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There are a couple people here who reference Richard Hanania, both for and against. Recently, Colorado governor Jared Polis has also namedropped him in a tweet about 'real thinkers I sometimes disagree with'.
Looks like the press were very quick to trot out why Hanania is not a thinker worth agreeing with. It's not surprising to hear their disapproval of his race-based statements. It's surprising to hear he's also weighed in on ephebophilia.
I don't follow the man much beyond seeing how he's talked about here. My overall impression is that he's uncomfortable with more religious/militaristic conservatives but has no play with the news/media/entertainment memeplex. Slotting him into a LibRight stereotype is honestly a pretty easy move at this point.
There are some other social dynamics at play here. Governor Polis is currently serving his last term as governor. Despite the likelihood that he's independently wealthy, it's highly probable that many journalists and political junkies are aiming to corral his future roles. They're working to ensure that people like Hanania are squarely within the confines of 'infohazard' and beyond the pale. /r/Denver is all too happy to carry water to continue the mission, from the looks of things.
I don't have a lot to say on the matter. I'm just surprised that people I've read about here are actually being written about elsewhere. The heat is stronger than I expected.
To be specific, Nicholas Decker is the one proving himself a real libertarian when it comes to ai-generated photos of children, or fucking almost-18 teenagers and being sucked by animals. To be fair to him, he's just being an edgelord; to be less naive, he's doing it in very stupid ways.
The headline writers are just not very good.
Hanania's just an obnoxious putz in other ways. He's pretty heavily abandoned the classical racism that the headline focuses on, but that's mostly by pivoting into a broader anti-lower-classism that's more tolerated so long as no one pins him down and makes him comment on lower-class <insert race here>. That doesn't make him wrong, but it does mean he's quite willing to play with news memeplexes so long as it's convenient.
But it's like the Newsom-Kirk interview, a lot of this stuff is just wind. Polis is more deft about it, because Hanania's whole 'but the experts' schtick is going to have more Democratic-moderate appeal, but it's not like he's actually going to care what Hanania or Decker think, just that it's useful to pretend he does. My guess is that Polis is trying to pivot to the national level, but maybe he'll retire to be a private advisor or focus on business.
I have no idea on what to make of Decker. I don't recall ever hearing of him before, and I just don't have it in me to look any deeper. There's might be something of merit in his writings the press has a reason to ignore, but someone else is going to have to do the deep dive. I am not your guy there.
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