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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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An obscure figure from the old Alt Right takes the Hanania Pill.

The main reason I am posting this is not that, but to highlight his insider's history of the 2015-2017 era Alt Right which makes up much of an accompanying article.

1: Hanania's apparent survival of cancellation for past extremism via telling his story and disavowing his most extreme past views may have been quietly influential. This is the 2nd guy I've seen do it without even being forced to by exposure.

2: This guy claims to have been a quietly very influential figure and tells a story where his actions had a very outsized effect on the world. Maybe truly, maybe not. But his general account of events besides his own part in them is an insider's history of that much-mythologized period of the Alt Right, which was very influential and did have have a very outsized effect on the world, and his account seems to be a reasonably well-calibrated explanation of how their influence rippled into events.

I think it's strange that people accuse Hanania of shifting his views to avoid cancellation. His views are still much more extreme and controversial than are acceptable to pretty much anybody left-of-center. In any case, what would the cancellation of Richard Hanania consist of? It's not like he's an actor or a politician or somebody. His public-facing activity consists of posting on twitter. Musk owns twitter now, and you can be a full-on Nazi on there now, let alone whatever Hanania is. The most parsimonious explanation for Hanania's shift is that his views actually changed.

On another note, I wrote the above before actually clicking the link and seeing who this guy was. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time lmao. I'll never forget his racist cover of "On The Open Road" from A Goofy Movie ("the left are the real racists, to Mexicans they lie/'cause family values cross the Rio Grande! (¡Hola!)/you'll still get on a hate list, let's go to NPI/stop burying your heads into the sand!") 2016 really was a hell of a ride.

Unfortunately Walt was a terrible singer.

EDIT: Also the "Be Prepared" parody where Scar is an Elder of Zion and the hyenas are blacks and browns ("Be prepared for the end of the white man!/Be prepared for his daughters and wealth!")

EDIT 2: now that I've actually read it, extremely funny that the primary impetus for Walt's ceasing to identify as a WN was that he moved to the midwest, and got so annoyed that midwesterners refused to be as based and redpilled as he expected that he decided they were a race of servile undermen.

His views are still much more extreme and controversial than are acceptable to pretty much anybody right-of-center.

Did you say "right" when you meant "left"? Or possibly omit a "not" or similar word?

I meant "left"