Richard Hanania

Richard Hanania
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Colorado (BA) University of Chicago (JD) University of California, Los Angeles (PhD)
Occupation(s)	Researcher, columnist
Known for	Right-wing commentary, The Origins of Woke (2023), various essays, pseudonym

Richard Hanania is an American political science researcher and right-wing political commentator. Hanania is the founder and president of the think tank Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI).

Known for expressing anti-woke positions, his writing has been described as overtly racist. Between 2008 and the early 2010s Hanania wrote for alt-right and white supremacist publications under the pseudonym Richard Hoste. He later disavowed his writing under the pseudonym, though others have cast doubt on whether Hanania has in fact disavowed racism.

Hanania has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Early life and education

Hanania grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois. He is of Palestinian Christian descent.

He attended Moraine Valley Community College and the University of Colorado. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago and a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Career

Hanania was a research fellow at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies of Columbia University. He was a fellow at Defense Priorities. He was a fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Salem Center for Public Policy, which had been launched in 2020 with funding from right-wing donors.

Hanania has written articles for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Atlantic.

He is founder of the think tank the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), which, according to Jonathan M. Katz, has received sums of money from Andrew Conru, the Mercatus Center (headed by Tyler Cowen), and at least one undisclosed donor. As of the summer of 2023, he was the organization's president.

Hanania authors a blog on Substack, which was received positively by figures such as the Mercatus economists Cowen and Bryan Caplan and J.D. Vance, noted by Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, and publicized by Tucker Carlson, who invited Hanania on his show multiple times. Hanania also operates a podcast where he has interviewed various people including the billionaire Marc Andreessen.

Hanania is sometimes described as libertarian, although he has written in favor of curtailing civil liberties with increased police power targeting African Americans, and has praised mass arrests in El Salvador. Hanania wrote in one essay that the only way to reduce crime would be to have "a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won’t appreciate it, whites don’t have the stomach for it." The essay caught the attention of Elon Musk on Twitter, who called it "interesting".

In The Origins of Woke, Hanania argues that "wokeness" is not something new, but that to some extent it has been codified into U.S. law since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Published in September 2023, it features promotional blurbs written by Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, who expressed support for the idea that "government violence" is the only way to defeat the threat of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper described the book as a "Trojan horse for white supremacy". Robert VerBruggen, writing in the Washington Examiner, called it "an interesting and mostly sober take on long-debated civil rights topics from one of the Right's most frustrating figures".

Writing as "Richard Hoste" (2008–early 2010s)

In 2023, the HuffPost analyzed digital records believed to establish that Hanania was the true identity of a poster, "Richard Hoste", who had written articles for multiple far-right publications between 2008 to the early 2010s; including AltRight.com, The Occidental Observer, Taki's Magazine, and VDare. "Hoste" wrote his own blog called HBD Books (a reference to "human biodiversity") and operated a Disqus account. After Disqus was the target of a data leak, passwords and email addresses associated with many accounts became public. Several Disqus accounts (including "Richard Hoste" as well as multiple apparent alts) used Hanania's personal and student email addresses. Hanania, under the pseudonym, argued for eugenics, including the forcible sterilization of everyone with an IQ below 90. He was opposed to immigration to the United States, saying that "while an increasing Muslim underclass might not inspire as much bad art, the IQ and genetic differences between them and native Europeans are real, and assimilation is impossible". He cited a speech by William Luther Pierce, who had used Haiti as an example to argue that black people were incapable of governing themselves. The HuffPost described the persona as "a formative voice during the rise of the racist 'alt-right'".

Hanania did not deny that he was "Richard Hoste", writing: "Recently, it’s been revealed that over a decade ago I held many beliefs that, as my current writing makes clear, I now find repulsive." In August 2023, he wrote in Quillette: "I truly sucked back then." He also wrote that he was "the target of a cancellation effort" because "left-wing journalists dislike anyone acknowledging statistical differences between races". An editor's note by Quilette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann offered a rationale for publishing Hanania, which includes the “scarcity of narratives portraying young men’s journey away from extremist ideologies through the processes of maturity and moderation."

On August 9, 2023, after his writings as "Richard Hoste" were revealed, the San Antonio Express-News called for University of Texas at Austin to cut ties with Hanania. By August 10, 2023, the Salem Center had removed the "visiting scholar" link to Hanania's bio. Jeet Heer wrote that the revelations might have the effect of making Hanania more prominent, because "As a former overt racist who now calls himself a supporter of 'enlightened centrism,' he offers a message that can reunite the fractured right."

Many journalists and writers have cast doubt on whether Hanania has in fact disavowed racism. In September 2023, Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic:

People can and do change, even those with extreme views like these, but there’s not much evidence that happened here. As the writer Jonathan Katz notes, Hanania recently wrote, “These people are animals, whether they’re harassing people in subways or walking around in suits,” in an angry tweet about the Black district attorney of Manhattan indicting a white man who strangled a homeless Black man on the subway.

New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote that "though he may claim otherwise, it doesn’t appear that his views have changed much [...] he still makes explicitly racist statements and arguments, now under his own name". Zak Cheney-Rice, writing for New York Magazine, wrote that "Hanania is seen as more moderate today because he has shrouded many of his old arguments about race in the mainstream terminology of crime prevention, a subtle shift in emphasis that makes him appealing to both the transgressive right and the broad middle". Tyler Austin Harper, writing in The Atlantic, states that despite his denunciation of his previous work, "Hanania remains a white supremacist. A real one. He is also intelligent and rhetorically savvy" and that his recent work is grounded in the implicit assumption that "Black people and women are less competent, capable, and intelligent than white men."

Bibliography

• Hanania, Richard (2020), Ineffective, Immoral, Politically Convenient: America's Overreliance on Economic Sanctions and What to Do about It., Cato Institute
• Hanania, Richard (2021). Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy. Routledge. ISBN 9781000514001.
• Hanania, Richard (2023). The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics. Broadside Books. ISBN 9780063237216.