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.
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.