The Hanania Show

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The peak of Gloria Steinem’s influence was before my time. I knew that she was a famous feminist but little else. As it turns out, as Michael Tracey taught me in his article upon her death (see also part II), she was a crazy person who was an important figure in the Satanic sex abuse mass hysteria of the 1980s and early 1990s. Steinem also popularized the idea of multiple personalities. This has all gone unmentioned in the tributes that have come out since her death.

Michael joins me on the livestream to talk about Steinem and her legacy. I had mixed feelings reading Michael’s article. On the one hand, what happened with the Satanic Panic was truly depressing. At the same time, I had thought we were unusually stupid today, and yet nothing of the last few decades compares to putting people on trial over allegations that a random daycare was ritually abusing children. Michael argues that moral panics like this take off when we get buy-in from both conservative bumpkins and liberal elites, which we saw in the 1980s and again today with the Epstein hysteria.

We touch a bit on Lindsey Clancy, a case I’ve tried not to pay attention to because it’s too depressing. We reflect a bit on the political reaction to the case, which I find more worth discussing. See here for the video that upset rightoids, which we talked about during the stream. We close with a preview of my article on the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death, out tomorrow.

This post is sponsored by Mechanize. AI alignment is perhaps the most important issue of our time, and if you’re interested in being part of that effort, Mechanize is hiring software engineers at a base salary of $300K-$400K/year, plus substantial bonuses. They also have openings for other positions, including Recruiter ($200K). Here is their website, and you can apply here. If you apply, make sure to use the links provided here so I can receive credit, and name me as a reference in the process.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Michael joined me today to talk about two Congressional scandals recently in the news: the Chuck Edwards censure, and the abuse allegations being made against Congressman Max Miller by his former wife and former father-in-law, who happens to be Senator Bernie Moreno. I thought the case against Miller looked really bad, but Michael shifted my views on it.

The Chuck Edwards thing I find quite hilarious, and we end up getting into a long debate about what counts as simping as we browse through the ethics report.

Check out my X thread on the Edwards story.

See also Michael on Max Miller’s strange “political marriage,” which Trump officiated.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

Steve Hilton is one of the two candidates who made it to the runoff in the California gubernatorial election this year. He was in San Diego and kindly agreed to sit down for an interview about his campaign, with Michael Tracey joining us remotely.

We start by arguing about housing. Beyond all the back-and-forth, we uncovered a real philosophical difference. Although Hilton calls himself a YIMBY, he believes in local control and that the state shouldn’t be telling cities and towns that they need to allow more building. Instead, he’d like to go after labor and environmental regulations and find ways to develop more land outside of established communities. I am all for that. But the fact that we have so much of the Bay Area zoned for single-family homes is absolutely crazy given how much wealth is being created there and how much under any rational economic system the region should be growing. Local control in my view does not trump individual rights, and governments that make housing decisions at higher levels tend to do a better job on this, with Japan being a standard example.

Until recent changes in the law, roughly two-thirds of San Francisco’s residential land was reserved for single-family homes, and Palo Alto has historically been worse. In Chinese hubs where tech industries have taken off, we’ve seen the emergence of megacities like Shenzhen, with a population that has gone from approximately 330,000 in 1980 to over 17 million today. Meanwhile, San Francisco went from 775,000 people in 1950 to only about 874,000 as of 2020. This is disgraceful. It’s great that the Bay Area is minting billionaires. But we also want people who work for their companies to be able to afford to live in the area, and for the wealth to contribute to increases in tax revenue and jobs for barbers, waiters, writers, teachers, and other new residents – the kinds of people who are currently priced out due to artificial scarcity. We’ve made a few old homeowners extremely rich at the expense of everyone else.

It seems to me that blue-state Republicans have found a way to run against Democratic YIMBYs by hammering on about defending “local control.” This is strange, because no conservatives believe that Texas should adopt policies that make it easier for communities to block development. In fact, the state has gone in precisely the opposite direction, recently enacting by-right zoning in large cities. The people involved in local fights are usually far from representative of their communities. And even if they are, who cares? Your local community can’t decide it doesn’t want you to speak out about certain issues, and it similarly shouldn’t have the ability to tell you what to do with your property except in the most extreme cases. The worry that moving in the direction of letting people build what they want would lead to anarchy is disproved by how much better the red state model works in terms of providing affordable and spacious housing. There may be some theoretical limit to the principle of strengthening property rights at which point it can cause harm, but Texas hasn’t reached that point, and that means that California is certainly nowhere near it.

If you want more California housing talk, see my interview with Scott Weiner.

Moving beyond that issue, I ask Hilton why he thinks Republicans have performed so poorly in California. I also bring up Spencer Pratt’s insinuations that the LA mayoral election was being stolen from him. It was reassuring to hear Hilton acknowledge that there isn’t widespread voter fraud in California, whatever the problems with the current system. This is good as a general test of openness to conspiratorial thinking, which I consider morally and intellectually poisonous.

Michael brings up Brexit, tries to get our guest to take a position on Iran, and mentions another one of his favorite topics, which is concept creep when it comes to sex trafficking.

I enjoyed this discussion and thought that the housing part in particular helped clarify where the candidate stands. Despite our disagreement on what is one aspect of one issue – albeit a very important one – I think our politics are largely aligned and I wish him the best of luck.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Michael Tracey told me that he was reading JD Vance’s Communion, so I thought I would also check it out and we’d do a podcast on the book. I was actually sick of thinking about JD Vance and wasn’t planning on reading it, but decided to give it a try. I was nudged by our mutual publisher sending me a copy, though I ended up listening to it on Audible. I’ve written a review that I will publish later this week, but for now enjoy this podcast, where I preview some of the arguments I will make. The more I think about Vance and learn about his thinking, the more disturbed I become. I sometimes say I don’t know how I will hold up if he ever becomes president. But who am I kidding? It would obviously be invigorating.

First twenty minutes here are free, the rest is for paid subscribers. Note that you can get a one-year paid subscription to the newsletter simply by preordering my book, Kakistocracy, which is released tomorrow. Details on the offer here. The hardcover is under $30 and the newsletter subscription is $70 for the year, so it’s a pretty good deal.

While we were live, news broke of a sexual assault allegation against Graham Platner. We discuss the story a bit at the end. You will not be shocked to learn that Michael is not impressed with the quality of the evidence, and neither am I.

During the podcast, I read an ad for Mechanize, which Michael makes fun of me for. That’s right, I’ve sold out. But it’s for a good cause, as they are going full steam ahead toward complete automation, something I believe strongly in. Here is the link to apply. Jobs available include software engineer ($300K base pay), research engineer ($500K base pay), recruiter ($200K), growth manager ($250K), intern ($150/hr), and legal counsel ($400K).

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Michael Tracey joins the livestream to talk about recent events. We start with the end of Orban’s reign in Hungary, discussing that nation’s role in American political discourse. This might be the last time in a while anyone in the US has any reason to care about this small central European country.

The bulk of the conversation focuses on the war with Iran and what comes next. Michael expects Trump to keep going all out for regime change, while my money would be on TACO. We read the tea leaves and debate Trump’s many muddled and contradictory statements.

I don’t have a high degree of confidence in my view; Trump is obviously an increasingly unstable lunatic who can go in any direction, and his babble on this topic is even more incoherent than normal. As I explained on X, I think that Hormuz and his lack of palatable options have broken him. But underneath it all, I believe that he’s first and foremost a political survivor, and that means trying to get the best possible outcome for Republicans in the midterms so nobody investigates his crimes and corruption.

We close with some discussion about the Eric Swalwell situation and questions from the audience.

Links to articles mentioned in the discussion

David Ignatius on what comes next

NYT on how Mojtaba Khamenei became his father’s successor, article and podcast

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

Something very strange just happened. I was doing a livestream on James Fishback, and the man himself joined us midway through.

This began as a stream with Nikos Mohammadi (X, Substack), a student at Columbia University whose work has appeared in UnHerd, The Spectator, and elsewhere.

As everyone knows, I’ve been fascinated by the Fishback phenomenon. Nikos wrote one of the articles I cited as a sign he was getting a respectful hearing in the right-wing press. My argument has been that those inclined toward populism on the right who are not Groypers have proved too eager to claim Fishback as their own, given his many scandals and shortcomings.

About forty minutes in, someone with the profile name James Fishback showed up in the chat. I was skeptical that this was the real thing, but then I saw one of his campaign staff vouch that it was actually him. Before long, Fishback, sitting in Starbucks, was taking questions on the stream!

I didn’t know exactly what to do with this, and it’s always awkward facing someone you’ve criticized harshly. There were a lot of angles that I could take, but I decided to focus on policy questions. I asked him about school choice, taxes, and crime. Fishback sounded more like a conventional Republican than I expected. On housing, I pushed back on his lack of enthusiasm for removing supply-side constraints, the one thing we really clashed over. I thought this would be more fruitful than fighting him on immigration, where he was less likely to budge. My view is that anti-immigration sentiment is too fundamental to populism to shift people on, but nearly everything else is more incidental, so I could maybe move him and his followers toward YIMBYism. I gathered that racism-related questions would be pointless, as I rarely find it informative when journalists focus on bigoted statements in interviews.

Still, I felt the need to ask about By’rone. I was surprised by the candidness of his response.

Having now personally experienced Fishback’s charm, I can confirm he’s very good at this. He said my name a lot, claimed to have read my book, and complimented me as a keen scholar of the conservative movement — particularly amusing since I have been arguing that his rise is a sign of its decline. After Fishback left, Nikos said he sounded more pro-market with me than he did during the discussions for UnHerd, which gets back to the idea that he is a talented politician. Fishback talked about learning economics from Mankiw’s textbook, which I have mentioned reading before. Maybe it was all coincidental, but the whole thing felt eerily micro-targeted.

Fishback ended up inviting me to come cover his campaign in Florida. I hope to take him up on the offer. Even in the likely case that he loses, I’m quite confident this guy is not going away, and we’re seeing the rise of someone who is going to be a major force in Republican politics for years to come.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

I’ve always seen Lauren Southern (X, Substack) as the original right-wing egirl. While they are a dime a dozen today, and the act has grown pathetically stale, a decade ago it was a fresh thrill to be an online rightoid and see a pretty young girl telling you what you wanted to hear about feminism and Muslim immigration. There had been Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but they were a bit older and more established, and their relationships with the conservative audience were mediated by TV networks and book publishers. The egirl was directly yours. You could like her posts, leave comments, and, if so inclined, even harass her with non-stop DMs. The audience’s reaction was embedded in the creation of her work.

Lauren eventually dropped off my radar, though I would occasionally see right-wingers seethe about something she said or did. When her memoir This Is Not Real Life was released, I heard good things and decided to check it out.

Though I was involved with a more intellectual crowd, I ended up seeing parallels between her story and mine. If you’re a thoughtful person with a conscience, you eventually realize that conservative politics and media are corrupt to their core. Lauren writes about low journalistic and fundraising ethics, how English street thugs framed their activities as “defending Western civilization,” and even how her old friends didn’t seem to care when she was allegedly raped by Andrew Tate. Her story is a reminder that they were like this before Trump, though he has obviously made it much worse.

Today, Lauren joined me for a livestream where we discussed all that and more. I ask how she’s holding up now, how much what is said online bothers her, the fears she had of going to jail during the Tenet media investigation, and whether her realization about the flaws of right-wingers has made her question the wisdom of right-wing political views.

I was particularly entertained hearing her describe the story of Tommy Robinson. Here is an English hoodlum who once sold cocaine out of his tanning salon, and by making up things about local Muslims, including an underage boy, he would be championed by Elon Musk and other prominent right-wing figures as a persecuted dissident. After Lauren’s experience with Tate, she became the target of attacks, including by Milo Yiannopoulos, who was paid by Tate to go after her and say that she was sleeping with men so they would write articles for her.

I enjoyed the part of our conversation where I asked Lauren whether her experiences made her more sympathetic to feminism. Everywhere she appears to go, men in right-wing spaces are either trying to sleep with her or engaging in attacks related to her sexual behavior. She mentions growing up in an Evangelical background, amidst a high-trust community where she felt safe around men. I reflected on how different this sounds from the way that leftists portray the culture of conservative Christians, where they assume abuse and hypocrisy are rampant but hidden. I also bring up the story of Roger Ailes, as reported on in The Loudest Voice in the Room (review here). It almost seems as if the entire conservative movement at the top is just predators and grifters sucking up and victimizing the most naive members of the public.

It was a fun discussion, and, despite the setbacks she has faced, I hope that Lauren’s time as a public figure isn’t over yet.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Graeme Wood (X account), a staff writer for The Atlantic who has reported extensively on the Middle East, joins me on the livestream to discuss the bombing of Iran and what comes next. This is a busy day for him, so I appreciate Graeme making time and fighting through his cough. Just yesterday, he published a well-timed profile of former regime official Jaber Rajabi, who argues that all you need to do is eliminate around ten people for the government to crumble. Well, as of this recording, reports are that the US and Israel may have taken out the top 5-10 members of the regime, with Khamenei confirmed dead. So it appears that we are testing that theory in real time.

We discuss Rajabi’s theory of the regime, and whether it is plausible. The conversation also covers Trump’s decision-making, whether the Iranians could have done anything to avoid this outcome, the logic of attacking the Gulf Arabs, the state of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and the roles of the Europeans and Russians. At the end, I ask Graeme who else to follow to be informed on the situation, and he recommends Karim Sadjapour and Arash Azizi.

I wonder whether, if this intervention works out well, as Venezuela has so far, there may start to be some sense among foreign policy elites in Washington that perhaps Trump has a point in his approach to hostile regimes. I think that while Iraq and Afghanistan were understood to discredit interventionism, it’s anti-interventionism that has had a bad last few years. I lay out some thoughts here on a proper synthesis incorporating all the lessons learned over previous decades, which converges on the view that while trying to do social engineering through force has failed, simply killing bad people and being pragmatic about what comes next makes sense as an approach to American foreign policy.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

Zoë Booth (X, Substack) is the Content Director for Quillette and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast. Amid all the talk about Epstein, she mentioned to me that when she was 15–16, she had sexual relationships with older men, yet did not consider herself to have experienced pedophilia. I wanted to talk about it, so I invited her on to stream. Funnily enough, the guys got mad at her when she stopped being woke. Yet despite the financial and cultural incentives to do so, she refuses to identify as a “victim” or “survivor.” We also discuss age gap relationships, gooning, safetyism, neuroticism, the evils of locking up female teachers for having relationships with male students, and the causes of actual pedophilia. As you can hear, the Squatty Potty guy is on my mind today. I argue that society is pushing to make heterosexuality resemble lesbianism. This is what ties together pedo hysteria and opposition to age gaps and power disparities within couples.

Near the end, we move on to other topics like immigration to Australia, Zoë’s upcoming marriage, testosterone and hormone replacement therapy, Bryan Johnson and how he makes me root for death, and having kids. A fun conversation, and obviously an enjoyable viewing experience too.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.com

I just did a livestream during which I read through the decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. To get the full benefit of this stream, you should watch the video, as I highlight text as I read. I share some thoughts about reading judicial decisions as a general matter, and Supreme Court justices functioning as philosopher kings. Topics addressed throughout the video include the logic of the IEEPA, the major questions doctrine, how much you should read into these opinions the justices’ views of the underlying policy, and the extent to which Trump can achieve the same results through different statutory authority. I argue that by changing the status quo, the Supreme Court has made the lives of Trump officials much more difficult.

I also explain why the judiciary is the one part of conservatism beyond the president’s ability to shape at will. In the first administration, Trump regretted most of his major appointments. Right-wing media has also been remade in his image, as has Heritage. This time around, he can have all new people in the executive branch, but he’s still stuck with those he put on the courts in the first administration. Moreover, judges go through more of an academic process to get where they are. This leads to some thoughts on the wisdom of lifetime appointments under the Constitution, as we are never one election away from a crazy person getting into power and dismantling norms and institutions. Even if Trump wants judges now who will pledge unending loyalty, there’s no way for him to enforce any promises that are implicitly or explicitly made.

I reflect on whether and how the existence of an individual as flawed as Trump changes the entire process of statutory interpretation. It seems possible to me that Kavanaugh’s dissent is correct that Congress in 1977 meant to give the president some power to implement tariffs. But they never imagined unlimited tariffs for an unlimited period of time without any procedural safeguards, enacted by a president this emotionally immature and economically illiterate. If they had foreseen someone like Trump, they probably would have explicitly limited the power to place tariffs in the IEEPA. If this is true, what does statutory intent actually mean? A lot of things are probably like this, where our laws, norms, and institutions assume a certain amount of good faith that no longer exists in the Trump era. This raises deep questions about the nature of democracy and how to protect the parts of our system that need to be preserved.

Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use.