Read the full list of Who's Who in the Dissident Right HERE
HB1 über-enthusiast and Whiteness stalker Richard Hanania
Richard Hanania is a figure indicative of the Dissident Right's increasing domination of the actual Right. But this move of the DR towards a form of intellectual dominance is also underwritten by a dilution of what it means to be dissident right. Hanania is very much emblematic of that too.
So, just who is this Hanania guy? To anyone faced by his weird Substack screeds and oddly gurning appearance on podcasts and live streams, he comes across as a neo-liberal, neo-con, "Israel Firster." However, he also has considerable history in the old Alt-Right, being one of the 2010 OGs, under the sock name of "Richard Hoste," a guise in which he wrote for Richard Spencer's AlternativeRight.com site in 2010 and 2011.
When the Alt-Right later mutated into the Putin-backed "dark energy" mess that fed into a massive rise in anti-Semitism, conspiritardery, and the election of a reality TV show host as President, Richard Hoste did something of a disappearing act.
At this point Hanania was still relatively young (b. 1985). He then appears to have concentrated on an academic career, getting a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to writing and other forms of content creation under his own name, appearing in the mainstream press (Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, etc.) and his own Substack.
His importance as a certain kind of "edgy" Right Winger was signalled by his apparent involvement with "Project 2o25," a friendship with JD Vance, and appearances on Tucker Carlson. This all made him a target for doxxing his "darker" Alt-Right past, which happened in August 2023. There is a convoluted story of how this happened, but I choose to disregard this and posit the theory that someone who knew who he was simply pointed the finger, someone from the old Alt-Right days.
Regardless of how the doxxing was actually done, Hanania chose to respond to this by breezily taking a giant critical crap all over his earlier Richard Hoste views, and then waltzed off into the sunset, with relatively little in the way of negative consequences.
At this point Hanania was still relatively young (b. 1985). He then appears to have concentrated on an academic career, getting a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to writing and other forms of content creation under his own name, appearing in the mainstream press (Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, etc.) and his own Substack.
His importance as a certain kind of "edgy" Right Winger was signalled by his apparent involvement with "Project 2o25," a friendship with JD Vance, and appearances on Tucker Carlson. This all made him a target for doxxing his "darker" Alt-Right past, which happened in August 2023. There is a convoluted story of how this happened, but I choose to disregard this and posit the theory that someone who knew who he was simply pointed the finger, someone from the old Alt-Right days.
Regardless of how the doxxing was actually done, Hanania chose to respond to this by breezily taking a giant critical crap all over his earlier Richard Hoste views, and then waltzed off into the sunset, with relatively little in the way of negative consequences.
Hanania is now mainly known for being something of self-parodying bore for the predictable way he takes the side of Israel whatever it does and supporting neoliberal measures like mass immigration, of which he is a relentless cheerleader. He also seems to align with the "Woke Right" thesis that critiques parts of the Dissident Right by ascribing to it the "bad" characteristics of the Woke Left (elements of indentitarianism and victiminisation).
Although he attempts to present his arguments as well-argued logic, it is evident that Hanania's supposedly "objective" views have a strong core of subjectivism and irrationalism that stems from his own identity as a Christian Palestinian.
For example, he summed up his recent debate with White Nationalist Jared Taylor as:
For example, he summed up his recent debate with White Nationalist Jared Taylor as:
"I think that while he's right that people have tribal instincts, revealed preferences show they don't care as much about race as he thinks."
This may be true for many Americans, but it is especially true for Hanania. But why is this? The answer ironically is because of his ethnic identity: he comes from a group that is too small to make racial solidarity a meaningful strategy.
According to the 2023 American Community Survey, there are approximately 160,000 Palestinian Americans (of all religions) in the United States. This number makes up around 0.05% of the U.S. population. With such low numbers, ideas of tribalism and ethnic solidarity are clearly meaningless, which would thus obviously incline someone from that ethnic background, especially someone high IQ, to notions of atomisation and individualism.
But how then are we to explain Hanania's earlier and presumably genuine belief in what he himself called a "White awakening"?
It seems that here Hanania was playing the familiar Alt-Right part of the try-hard White, i.e. a "quasi-White" (by White nationalist standards) who makes up for his perceived lack of Whiteness by signalling extra-hard as a "White."
It seems that here Hanania was playing the familiar Alt-Right part of the try-hard White, i.e. a "quasi-White" (by White nationalist standards) who makes up for his perceived lack of Whiteness by signalling extra-hard as a "White."
Less easy to explain is Hanania's endless Israel shilling, given his Palestinian Arab background. Is there something of a weird Stockholm Syndrome at work here, or is this an unfathomable "Christians vs Muslims" intra-ethnic Palestinian thingee?
My guess is that it is just a necessary (but rather perverse) "offset" to protect his radical individualism, which in turn allows him to surreptitiously trick himself into feeling subconsciously "American" in a general sense and therefore "White" in an effective sense.
An actual conscious attempt to just identify as White would cause all manner of problems for someone as (a) logical and intelligent and (b) quasi-White as Hanania.
My guess is that it is just a necessary (but rather perverse) "offset" to protect his radical individualism, which in turn allows him to surreptitiously trick himself into feeling subconsciously "American" in a general sense and therefore "White" in an effective sense.
An actual conscious attempt to just identify as White would cause all manner of problems for someone as (a) logical and intelligent and (b) quasi-White as Hanania.
Also, his Israel shilling has the added advantage of weakening attacks on him from Jewish "antifa" organisations. In one article the SPLC refer to him as "Richard Hanania, a right-wing academic" and say little else about him. It is hard to imagine the SPLC soft-balling a doxxed former Alt-Righter with "anti-Semitic" associations like this.
So, is Hanania simply a "broken sword," someone whose present-day views exist in total contradiction to his past views? I believe not, as both his Hoste incarnation and his present day one have at their cores the desire of "the outsider" to assimilate and belong in the wider group.
Just as Hoste-Hanania craved to "be White" by embracing a sock name, roleplaying form of White/American identity, so the more recent Substack-Hanania attempts the same trick by overemphasising the atomised raceless (but implicitly White) individual of neo-liberalism.
It is at least a more respectable form of "wrestling with one's personal demons" than throwing helpless poodles off roofs like another "deracinated atomised individual" from the Hanania clan did.
Just as Hoste-Hanania craved to "be White" by embracing a sock name, roleplaying form of White/American identity, so the more recent Substack-Hanania attempts the same trick by overemphasising the atomised raceless (but implicitly White) individual of neo-liberalism.
It is at least a more respectable form of "wrestling with one's personal demons" than throwing helpless poodles off roofs like another "deracinated atomised individual" from the Hanania clan did.
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
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