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Richard Hanania is a man whom I do not always agree with but do appreciate for successfully pissing off people both on the left and the right. The ability to piss off people from both of those groups is, in my opinion, generally correlated with being right about things.
Well, Hanania has allegedly been linked to a pseudonym. The allegation is that about 10 years ago, he was routinely saying taboo things about race and gender issues under the name "Richard Hoste".
Some quotes:
It's nothing very shocking for those of us who read dissident right stuff, and it's not even really that far away from Hanania's typical under-his-birth-name writing. But it may be a bridge too far for much of the more mainstream audience.
What I wonder is, which way shall Hanania go?
Own it, say "yes I am Richard Hoste and I did write those things"? He would gain praise from some people for honesty, but he would also stand probably a pretty good chance of losing book deals, interviews with some mainstream figures, and so on.
Deny deny deny?
Ignore it?
I think that it is an interesting case study, the attempted take down of one of the more famous examples of what is now a pretty common sort of political writer: the Substacker whose views are just controversial and taboo enough to have a lot of appeal for non-mainstream audiences but are not so far into tabooness, in content and/or tone, to get the author branded a full-on thought-criminal.
He wrote about it.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-used-to-suck-and-hopefully
Moron.
He could have ignored it and increased his chances of surviving, or he could have owned it and gone down with dignity.
Instead, he will go down as a cuck.
Have you considered the possibility that this is sincere? That is, that he genuinely doesn't hold or like his past views?
Now every time someone attempts to discredit him by posting the huffpost article, someone else can post this in response, which'll take off some of the bite.
This seems like the right play to me.
That would be the part that warrants the opening insult. "Oh no, I no longer hold hose views! If I apologize for the stuff I said pseudonymously, I'm sure that will clear things up" is extremely unwise.
Or it won't. In fact there's no reason to believe that it will.
Why? The way he put it doesn't really open him much to further attacks or attempts at pressuring further capitulation. The main negative to this, under my current model, is losing some people who'd prefer he was his former pseudonymous self, but I think these should generally have lower impact than the people that doing this could let him hold onto.
It'll obviously vary by person?
It legitimizes the concept that he is now tainted goods because he once held those views. The claim that X conservative (was) racist isn’t about racism, it’s about saying that he is tainted goods and thus no longer worth dealing with. He backs away and thus the attack was legitimate— he was (and for the left, the past isn’t over) racist therefore anyone who has anything to do with him catches racist cooties and nobody wants that. It’s like being asked if you have stopped beating your wife — all answers are wrong.
His target audience is not the left, and people'd believe the article written against him anyway if he tried radio silence.
The left side of the people he's losing by acknowledging weren't going to listen anyway—they'd believe the accusation, or they'd just not care for his political opinions. The main loss to his audience by doing this are people who a) couldn't read the huffpost well enough to be convinced it was Hanania or b) people who thought he was currently still basically Hoste, and are disappointed at the ways he is no longer.
He also doesn't concede anything in the present. He doesn't consider himself tainted goods. He's not going "yes, I'm secretly racist and bad, sorry about that." He's going "I used to be racist and bad, now I'm right and good," and doing it in a way that isn't subjecting himself to anyone's judgment but his own—it's not an entreaty but a declaration.
It matters for mainstream conservatives. They’re the ones most afraid of guilt by association, because most of them have professional careers to defend. And because he’s now tainted, he won’t get that audience, nor get invited to their platforms to speak or write.
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