To put Garrisonās comment a bit more bluntly, I challenge you to name 1 left-winger who might feasibly be invited to speak at Manifold and has said anything about Jews as a group comparable to Hanania saying āthese people are animalsā about Black people*. Thatās not a dogwhistle, or a remark that reflects stereotypes, or applies double-standards, or cheering for one side in a violent conflict because you think their the aggressors itās just explicit open racism.
*(The claim made below that Hanania really meant woke people not Black people, strains credulity. He was talking about not just the lawyer who prosecuted a man for violence towards a black man who was harrassing people on the subway, but also the . The full quote was āthese people are animals, whether harassing people in the subway or walking around in suitsā. There is no reason to think the harasser was woke or shared any other characteristic with the lawyer except being Black. And your prior on āman who was a neo-Nazi for years, and never apologised till he got caught actually meant the racist reading when he said something that sounded racistā should be high.)
One person I was thinking about when I wrote the post was Medhi Hassan. According to Wikipedia:
During a sermon delivered in 2009, quoting a verse of the Quran, Hasan used the terms ācattleā and āpeople of no intelligenceā to describe non-believers. In another sermon, he used the term āanimalsā to describe non-Muslims.
Medhi has spoken several times at the Oxford Union and also in a recent public debate on antisemitism, so clearly heās not beyond the pale for many.
I personally also think that the āfrom the river to the seaā chant is pretty analogous to, say, white nationalist slogans. It does seem to have a complicated history, but in the wake of the October 7 attacks its association with Hamas should I think put it beyond the pale. Nevertheless, it has been defended by Rashida Tlaib. In general I am in favor of people being able to make arguments like hers, but I suspect that if Hanania were to make an argument for why a white nationalist slogan should be interpreted positively, it would be counted as a strong point against him.
I expect that either Hassan or Tlaib, were they interested in prediction markets, would have been treated in a similar way as Hanania by the Manifest organizers.
I donāt have more examples off the top of my head because I try not to follow this type of politics too much. I would be pretty surprised if an hour of searching didnāt turn up a bunch more though.
Hassan: Those comments were indeed egregious, but they were not about Jews specifically. Indeed much more recently (although still a while ago) Hassan has harshly criticised antisemitism in the British Muslim community. I canāt link on my phone but google āthe sorry truth is that the virus of antisemitism has infected the British Muslim communityā. I grant that this was comparably egregious to what Hanania said (I do think it is slightly less bad to attack literally everyone outside your small community than to target a vulnerable minority, but I wouldnāt rest much on that.*) If Hassan had said that more recently or I was convinced he still thought that, then I would agree he should not be invited to Manifest. But itās not actually an example of prejudice against Jews specifically except to the extent that Jews are also not Muslim.
Tlaib: Well I wouldnāt use that phrase, and Iām inclined to say using it is antisemitic yes, because at the very least it creates an ambiguity about whether you mean it in the genocidal way. Having said that, given that there is a very clear non-genocidal reading, I do not think it is a clear example of hate speech in quite the same sense as Hananiaās animals remark. Iād also say that my strength of feeling against Hanania is influenced by the fact that he was an out and out white nationalist for years, and that he remains hostile to the civil rights act that ended Jim Crow and democratised the South.. If you can show me that Tlaib is or was a Hamas supporter, then yes, Iād say her saying āfrom the river to the seaā is at least as bad as Hananiaās animals comment. (Worse inherently, since that would make it a call for violence and genocide/āethnic cleansing. But I do think Palestinians are subject to forces that make resisting bigotry harder vis-a-vis Israelis, than it is for white Americans to resist white nationalism.)
*For example, I think the NYT should have fired Sarah Jeong even though her racist comments were āonlyā about whites, if you know that incident.you
If Hassan had said that more recently or I was convinced he still thought that, then I would agree he should not be invited to Manifest.
My claim is that the Manifest organizers should have the right to invite him even if heād said that more recently. But appreciate you giving your perspective, since I did ask for that (just clarifying the āagreeā part).
Having said that, given that there is a very clear non-genocidal reading, I do not think it is a clear example of hate speech in quite the same sense as Hananiaās animals remark
I have some object-level views about the relative badness but my main claim is more that this isnāt a productive type of analysis for a community to end up doing, partly because itās so inherently subjective, so I support drawing lines that help us not need to do this analysis (like āorganizers are allowed to invite you either wayā).
Most Israeli Jews would call the phrase āFrom the river to the seeā antisemitic. Myself being relatively on the far left in that group, and having spoken a lot with Palestinians online before the war, Iād argue that itās antisemitic/ācalls for ethnic cleansing of Jews around 50% of the time. I would not prosecute or boycott someone based on it alone.
Edit: but most Israelis might choose not to come to a conference that would platform such a person, I guess. I think this is a different situation from the current real controversy, but make of it what you will.
For what itās worth, Iām 75% confident that Hanania didnāt mean black people with the āanimalsā comment.
I think itās generally bad form to not take people at their word about the meaning of their statements, though Iām also very sympathetic to the possibility of provocateurs exploiting charity to get away with dogwhistles (and I think Hanania deserves more suspicion of this than most), so I feel mixed about you using it as an example here.
āDidnāt meanā is fuzzy in this sort of case. Iād put āhe expected a good number of readers would interpret the referent of āanimalsā to be āblack peopleā and was positive on that interpretation ending up in their mindsā at more likely than not.
I think many people are tricking themselves into being more intellectually charitable to Hanania than warranted.
I know relatively little about Hanania other than stuff that has been brought to my attention through EA drama and some basic āknow thy enemyā reading I did on my own initiative. I feel pretty comfortable in my current judgment that his statements on race are not entitled charitable readings in cases of ambiguity.
Hanania by his own admission was deeply involved in some of the most vilely racist corners of the internet. He knows what sorts of messages appeal to and mobilize those people, and how such racists would read his messages. He āknow[s] how it looksā not just to left-wing people but to racists.
More recently, he has admitted that he harbors irrational animus (mostly anti-LGBT stuff from what I know) that seems like a much better explanation for his policy positions rather than any attempt at beneficence from egalitarian first principles. If you just read his recent policy stances on racial issues, they are shot through with an underlying contempt, lack of empathy, and broad-strokes painting that are all consistent with what I think can fairly be called a racist disposition towards Black people in particular.
Charitable interpretation of statements can be a sensible disposition in many settings. But giving charitable interpretations to people with this sort of history seems both morally and epistemically unwise.
The prior on āperson with a white supremacist history still engaged in right wing racial politics still has a racist underlying psychologyā should be very high. Right-wing racists also frequently engage in dogwhistles to signal to each other while maintaining plausible deniability. Reading that statement (and others of his) with those priors+facts in mind, I feel very comfortable not giving Hanania any benefit of the doubt here.
Thereās also a textual case that I think supports the racist reading. Woke people walking around āin suitsā is not at all a common tropeāIāve literally never heard of someone talking about a woke person wearing a suit as some sort of significant indicator of anything. But racists judging Black people by what they wearāe.g., purporting to be willing to be nicer to Black people if only they dressed more appropriatelyāis a huge trope in American race discourse. This sort of congruence between racist tropes and Hananiaās language similarly applies to āin subwaysā and āanimals.ā These are racist tropes consistently used about Black people, not woke people.
He explicitly said that he sent an emotional and unthinking tweet.
This seems to me like also what you do if youāre in an elaborate game of secretly communicating hate. I think a sensible prior is that more people are emotional and unthinking than playing an elaborate game, but I donāt think his claims about his own intentions are strong evidence here.
Also, while āelaborate game of secretly communicating hateā is a pretty weird and specific hypothesis, I think weāve also seen evidence from time to time that some people are very much doing it, so I donāt think itās unreasonable for people to suspect it (e.g. I think of the things Lee Atwater said about switching from being openly racist to covertly racist in US politics).
To put Garrisonās comment a bit more bluntly, I challenge you to name 1 left-winger who might feasibly be invited to speak at Manifold and has said anything about Jews as a group comparable to Hanania saying āthese people are animalsā about Black people*. Thatās not a dogwhistle, or a remark that reflects stereotypes, or applies double-standards, or cheering for one side in a violent conflict because you think their the aggressors itās just explicit open racism.
*(The claim made below that Hanania really meant woke people not Black people, strains credulity. He was talking about not just the lawyer who prosecuted a man for violence towards a black man who was harrassing people on the subway, but also the . The full quote was āthese people are animals, whether harassing people in the subway or walking around in suitsā. There is no reason to think the harasser was woke or shared any other characteristic with the lawyer except being Black. And your prior on āman who was a neo-Nazi for years, and never apologised till he got caught actually meant the racist reading when he said something that sounded racistā should be high.)
One person I was thinking about when I wrote the post was Medhi Hassan. According to Wikipedia:
Medhi has spoken several times at the Oxford Union and also in a recent public debate on antisemitism, so clearly heās not beyond the pale for many.
I personally also think that the āfrom the river to the seaā chant is pretty analogous to, say, white nationalist slogans. It does seem to have a complicated history, but in the wake of the October 7 attacks its association with Hamas should I think put it beyond the pale. Nevertheless, it has been defended by Rashida Tlaib. In general I am in favor of people being able to make arguments like hers, but I suspect that if Hanania were to make an argument for why a white nationalist slogan should be interpreted positively, it would be counted as a strong point against him.
I expect that either Hassan or Tlaib, were they interested in prediction markets, would have been treated in a similar way as Hanania by the Manifest organizers.
I donāt have more examples off the top of my head because I try not to follow this type of politics too much. I would be pretty surprised if an hour of searching didnāt turn up a bunch more though.
Hassan: Those comments were indeed egregious, but they were not about Jews specifically. Indeed much more recently (although still a while ago) Hassan has harshly criticised antisemitism in the British Muslim community. I canāt link on my phone but google āthe sorry truth is that the virus of antisemitism has infected the British Muslim communityā. I grant that this was comparably egregious to what Hanania said (I do think it is slightly less bad to attack literally everyone outside your small community than to target a vulnerable minority, but I wouldnāt rest much on that.*) If Hassan had said that more recently or I was convinced he still thought that, then I would agree he should not be invited to Manifest. But itās not actually an example of prejudice against Jews specifically except to the extent that Jews are also not Muslim.
Tlaib: Well I wouldnāt use that phrase, and Iām inclined to say using it is antisemitic yes, because at the very least it creates an ambiguity about whether you mean it in the genocidal way. Having said that, given that there is a very clear non-genocidal reading, I do not think it is a clear example of hate speech in quite the same sense as Hananiaās animals remark. Iād also say that my strength of feeling against Hanania is influenced by the fact that he was an out and out white nationalist for years, and that he remains hostile to the civil rights act that ended Jim Crow and democratised the South.. If you can show me that Tlaib is or was a Hamas supporter, then yes, Iād say her saying āfrom the river to the seaā is at least as bad as Hananiaās animals comment. (Worse inherently, since that would make it a call for violence and genocide/āethnic cleansing. But I do think Palestinians are subject to forces that make resisting bigotry harder vis-a-vis Israelis, than it is for white Americans to resist white nationalism.)
*For example, I think the NYT should have fired Sarah Jeong even though her racist comments were āonlyā about whites, if you know that incident.you
My claim is that the Manifest organizers should have the right to invite him even if heād said that more recently. But appreciate you giving your perspective, since I did ask for that (just clarifying the āagreeā part).
I have some object-level views about the relative badness but my main claim is more that this isnāt a productive type of analysis for a community to end up doing, partly because itās so inherently subjective, so I support drawing lines that help us not need to do this analysis (like āorganizers are allowed to invite you either wayā).
Most Israeli Jews would call the phrase āFrom the river to the seeā antisemitic. Myself being relatively on the far left in that group, and having spoken a lot with Palestinians online before the war, Iād argue that itās antisemitic/ācalls for ethnic cleansing of Jews around 50% of the time. I would not prosecute or boycott someone based on it alone.
Edit: but most Israelis might choose not to come to a conference that would platform such a person, I guess. I think this is a different situation from the current real controversy, but make of it what you will.
For what itās worth, Iām 75% confident that Hanania didnāt mean black people with the āanimalsā comment.
I think itās generally bad form to not take people at their word about the meaning of their statements, though Iām also very sympathetic to the possibility of provocateurs exploiting charity to get away with dogwhistles (and I think Hanania deserves more suspicion of this than most), so I feel mixed about you using it as an example here.
āDidnāt meanā is fuzzy in this sort of case. Iād put āhe expected a good number of readers would interpret the referent of āanimalsā to be āblack peopleā and was positive on that interpretation ending up in their mindsā at more likely than not.
Iād bet against that but not confident
I think many people are tricking themselves into being more intellectually charitable to Hanania than warranted.
I know relatively little about Hanania other than stuff that has been brought to my attention through EA drama and some basic āknow thy enemyā reading I did on my own initiative. I feel pretty comfortable in my current judgment that his statements on race are not entitled charitable readings in cases of ambiguity.
Hanania by his own admission was deeply involved in some of the most vilely racist corners of the internet. He knows what sorts of messages appeal to and mobilize those people, and how such racists would read his messages. He āknow[s] how it looksā not just to left-wing people but to racists.
More recently, he has admitted that he harbors irrational animus (mostly anti-LGBT stuff from what I know) that seems like a much better explanation for his policy positions rather than any attempt at beneficence from egalitarian first principles. If you just read his recent policy stances on racial issues, they are shot through with an underlying contempt, lack of empathy, and broad-strokes painting that are all consistent with what I think can fairly be called a racist disposition towards Black people in particular.
Charitable interpretation of statements can be a sensible disposition in many settings. But giving charitable interpretations to people with this sort of history seems both morally and epistemically unwise.
The prior on āperson with a white supremacist history still engaged in right wing racial politics still has a racist underlying psychologyā should be very high. Right-wing racists also frequently engage in dogwhistles to signal to each other while maintaining plausible deniability. Reading that statement (and others of his) with those priors+facts in mind, I feel very comfortable not giving Hanania any benefit of the doubt here.
Thereās also a textual case that I think supports the racist reading. Woke people walking around āin suitsā is not at all a common tropeāIāve literally never heard of someone talking about a woke person wearing a suit as some sort of significant indicator of anything. But racists judging Black people by what they wearāe.g., purporting to be willing to be nicer to Black people if only they dressed more appropriatelyāis a huge trope in American race discourse. This sort of congruence between racist tropes and Hananiaās language similarly applies to āin subwaysā and āanimals.ā These are racist tropes consistently used about Black people, not woke people.
He explicitly said that he sent an emotional and unthinking tweet.
That seems much more likely than heās playing an elaborate game of secretly communicating hate.
This seems to me like also what you do if youāre in an elaborate game of secretly communicating hate. I think a sensible prior is that more people are emotional and unthinking than playing an elaborate game, but I donāt think his claims about his own intentions are strong evidence here.
Also, while āelaborate game of secretly communicating hateā is a pretty weird and specific hypothesis, I think weāve also seen evidence from time to time that some people are very much doing it, so I donāt think itās unreasonable for people to suspect it (e.g. I think of the things Lee Atwater said about switching from being openly racist to covertly racist in US politics).