For what it’s worth, calling for deplatforming people based on thinking they’re racist based on what they wrote from when they were younger and uncharitable interpretations of a couple of tweets feels pretty “cancel-y” to me.
TheAthenians
Karma: 486
Hanania didn’t call black people animals. I reached out to him 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.
Also, when I first read the tweet it was clear from the context that he wasn’t referring to black people.
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.
What were the clearly racist of bigoted things?
We’re afraid of people writing hit pieces about us and then boycotting and shunning us because of who we associate with.
Do you not see how that’s controlling what ideas and people they are exposed to?
They can’t make the choice on their own. You’re keeping information from them because you’ve decided what’s good for them.
I think the more robustly good thing to do is find out what your friends’ preferences are and follow their expressed preferences.
He explicitly said that he sent an emotional and unthinking tweet.
That seems much more likely than he’s playing an elaborate game of secretly communicating hate.
Just for your information, as a non-binary person who was assigned female at birth (so definitely under-represented in EA), I would find it very upsetting if I knew you were trying to control which ideas and people I was exposed to.
I find speciesist attitudes morally offputting, but if you would keep events from me because some people there were speciesist, I’d consider you to be being a bad friend.
People are different. Some people consider what you’re suggesting to be helpful. I do not. I just want you to be aware about the differences in preferences there, and not think that all “underrepresented groups” would feel uncomfortable going to events with speakers they deeply disagree with.
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’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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not advocating for something to change based on my discomfort
Appreciate it. I wish more people thought this way.
I second that. He does a pretty good job of making all sides angry.
He wasn’t referring to black people. 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.
I recommend editing your comment to update it based on new information.
Signal boosting incorrect and damaging information about somebody is bad for discourse.
Oh you’re right. My bad. So many threads going on here and I got mixed up. Sorry about that.
Glad you’re not suspicious of them!
Why are you suspicious of their intentions?
Have you considered all of the other intentions they might have and compared the probabilities of various hypotheses?
My top hypothesis is that for most of the prominent HBD intellectuals, their motivation is the usual “ooh, shiny, what an interesting idea” combined with some contrarian urges.
Like, when somebody censors a book, readership goes up.
I know the moment I hear that a book has been banned, I go download it. What don’t people want me to know?
Many people have the urge to talk about things if it’s been deemed taboo by society.
It’s important to note that few people will share their negative experiences with the Community Health Team because the CHT blacklists people from funding, EAG attendance, job opportunities, etc.
Also, if they cause people to leave the community, you’re unlikely to hear about it because they’ve left the community.
This leads to a large information asymmetry.
I know many people who’s lives and impact have been deeply damaged by the CHT but they won’t share their experiences because they are afraid of retaliation or have given up on the EA community because of them.