively woke people by saying something like “in a world with millions of people in poverty and thousands of heavily-armed nuclear missiles, you’re really choosing to focus on whether someone said something slightly silly about gender?” Then they do that again. Then they do that again. Then you realize these pundits’ entire brand is making fun of people who say silly things (in a woke direction) about gender, even though there are millions of people in poverty and thousands of nuclear missiles. So they ought to at least be able to appreciate how strong the temptation can be. As Horace puts it, “why do you laugh? Change the name, and the joke’s on you!””
Deep down, I know wokeness is not the most important issue facing humanity. I would contend it’s more important than most people think, say top 5-10 depending on how you count. Twice this year, there have been stories of women’s tears bringing down male scientists of unusual ability, one who had been working at MIT, the other running the “cancer moonshot” at the White House. I suspect that there might be some correlation between unique male talent and the likelihood of inspiring a PC mob to come after you (see also Roland Fryer). Regardless, wokeness is probably not as important as, for example, advancing anti-aging research. Part of my choice to write about it is that I feel like I have something unique and original to say on the topic. That means I can be most effective when talking about it, but that’s partly by design. I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it. If I’d studied anti-aging research or space travel as much, I would probably have something interesting and useful to say about those topics.
Hanania is a frequent and intentional provocateur. He knows exactly what he’s doing with this article. He has made clear explicit intent to use outrage towards himself to build a platform to overturn the US Civil Rights Act.
“I’ll tell you a secret to success. Always be pushing the envelope. As soon as you’ve done or said something that gets attention, resist the temptation to go rest on your laurels and become risk averse. Keep pushing, always give them a twist.”—Richard Hanania
Not hyperbole. Hanania, Manifest promoted speaker, wrote “Why Do I Hate Pronouns More Than Genocide?” in May 2022.
(EDIT: I misunderstood this, but I don’t think I misunderstood that Hanania is generally a provacateur who says pretty “edgy” things, like that black people are animals and that we need mass surveillance of black people to lower crime.)
I still think this is hyperbole. Hanania isn’t saying he things they/them pronouns are worse than genocide, he says he gets more upset about they/them pronouns than about genocide, just as (according to him) people on the left get more upset about racial slurs than about genocide:
You could reasonably object that Hanania should be more accepting of nonbinary people (I would agree), but I think you’re meaningfully misstating his position.
Ok, I’ll state for the record that I misunderstood that particular Hanania post. I’m sorry for that. But I still stand by Hanania being a provocateur who I do not want in any community I am a part of.
I would like to disagree and say that I would be excited to attend an event where Hanania was attending.
He makes a lot of really interesting points, writes engagingly, and is an independent thinker.
All of the times I’ve seen somebody saying “he’s super racist!” have turned out to be not actually racist, taken out of context, or the definition of racism where talking about any racial differences is racist, etc.
For example, the whole “he called black people animals” thing.
He was calling woke activists animals, not black people.
Which, yeah, I’m generally against calling people animals, but is very different from the narrative of him saying all black people are animals.
Wait, I do not think that is the natural reading of that tweet. He is supportive of Penny elswhere. I discussed this with someone yesterday—he seems to be on Penny’s side in these tweets saying it will become clear to people that blacks are a danger to whites. Given his history I do think he was calling blacks animals (which is gross) and were he not to be he could easily have corrected it, which he hasn’t.
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.
He didn’t say that blacks are danger to whites
He said that woke rhetoric makes it sound like white people kill more black people, and actually, more black people kill white people. (I don’t know if this is true, but it is a matter of looking into the data and is different from how you portrayed what he said)
He corrected the blacks being animals in a Blocked and Reported podcast episode. He was not calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
It almost seems rude to ask but… did you actually read the post you linked? It says the exact opposite of what you claim it does:
This seems at best quite negligent of you—to assume a person is saying something bad just because you dislike them. At worst it seems like you were hoping people would just take your word for it and not actually click the link.
Ok, I’ll state for the record that I misunderstood that particular Hanania post. I’m sorry for that. But I still stand by Hanania being a provocateur who I do not want in any community I am a part of.
I would hold a tighter grip on your horses. The article does not contravene the headline. Hanania talks at length about how much he hates wokeness.[1] He doesn’t mention his views on genocide. He notes that some issues are more important than being anti-woke (as an example, he mentions anti-aging research). So in sum, this article suggests:
he hates wokeness vehemently
he thinks some issues are more important than wokeness.
It seems entirely consistent with the article that Hanania hates wokeness more than genocide, and a straightforward reading of the headline and context would support this. We don’t know whether Hanania puts genocide as one of the ‘5-10’ more important issues.
So we have mildly positive, at best neutral evidence on how Hanania rates genocide compared to wokeness. ‘Thinks is worse’ could mean different things. One reading is that ‘worse = rates as a more important problem’ (on which we should be unsure). Another reading is ‘worse = hates more’ (on which we have positive evidence). Either reading is reasonable.
E.g. “I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it.”
The entire article is about how he hates wokeness the most but recognizes that objectively there are other bigger problems; genocide is an example he mentions of an objectively worse problem.
Could you point me to where he does so? I only see mentions of genocide in the title (which he does not contradict), and in the context of liberals’ relative hatred. And where he says “Emotionally, I don’t identify with the tribe of ‘people who don’t commit genocide.’”
The article reads to me as straightforwardly saying “I know [wokeness] is nowhere near the most important issue I could be focusing on [but I find myself doing it anyways]” and reflecting on why he (and others) feel so much more passionate and outraged about topics like pronouns (for him) and racial slurs (for people on the left), when there are so many things that from a system 2 perspective are much bigger deals that he and others feel much less passionate about when they come up (like genocide).
This feels like an interesting point (though I have disagreements with some of the writing in the essay). I have failed to find a literal sentence with “I think genocide is more important than X”, since he mostly invokes the term when talking about how he is surprised how dispassionate other people are about that topic, but the overall content of the post is the opposite of what I thought he was going to say when Peter linked to it.
He says wokeness is in the “top 5-10, depending how you count”. That doesn’t seem to be ‘nowhere near’?
The text in quotes is a quote:
It agree he also says it might be in the top 5-10, which I agree seems somewhat incongruent, though like, the whole point of the post is to explore internal cognitive dissonance in him and others, so some inconsistency doesn’t seem inappropriate (though yeah, I think it makes the post worse and the meaning less clear, which is still bad).
Eh, I personally think of some things in the top 10 as “nowhere near” the most important issues, because of how heavy-tailed cause prioritization tends to be.
Yeah, I was thinking about that as well. Seems plausible for something to be top 5-10 and also “nowhere near”.
That’s reasonable. My point is that it’s much less clear and open to contestation that Hanania’s article says the opposite of what the headline is, but given the example is ~retracted anyway my point is not important
Thanks for the context. I think both your initial comment and reply, without further context (I personally did not have more context; I have not been following these discussions), lead to an innacurate picture of Hanania’s views. The title is provocatory, but my understanding based solely on skimming that post would be that Hanania is not “someone who thinks that using they/them pronouns is worse than committing genocide”. Hanania thinks genocide is worse, but then focusses on pronouns due to personal fit considerations? From the post:
Hanania is a frequent and intentional provocateur. He knows exactly what he’s doing with this article. He has made clear explicit intent to use outrage towards himself to build a platform to overturn the US Civil Rights Act.
“I’ll tell you a secret to success. Always be pushing the envelope. As soon as you’ve done or said something that gets attention, resist the temptation to go rest on your laurels and become risk averse. Keep pushing, always give them a twist.”—Richard Hanania
This appears to be the source of the ‘pushing the envelope’ quote if anyone is interested:
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1699223634349629771