It’s a movie we’ve seen over and over again in US politics. Centrists engage in respectful discussion with a thoughtful conservative[1], only to discover they are actually talking to a dishonest troll. Yet, just like Charlie Brown lining up to kick Lucy’s football, they keep coming back for another try.
Examples include Paul “policy wonk” Ryan, JD “voice of the heartland” Vance, and most recently Richard Hanania, for whom I can’t come up with a suitable nickname. Hanania’s public writing has always skirted the edge of outright racism, so it was no surprise when it turned that he had published far worse stuff under a pseudonym. That was enough to lead Bari Weiss to cancel him, but the majority reaction among his interlocutors was to accept a redemption narrative.
Hanania rewarded his backers with a tweet so breathtakingly dumb it’s still hard to believe. Challenged on his opposition to aiding Ukraine, he asserted that the US was spending 40 per cent of GDP on such aid, and laid out some of the alternative ways the money could be spend (years of funding for social security, for example).
This claim was so absurd that lots of people looked for an 11-dimensional chess explanation. Sadly, the prosaic explanation appears to be that US aid is equal to about 40 per cent of Ukraine’s GPD. Hanania must have read this number and misinterpreted it. That could only be done by someone utterly clueless about economics and public policy, but Hanania hasn’t needed a clue to become a big fish in the small pool of rightwing intellectuals.
Why do centrists keep falling for this? The answer, to paraphrase Voltaire is that, since no-one like the imagined intelligent, honest conservative exists, they have to be invented. In reality, intelligent honest conservatives, are either ex-Republicans (for example, David French and the Bulwark group) or open enemies of democracy (Adrian Vermeule).
But once they recognise that there is no serious thought to their political right, centrists would have to recognise that they themselves are the conservatives. That would entail an intellectual obligation to engage with the left, which is the last thing they want.
All of this was true well before the rise of Donald Trump, though Trump’s rise crystallised what was previously part of a mix of competing ideas. As I observed in 2013,
Pluralities of US conservatives believe, or at least claim to believe, that:
- The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
-
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
-
Mainstream science is a communist plot
-
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future
The last of these has gone from prediction to actual insurrection, with more threatened..
No one who openly rejects these propositions, and others like them, can last long in the Republican party, or in the mainstream of the conservative movement.
The centrist project is to engage in serious policy discussion with conservatives while treating such delusional statements as mere shibboleths. Long experience shows that this doesn’t work.
fn1. This term isn’t really satisfactory, but neither “rightwinger” nor “Republican” works well either.
{ 64 comments }
anon/portly 10.03.23 at 8:22 am
This claim was so absurd that lots of people looked for an 11-dimensional chess explanation. Sadly, the prosaic explanation….
The whole thing was a bit, a joke, Hanania was making fun of Republicans or MAGA types or whoever. (Isn’t that something he’s known for? – I could have that wrong). This becomes more obvious if you read all of Hanania’s replies, which include the “40%” thing and also these:
“Russia isn’t seen as the aggressor in much of the world. Countries without the distorting effect of the western media like Eritrea and North Korea recognize it as a moral champion.”
“Putin didn’t want to take over Ukraine. He just wanted to bring democracy to the Donbas through free and fair elections.”
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1708475055930479003
And there are people in the replies pointing out that Hanania is being facetious, and there’s a second, more obviously silly tweet:
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1708494302207410599
nastywoman 10.03.23 at 9:20 am
‘Pluralities of US conservatives believe, or at least claim to believe, that:
The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
Mainstream science is a communist plot
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future’
AND lately they also might believe that they rather die by electrocution than by shark?!
And please don’t laugh about such latest advice of Trump – as that’s how it’s done.
That’s how successful narratives in the US are built – on the base of complete nonsense and when the NY Magazine then jokes:
Trump finally reveals He’d rather dies by electrocution Than by shark – while
Actually Trump reveals – (what he has revealed numerous times before) that he hates –
HUUUGELY!!!! hates ALL e-energy.
AND!!!-
that such supossedly ‘silly statements’ which have absolutely NOTHING to do with ‘engaging’ in respectful discussion with thoughtful conservative[1], – are actually very much damaging to the development of e-boats in the US. As all these fans and followers of the Right Wing Racists Sex Abusing Science and Climate Change Denier will say too:
YES!! – our Führer couldn’t be more RIGHT in advising US to NEVER EVER entering a boat powered by Batteries – as
FOR SURE –
we all will be eaten by SHARKS!
Trader Joe 10.03.23 at 2:09 pm
Two things I cannot reconcile:
Every day the Republican/MAGA/right provides a fresh example of their loathsome positions, absurd understanding of the world and racist policy reactions and yet, despite all of this which anyone can plainly see – a solid 30% of people still back every bit of it and another 15-20% seem prepared to hold their nose and abide it even if they don’t support it.
Despite being gifted these daily gaffes and moral failures, the Democrat left seems to believe the correct response is to just do nothing and stare at the train wreck rather than reveal the basic failure of the rights thinking. They seem content to constantly double down on topics that frankly most people are tired of hearing about like racism and climate change rather than just focus on the ABCs of fraud, lying, and moral failure. The current right is a gift to the left, yet the deliberate policy response seems to be inertia.
Those are things I can’t understand.
kent 10.03.23 at 3:06 pm
Hanania is a troll and he was joking. It’s a dumb joke and it’s a net negative contributor to the level of discourse, but it’s a joke.
Worth noting is that it’s a joke aimed at the conservatives who will believe him. One wonders how many other “conservative” sites are also jokes. One wonders, for instance, if “Q” is a long-lasting performative troll.
“since no-one like the imagined intelligent, honest conservative exists, they have to be invented. In reality, intelligent honest conservatives, are either ex-Republicans (for example, David French and the Bulwark group) or open enemies of democracy (Adrian Vermeule).”
Um, so they don’t exist … but also they exist and here are two examples?
What’s wrong with talking to the Bulwark people? I read the Bulwark substack and find it useful. If I had something worthwhile to say to them, I’m pretty sure they would listen.
someone who remembers when radley balko was a wapo columnist 10.03.23 at 4:15 pm
Hanania specifically appeals to centrists because his variety of cold-eyed, furious racism is dressed up in a nice suit and spoken in terms of phrenological analyses of “national IQ”. He was hoping to be the Charles Murray after (actual cross-burning) Charles Murray dies. The racism was and is a huge part of his success and will continue to be because America is a wildly, passionately racist nation. There will always be a market for people like him, who tell you that, “statistically”, a black American has the intellect and sexual voracity of a rabid animal, but insists that they are not hostile to black Americans, oh no, they’re just concerrrrrned about how far the Leeeeeft has gone.
My prediction is that in a year Hanania will be more influential and wealthy than ever before. Charles Murray wrote a whole book about how no black person has ever accomplished anything of note in all of human history, and it was a runaway bestseller! Hanania’s got nothing to worry about.
DocAmazing 10.03.23 at 4:49 pm
Regarding the “Hanania was being facetious” claim: First, given his previous writings, including those set out under a pseudonym, the statements he made can easily be read as sincere, because he’s trafficked in neo-fascist tripe before. Second, with respect to an attempted joke, I believe it was author John Scalzi who observed, “The failure mode of clever is asshole“.
Tim Sommers 10.03.23 at 6:21 pm
Rush Limbaugh was a satirist. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/why-jon-stewart-is-a-better-satirist-than-rush-limbaugh/243798/
Ann Coulter was joking. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ann-coulter-may-be-joking-but-what-she-says-is-far-from-funny-2/
Project Veritas was a fun loving group of pranksters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas
Even President Bush was hilarious on the subject of not finding WMD. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/26/usa.iraq
If Hanania is just joking, I can’t wait to hear how his racism is just a fun way of spoofing liberals.
This is why conservatives dominate stand-up. They are so funny.
gmoke 10.03.23 at 6:24 pm
Once upon a time, I was at a talk by the pollster Peter D Hart at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. He mentioned how politicians railed against foreign aid. I mentioned that foreign aid is less than 1% of the Federal budget. He made me stand up and repeat it to the rest of the group. Then said that reality, really, didn’t make a difference.
Dr. Hilarius 10.03.23 at 6:34 pm
I’ve only recently learned of Hanania and am again amazed at how little it takes to be regarded as a public intellectual as distinguished from a random crank on the internet.
I have no special insight into Hanania’s intentions when tweeting but am familiar the the common right-wing defense to criticism, “can’t you take a joke?” Just as the search for responsible, moderate Republicans is futile, so is the search for reasonable explanations for outrageous falsehoods.
John Q 10.03.23 at 6:56 pm
Kent @4 and Anon/portly @2 both confirm the main point in the OP, that Hanania is a dishonest troll, which rather suggests that engaging with him is a sucker move. Kent goes on with an absurdly literal misreading (which I tried to forestall in a footnote, but failed).
Of course, there is nothing wrong with talking to the Bulwark group, whose message is that the Republicans are a lost cause. But that’s not a message the centrists want to hear. And, judging my recent debate with Matt Yglesias, centrists also don’t want to be seen as splitting the difference between dictatorship and democracy. So, neither group fits the picture of the kind of intelligent honest conservative they want to talk to.
Doctor Science 10.03.23 at 7:15 pm
You can’t understand this dynamic without acknowledging that the proportion of white males goes up as you go right on the US political spectrum. And our culture says White Male is the default, the unmarked norm. So as the right radicalizes it creates a terrible strain. The concerns of any other group of people could be minimized or ignored, their votes could be discounted. But if white men aren’t at the center, do we even have a center?
And for white people in general, there’s also a personal dynamic. We all have relatives who’ve gone MAGA, and in many cases it’s people very close to us: parents, siblings, spouse, grandparents. Not to mention bosses or the bosses’ friends. There’s a very very strong impulse to look for reassurance that it’s not that bad, that Dad/Uncle/Grandma/Brother/etc isn’t really a fascist.
In sum: centrist reporters & pundit will keep doing it as long as society & their bosses defer to the opinions of white men. The news will be when that changes.
boba 10.03.23 at 7:55 pm
This still holds true today (it was written 22 years ago):
I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Which is the rub, any serious candidate must account for a cohort of “head-trauma crazy” constituents. To abandon them allows another candidate to bamboozle them and collect the winnings. Is any given candidate really going to follow through with the insanity they propose (Gaetz) or is the candidate going to throw out these bon mots and act in a different manner (McCarthy)? Hard to tell if they are serious and impossible to develop and working relationship either way.
Of course the solution is exceptionally difficult: educate the populace to prevent demagogues from bamboozling them.
Ray 10.03.23 at 11:50 pm
Why don’t the centrists want to engage with the left?
Most of the centrists seem entrepreneurial. They are needed to preserve status quo against the left so they market themselves for this purpose.
As the right becomes fascist, they become fascist light.
They aren’t conservatives so much as mirrors of the valueless version of conservatism. The right that’s about holding down the lower orders is very flexible. They’ll embrace almost any view with that purpose. The centrist tends to mirror this flexibility. Eventually, they’ll go full fascist because they will have to to keep it up.
Alex SL 10.04.23 at 12:56 am
“But once they recognise that there is no serious thought to their political right, centrists would have to recognise that they themselves are the conservatives.”
This is a beautiful sentence, thanks.
But oh I am so tired of the take that “he is just a troll and was joking”. These guys get a free pass to say vile or stupid things. If nobody pushes back, they have shifted the direction of discourse the way they wanted, making societies less safe for minorities, making people more doubtful about vaccines or masks, reducing support for human rights, etc. But if enough people push back, it was just a joke, why are you taking this so seriously? Haha, silly you, actually caring about people and our future. Let’s try again what reaction my next vile or stupid statement will get, and so on forever, slowly making things worse, bit by bit, with every public appearance.
Trader Joe,
I am not a US citizen, but I could imagine that racism and climate change are not “topics that frankly most people are tired of hearing”, but that instead the former is a problem that many supporters of the Democrats are exposed to on a daily basis, with consequences ranging from career damage to being denied a lease that a white couple would get in the same situation, and the latter is a matter of survival for our civilisation and understandably on top of the list of issues young voters care about.
Conversely, fraud and moral failure are extremely easily forgiven if somebody believes that the politician in question is delivering on their policy preferences. I am happy to admit that if I had to choose between a highly capable politician who has never accepted a bribe but who wants to put all refugees into death camps and another who is a bumbling incompetent and known to take bribes but who does not want to put all refugees into death camps, I would vote for the second one every single time.
Alex SL 10.04.23 at 2:33 am
boba,
That kind of assumes that the 27% are basically good people who have been bamboozled. We have to accept that other people have agency, and that includes those 27%.
What if one in four people are actually just what one might call evil? (Meaning, when faced with the choice between remaining miserable but seeing others hurt even more and improving life for everybody including themselves, they will always chose the first option.) What if pandering to them empowers them, and the only way of keeping their worst impulses in check is to signal very strongly to them that they will get into trouble if they hurt others?
J-D 10.04.23 at 2:44 am
All?
bad Jim 10.04.23 at 6:20 am
It blows my mind that the House Republicans not only continue to enforce the Hastert Rule, under which only propositions with majority Republican support are brought to a vote, they also continue to refer to it as “the Hastert Rule”, notwithstanding that its namesake, a long-serving Speaker, is a notorious pedophile who served time for his activities.
This from a party in the throes of a sexual panic revival.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the newest former Speaker was brought low by yet another Republican with a reputed taste for youthful flesh, who might be expelled before the year is out. Someone else has noted that, with the wild accusations these guys make, it’s hard to tell the difference between projection and confession.
anon/portly 10.04.23 at 6:32 am
Currently 14:
But oh I am so tired of the take that “he is just a troll and was joking”. These guys get a free pass to say vile or stupid things. If nobody pushes back, they have shifted the direction of discourse the way they wanted, making societies less safe for minorities, making people more doubtful about vaccines or masks, reducing support for human rights, etc. But if enough people push back, it was just a joke, why are you taking this so seriously? Haha, silly you, actually caring about people and our future. Let’s try again what reaction my next vile or stupid statement will get, and so on forever, slowly making things worse, bit by bit, with every public appearance.
This is to me an extremely odd paragraph – the dynamic described is common? I’m skeptical. And in my earlier comment (I don’t know about kent), I said Hanania was doing “a bit” not to give him “a free pass” or anything like that, I said it simply because it’s true. At least in a small handful of tweets, Hanania was not, as was suggested, saying absurd things because he believed them to be true, Hanania was saying absurd things in order to make some sort of point. (I believe it was something like “certain people are claiming that the money being spent to assist Ukraine is of particular significance, and they are being foolish” but that could be wrong).
Once you understand (or at least have some idea) what Hanania is really up to, what is stopping anyone from pushing back against him? What free pass has he gotten? It seems to me that in this instance pointing out what was actually going on in these tweets is helpful to someone who wants to push back against Hanania, since now they can push back against the actual point he is making, whatever that is, rather than pushing back against a point he is not making, which seems pointless to me. (Or as JQ does in 10 you can push back against his methods).
MFB 10.04.23 at 10:33 am
“There are two parties in U.S. politics. They agree on most important issues … ”
To be clear, my ban on pseudo-left bothsidesism applies to comments on all my posts. Nothing more like this, ever, please. Tell it to Thaelmann. JQ
MisterMr 10.04.23 at 11:14 am
My extremely enlightened opinion:
White males, contrary to what is sometimes implied, weren’t really the overclass in the past (sure the overclass was composed mostly by a subgroup of white males, but most white males were not part of that subgroup).
They are also not really an ethnicity: white culture in the USA is not really a different thing from black culture in the USA. Compare, linking to another thread, the difference between a white christian frenchmen and a muslim arab immigrant from, say, Lybia: that is an actual “hard” ethnic difference, whereas the difference between the white and black american isn’t as stark.
Those things are actually identities: the white, right leaning american dude recognizes himself as part of a certain idea of the USA, that he explains as a problem of ethnicity.
This also happens in the case of racism, where a certain negative identity is imposed on blacks, and they instead try to put out a positive version of black identity.
So from this point of view, the actual demographic dynamics are not really relevant IMHO. Suppose that there is an increase in the number of USAns with latin american ancestry; the definition of “white” will be changed, and they will start voting right, as happened previously to other minorities.
When we look at what these identities really represent, we have on the right a group that is linked to small businesses, and not very educated workers (the two things are related), is mightly pisside off by globalisation and also by big intervention by the government in the economy, and is more diffused in more rural areas; on the left we have a group that is more okay with big government but also, in pratice, big business, expects a different kind of worker so it has a certain concept of “meritocracy” where e.g. credentials are more important, and is overall ok with globalisation.
These two groups do not define themselves objectively, because like any group they project their own ideology and their own claims on themselves and on their opponents, who might then embrace the negative claims as shibboleths.
So we have the small business, low education, rural people who see themselvesd as the paragon of freedom (but are against immigration), and end up being anti-science (anti education actually) and anti a certain kind of conception of meritocracy that requires a large government intervention, which then makes then also anti-feminist, anti-anti-racist etc.
Because the economic options of this group are quite limited and somehow self contradictory (e.g. they are against government intervention in the economy but are pro tariffs, that are a form of government intervention) they double down on the “culture war” aspects of the situation, where the capital owners (often small capital) can agree with the uneducated section of the working class, and substitute “ethnic” interpretations for a policy that actually helps those workers (e.g. the chinese are stealing our jobs), because they totally don’t want big redistributive government to redistribute to said workers.
This works because the “meritocratic” approach of the left group tends to leave uneducated workers out; on the other hand I don’t think it is possible to have a leftish, either center or far leftish, policy today that doesnt push into more educated and specialized workers.
But, if we have to explain the prevalence of this kind of racist/reactionary ideology among white workers (as opposed to among capital owners), this is a reaction to the kind of “meritocracy” the left is proposing, that makes them feel like they are left behind (to a degree because they are actually left behind by economic evolution).
Other countries have similar dynamics: in Italy the Lega, that was initially anti-southern-italians, largely had success among northern working class people by, e.g., having a leader who could barely speak two sentences in standard italian one after the other, and used commonly sexual imagery (“we of the Lega have it hard”); Berluscony was similar on the sexual imagery. The appeal of both the Lega and Berlusconi to capital owners is self evident, they were both low tax guys; their appeal to the working class is less evident, but their anti-intellectualism certainly helped them with the uneducated working class.
reason 10.04.23 at 11:19 am
J-D I think the key word to question on not “all”, but “we”.
kent 10.04.23 at 3:59 pm
(1) Agree with anon/portly @ 18. Hanania isn’t getting away with anything.
(2) Confused by OP @ 10, who writes: “Of course, there is nothing wrong with talking to the Bulwark group, whose message is that the Republicans are a lost cause. But that’s not a message the centrists want to hear.”
On the contrary. If I may make so bold as to assume that Matt Yglesias and Jon Chait are among the paradigmatic centrists you have in mind: both of them believe the Republican party as it currently stands is a lost cause.
Here’s an extremely recent piece by Chait, titled “Anti-Trump Republicans Won’t Save Democracy. Can Anybody?” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/anti-trump-republicans-wont-save-democracy-can-anybody.html
Matt’s entire schtick is insisting that it’s important that Democrats try to win the election, because letting Republicans win would be horrifying for all of us. There’s nothing redeeming about their policies or their personnel. The OP’s disagreement with MattY, as far as I can tell, revolves around how to do that: the means, not the end.
I think I must be missing something … again.
Sashas 10.04.23 at 5:52 pm
@anon/portly (18)
Take a step back and ask yourself when you found out that “Hanania was saying absurd things in order to make some sort of point”. Was it before or after you read these statements? Was your conclusion based on something Hanania made clear before-hand, or something he (or someone else) said after the fact?
The after-the-fact “I was just joking” phenomenon that Alex SL is referring to is extremely prevalent, and I find it shocking bordering on suspicious that you are skeptical of its common-ness. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt for now, but this is 100% one of the ways that I detect alt-right shitheads and their tools that I do not want to interact with further.
@Trader Joe (3)
I would love to hear more about racism and climate change both from my politicians. With specifics please! I’m perhaps not as optimistic as JQ though. I believe (many) centrists engage with the right rather than the left because they feel more personally threatened by leftist positions like ACAB than rightist positions like putting brown kids in cages. And so they will grasp at anything which will give them a justification to align that way.
Alex SL 10.04.23 at 9:40 pm
anon/portly,
Sorry, maybe you aren’t “letting him get away”, but I read those two comments along the lines of being unaware that to the degree right-wing trolls are joking, it is a deliberate tactic.
MisterMr,
I find that very hard to make sense of except that the idea of race being a social construct is part of your analysis.
This works because the “meritocratic” approach of the left group tends to leave uneducated workers out; on the other hand I don’t think it is possible to have a leftish, either center or far leftish, policy today that doesnt push into more educated and specialized workers.
How about getting people health care, stronger unions, and a higher minimum wage? Are those only available to highly educated workers?
Are racism and misogyny really just a reaction to perceived big government overreach, or is that not something that has existed before and without that justification, simply because prioritising the best jobs, the best schools, the best suburbs, positions of power, etc. for white men is extremely convenient for white people, men, and white men in particular? The whites baying at the first black school children being integrated weren’t doing that because they saw themselves as paragons of freedom, they were merely upset that black students would now get access to the same schools as only their own children used to get. They would be totally fine with big government enforcing white supremacy, they only get annoyed at government trampling their freedom if it helps others who they would like to keep down – a contradiction you have also identified, of course.
Overall, the model that middle-class whites would benefit from left-wing policies but vote against their own interests because they hate minorities still seems like a good fit to reality to me. To paraphrase one Trump supporter interviewed a few years ago, Trump is hurting the right people, which is to say, that supporter did not feel it most salient to say instead, Trump’s policies are improving my situation. A more recent instance was a business owner who somehow managed to get through an interview where he said, Biden’s policies are really helping his business flourish compared to before but he was going to vote Trump again because border wall, without stopping mid-sentence to realise what he was saying and stepping away to reevaluate what kind of person he had become.
Moz in Oz 10.04.23 at 11:21 pm
Sashas: Briggs is a first nations musician in Australia and his commentary on “The Voice to Parliament” debate illustrates your point nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAqIypjk-5A
Two nice white liberal ladies (actors) explain that they don’t really know about the proposal because they’re busy and it’s hard, and they don’t really support it because {shrug} you know. Briggs plays himself and skewers that kind of guilty liberal racism. Potentially uncomfortable to watch.
FWIW the conservatives in Australia have gone full racist on this issue. The possibility that an advisory group might be forced on them by a constitutional change is far too threatening to allow any possibly angle of opposition to be left aside. Even if it means welcoming literal nazis into the group (in many ways we’re past the point where that’s unusual, but hopefully it’s still remarkable).
kent 10.05.23 at 12:34 am
I want to amend my belief that Hanania was straight up trolling. I’m honestly not sure anymore, based on a tweet that DeLong posted in which he comes across as clueless rather than trolling. Maybe he really was that uninformed (& dumb) and believed in the 40% of US GDP number, and then swapped over to pretending to have been trolling once he was called out.
Some of the things Hanania writes are legit intelligent. Some appear to be stupid as fck. Some are clearly evil, some are clearly on the side of righteousness and decency. I honestly don’t know what to make of him. But I have to admit, I do keep reading him. I don’t pay for his substack, but I do read it. Also he allows non-paying folks to comment on his substack essays, which most of the well-subscribed writers on the platform don’t do. I appreciate that openness.
kent 10.05.23 at 12:35 am
To be clear, Delong posted a screenshot of a tweet in which Hanania comes across as clueless rather than trolling.
Chetan Murthy 10.05.23 at 2:03 am
Re: “Hanania is a troll” / “Hanania was joking”
No. As Sartre pointed out going-on-a-century-ago, Fascists do this purposefully. They make outre’ arguments, false statements, and when we call them out on it, they say “gee whiz, can’t you take a joke?” And when we don’t, they go unchallenged and end up like “welfare queen” / “young bucks with cadillacs and t-bones”.
J-D 10.05.23 at 2:30 am
Evaluation of actions is more important than evaluation of people; it’s more important to know what is right than to know who is right.
MisterMr 10.05.23 at 4:52 pm
@Alex SL 24
You speak of “middle-class whites” but I don’t understand what you mean by it, for me middle class means top 20%, maybe top 10%, they wouldn’t clearly benefit economically by leftwing policies; maybe you mean workers with a reasonable income but like around 50% of income distribution? I would call them working class.
In my view, we have to distinguish two groups:
There is a group of people who have high wealth, they stand to lose from leftwing policies (as they are the ones who pay taxes), or at least they have good reasons to think they would lose. They are not necessarily filthy rich, but they are, probably, around top 10% again. They are the ones that are against “big government”, by which they mostly mean “high taxes”. They are not against other forms of “big government”, so for example they might be pro police overreach, or pro tariffs; but they say they are anti big government because this gives an ideological allure to their economic interests.
The second group are uneducated workers, who actually would be advantaged by some leftwing policies. Not all low income or low education workers vote republican, but enough of them vote republican to give team R a chance to win, and the reason they vote republican is more dubious.
My opinion is that the first group is able to attract a lot of the second group though the use of “culture war” issues, so that enough uneducated workers will think “hey this politician is one of us” and trust the R politician and vote for him/her.
These “culture war” issues have a strong anti-intellectual bias.
Why does the anti-intellectual bias have such traction? In my opinion because the left, on the opposite hand, tends to take a technocratict approach of “government by professor”, at least they give this image, and is largely tailored to a professional class, and I don’t see how the left could have a non-technocratic approach.
I see racism, but also fear of immigration, cultural traditionalism etc. as part of this pattern.
Alex SL 10.05.23 at 11:23 pm
I really don’t know much about Hanania, but today I opened Twitter to find people discussing a tweet of his where he gloats about a young progressive who was murdered on the street with the argument that lefties can’t expect to be protected from murder if they are against police brutality and police racism.
I was going to write that this doesn’t sound like a reasonable right-wing intellectual, but upon further consideration, if the same thought was expressed in academic language in an article instead of a gloating tweet, it would pass for it. That is what right-wing intellectualism is and always has been: apologetics for inequality, hierarchies, and privilege. A core argument of theirs is that if we do something to improve our world, everything will collapse into anarchy. You just wait – we don’t have kings anymore / people become atheist / police face accountability / gays are allowed to marry, and before you know it, it is raining blood and you get murdered in the street. That is all the seriousness there ever was to right-wing thought, and this tweet is merely a cruder expression of that same idea.
John Q 10.06.23 at 2:29 am
Granting, for the sake of argument, that Hanania says some interesting things, I can find plenty of people who say interesting things, without having to wade through vile racism and absurd nonsense passed off (after it is called out) as “only joking”.
John Q 10.06.23 at 2:31 am
MisterMr @30 I had a go at this back in 2011
https://crookedtimber.org/2011/10/14/percentiles/
nastywoman 10.06.23 at 6:44 am
@’just joking’
as we use that argument a lot – let’s remind everybody here that we:
‘the sensitive, nice and pleasant people’ on the Internet have used that argument
FIRST!!
and then –
only after the really vile and evil characters on the Internet became aware about how successful that argument could be –
and they stole it from US in order to use it against US –
it became ALL CONFUSED
(like that general Anglo-Saxon Confusion about ‘politics’ or ‘crazy Internet ideas’ that the People who are fighting Fascism and Hate could be Haters and Fascists themselves which is completely impossible as there is this HUUUUGE difference between mean drunks and nice drunks as there is between evil and just nice simplistic idiots)
And I don’t know if you guys have seen this last picture of Trump sitting besides Jesus
(which Trump posted) and –
YES –
it could be considered to be ‘a joke’ too –
(even if it was FIRST posted by ‘the Devil’)
AND that’t the ‘sink’ – as WE talk a lot with god and he told US that ALL of these guys who use his name -(and then pretend they were joking)
FINALLY WILL END IN HELL!
(and take that Hania – or however you’re called)
And JUST JOKING
(like always)
AND
read more KANT!
Please!!!
MisterMr 10.06.23 at 12:05 pm
Damn! Beated to the line by just 12 years!
I think another aspect that is important to think about is the “double elites” that Piketty some years ago called “merchants and mandarins”.
Basically wealth, when adjusted for education, is strongly correlated with voting right, while education, when adjusted by wealth, is strongly correlated with voting left.
But wealth and education are strongly correlated to each other, so people with high wealth and high education are pulled by both sides, whereas people with low wealth and low education are also pulled by both sides, but for the opposite reasons.
This makes an anlysis based only on income or wealth quite complex, however if we think about it as “technocrats VS owners” it is quite clear, and also in large part explains the cultural issues IMHO.
bekabot 10.06.23 at 2:32 pm
Let’s say a man commits sedition as a joke, shoots up a Walmart as a joke, kills a cop as a joke, breaks down a door as a joke, et cetera. In that case, there might be two schools of thought. The first says: “What does it matter? It was just a joke.” The second says: “What does it matter? He killed a cop.”
You pick.
engels 10.06.23 at 7:11 pm
MrMr 20 is correct imho: US electoral politics is a wrestling match between the petty bourgeoisie and the PMC (stage-managed by the super rich).
MrMr 30: because Americans don’t know what class is when they use the word they mean “quintile”.
engels 10.06.23 at 7:30 pm
Actually “officiated” would have been a better description than “stage-managed” as the super-rich don’t directly decide the outcome but control who takes part, what the audience sees and what is and isn’t allowed.
hix 10.06.23 at 7:46 pm
So was my comp just trolling me, or is Microsoft really sufficiently dumb to break USB-c loading systems’ software side with updates. Are the Elders of Zion a made up story by antisemites in the Russia Secret Service, or a real Semitic conspiracy to eat our Children. Or is it a made up story that still reflects the Jewish mind and should thus be treasured as a Nobel Prize worth fiction teaching us wisdom about the world.
Pretty sure people like him are both dumb and smart, manipulating others and getting manipulated, believe in stupid conspiracies and intentionally invent them to manipulate.
Let’s start with, he really believed: But then there was also no risk in getting it embarrassingly wrong. No need to have any technical expertise in federal budgets, no need to do any hard work. Maybe some emotional distress on top, his career is at risk after all. Maybe now he genuinely believes himself he was joking and that he is superior to everyone involved left or right. At the end, it does not matter. And well, he got attention again, including attention from me in the form of a comment -_-.
engels 10.06.23 at 10:17 pm
12 years too late but the definition attributed to EO Wright in the linked post is actually GA Cohen’s (it’s also missing Cohen’s fourth criterion, that the proletariat is exploited).
J-D 10.06.23 at 11:47 pm
It is wrong for me to say something with indifference to the effects on other people, and it’s still wrong if I’m making a joke. If I’m making a joke, I should still be thinking about what the effects on other people will be if I make that joke.
anon/portly 10.07.23 at 5:22 pm
39 Maybe now he genuinely believes himself he was joking
I had gotten the sense that everyone had accepted my explanation, but maybe not? Someone or someones could do others a favor by pointing out that once you read Hanania’s tweets with a minimum of care, it’s in fact 100% obvious.
Maybe it would help if I pointed out that the phrase ” a tweet so breathtakingly dumb it’s still hard to believe” from the OP, while not inaccurate, was incomplete and for purposes of understanding what Hanania was doing, misleading. Hanania made a series of tweets, each one of which (without exception) was so breathtakingly dumb that it was hard to believe. Suddenly one morning, for about 80 minutes, Richard Hanania morphed into an absurdly over-the-top defender of the GOP’s anti-Ukraine stance.
The people he’s known for making fun of (that’s the main thing I knew about him) suddenly isn’t just one of them, he’s zoomed way past them in his new enthusiasm.
And maybe have more sympathy for low-information right-wing people when they persist (as they do on such a large scale) in false beliefs, even when the truth is pointed out to them?
And I wouldn’t make this comment, except the really perplexing thing to me is why does everyone here seem to care so much about bashing Richard Hanania?
Comments like 14 and 28 assure me that there’s this all-too-common thing where bad people on the right say bad things and then good people on the left push back and the bad people say “it was only a joke.” I’m not sure how this is supposed to work, and they provide no examples, but who knows? 14 even suggests that without such push-back, the bad people will have “shifted the direction of discourse the way they wanted, making societies less safe….”
I’ll provide an example. Scott Adams. He says totally absurd things all the time – it’s his stock in trade. And people do push back, and sometimes he does respond. Does he say “I was joking?” Maybe sometimes, I don’t know, but most or all of the time that would be completely stupid, it’s obvious he’s not joking. He says “here’s why the absurd thing that I said was not what I said” or “here’s why the absurd thing I said is actually true.” (Mostly he just ignores the push-back, I think). Adams has 1M twitter followers, Hanania has 79.7K.
They got Dilbert cancelled, but does anyone think that dented his impact as a pro-Trump propagandist?
I’ll provide a second example. Cernovich. 1.1M twitter followers. Here’s a recent Cernovich tweet, a couple of days before the Hanania one:
If you’re a conservative with a large platform, have you talked to your family about how you’re going to be framed for a crime to killed in 2024 if Biden wins?
If you think this is hyperbole, you’ve not been paying attention.
2024 is life or death.
It’s time to understand.
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1707894724542230602
Am I here to tell you Cernovich is joking? No.
notGoodenough 10.07.23 at 11:07 pm
MisterMr @ generally
While I am always delighted to see arguments which (at least to me appear to) borrow much from cultural hegemony frameworks (proposed by such titans as Gramsci, Poulantzas, etc.), I fear I continue to be less than entirely convinced. Partly, I suspect, because such arguments tend to lack falsifiability, and partly because were it true I would expect collective endeavours with heightened class consciousness (“class first” socialist movements, for example) to reject such hierarchical cultural division as being inherently a form of subordination to dominant class – yet many seem to end up reproducing the harm and bigotries they should in theory reject leading to fragmentation of class solidarity. Suffice to say, it seems rather insufficient to me – though that is, of course, merely my opinion.
Setting that aside as a potential derailment, however, I am subsequently surprised to then see you state “and I don’t see how the left could have a non-technocratic approach”. While I don’t wish to infer to greatly, I would have thought you would agree that the “democratic road to socialism” is paved with the extension of participatory democracy through the expansion of trade unions, territorial assemblies, and socialist communitarianism? While I understand that this can be controversial to an extent (after all, to give but one example, there is still debate as to what extent trade unions should be considered a double-edged sword; on the one hand representing a bastion for worker rights, on the other the potential subordination to capital that is warned against), nevertheless I was under the impression that collective collaboration to strengthen the ties of solidarity and demonstrate unified commitment was generally considered to be a net positive?
I don’t therefore, see why the left should not have non-technocratic approaches? Or perhaps I misunderstand your point?
nastywoman 10.08.23 at 5:31 am
‘as the super-rich don’t directly decide the outcome but control who takes part, what the audience sees and what is and isn’t allowed’.
BUT ‘the super rich’ are NOT very happy lately that they can’t control anymore ‘who takes part, what the audience sees and what is and isn’t allowed as the super rich fella don’t like it if the poor get so chaotic and confused if they ‘sink’ they vote for…
Jesus.
bad Jim 10.08.23 at 6:55 am
Horseshoe theory claims that both sides meet at the extremes
And centrists contend that the truth is always somewhere in between
Which might convince if centrists and extremists tended to agree
But they nearly never do, as any fool can see.
The silliest hobgoblin is the national debt; I would build a giant figure in front of my house for Halloween if I could imagine a way to make it frightening. (Quite a few of my neighbors are already decorating; kids from all over come here to trick-or-treat). The problem is that it’s pretty tractable even without resorting to That Which Shall Not Be Named: raising taxes on the wealthy.
Theophylact 10.08.23 at 5:01 pm
Vis-a-vis Hanania, I remind you of Popehat’s Rule of Goats.
engels 10.08.23 at 10:39 pm
Agree with #43: the left should oppose every ‘ocracy apart from democracy.
Also: not all technocracy is the same. British post-war mandarin social democracy was one thing, contemporary PMC technocracy is something else—a special blend of managerialism, neoliberalism and desiccated radical gestures imported from US—and especially annoying.
someone who remembers when you could buy ethnic stereotype joke books at the mall 10.09.23 at 12:24 am
the “i was only joking” defense falls apart at first glance anyway. yea mr hanania, racists love racist jokes and think theyre really funny and people who arent racist dont think theyre funny and dont like them.
MisterMr 10.09.23 at 1:46 pm
@notGoodenough 43 and also engels @47
It is not possible to falsify the claim that one ideology is based on this or that class, because it is not possible to make an experiment about it, however one can look at correlations and see that the level of instruction has a very strong correlation with being left leaning, when corrected by wealth or income (that instead point to the right).
That said, I don’t think that the left has another route than some sort of technocracy because, in a complex economy where in practice someone has to coordinate a business or factory or similar, that someone will either be a technocrat or the owner.
Voters might still vote for their favorite technocrat, so I’m not saying that this would be undemocratic (or prevent workplace democracy, that now doesn’t exist but might in the future), but still there will be some difference between workers at an high level and workers at a lower level.
As things are now, capital is coopting high level management (by turnong them in semi-capitalists) while the political right is coopting uneducated workers (by turning them VS educated ones and technocrats), and this, in time, creates the ideology of meritocracy, that this sort of half baked class then sees as everyone’s values.
Relative to an ideal classles society this isn’t great, but on the other hand, as “capitalists” are better than “aristocrats”, then probably “technocrats” will be better than “capitalists”. I hope at least.
TM 10.09.23 at 3:54 pm
MisterMr: “middle class means top 20%, maybe top 10%, they wouldn’t clearly benefit economically by leftwing policies”
The middle class is the top decile of society, ok whatever. Words mean what I say they mean.
The English use of the word “middle class” is grating if you try to use a Marxist class concept (which practically nobody does nowadays with any consistency) since class in that sense isn’t about relative positioning. It would be better to have a different word instead of class (such as the German “Mittelschicht”).
But nitpick aside, even if you are in the upper part of the income distribution (but not at the top), you do benefit from leftist economic policies such as free or affordable education and health care and child care, you do benefit from having legal worker rights, and so on. To claim otherwise is bizarre.
hix 10.09.23 at 5:27 pm
“Horseshoe theory claims that both sides meet at the extremes.”
Not quite. Horseshoe theory says they start to become more similar to each other than to others closer to the centre. Otherwise, it would be called circle theory. It works reasonably well to describe German politics (guess it was introduced there?), with the important difference that the left extreme version is far less relevant.
For example, the Wagenknecht fraction of the left is closer to the AFD than anyone else (including the more reasonable fractions within her own party) with regard to attitudes towards Russia and vaccinations. Regarding migrants and climate change, or feminism, it’s probably a close call compared to the right-wingers in the CDU. But the Wagenknecht far left still wants to nationalize banks, higher incomes taxes, estate taxes and the like, normal left wing things that are more likely to find support with anyone else besides the far right.
Tm 10.09.23 at 7:36 pm
Hix: „ But the Wagenknecht far left still wants to nationalize banks, higher incomes taxes, estate taxes and the like…“
I wonder whether she really wants that or whether it’s just part of the grift. Guess I’m a cynic. Also, in my experience, actual radical leftists don’t get invited to the talk show circuit. The bourgeoisie usually knows it’s enemies and knows to fight them, not promote them. Wagenknecht‘s promotion has worked out well so far, the Left Party is on the way to oblivion (kicked ou of another state parliament yesterday) while Wagenknecht will be doing fine.
engels 10.09.23 at 8:32 pm
as “capitalists” are better than “aristocrats”, then probably “technocrats” will be better than “capitalists”. I hope at least.
We tried this: it was called Stalinism (it didn’t work out very well).
engels 10.09.23 at 8:34 pm
If you liked horseshoe theory you’ll love fishhook theory.
notGoodenough 10.10.23 at 10:12 am
MisterMr @ 49
Thank you for the reply.
I agree we can look at correlations and make inferences (as the saying goes, “correlation does not imply causality, but it does wiggle its eyebrows meaningfully”), but my objection is not to existence of correlations (such as between educations adjusted for other factors and political affiliation), but rather to your claim (as I understand it) that class is the underlying cause (with everything else being “merely” culture war). It seems to me that the correlations you’ve suggested (particularly given confounding factors) do not subsequently correlate strongly enough with class (you appear to be looking at different parts of fragmented classes, and therefore not really drawing along class lines) or with political affiliation (there are a number of other factors, such as race, religion, wealth, education, that you have to “allow for”), and so I do not see that we can be confident in drawing conclusions about underlying causes of observed socio-politico-economic effects.
Regarding the necessity of left-technocracy, I fear I am still missing your point (and apologies for doing so). To me a technocracy is where the elite decision makers are educated skilled technical experts (e.g. engineers, scientists, economists, social scientists, etc.), theoretically bringing that technical expertise to running the government (which is, of course, separate to the implementors having specific technical expertise). However, it seems fairly obvious to me that, to give an example, “being a good scientist” and “ensuring the country is undertaking good science” are two separate skills, and that the former in no-way implies the latter.
If your argument is (as I understand it to be) that uneducated voters resent the educated professional class -> therefore they support anti-intellectualism -> which the right harnesses to cause them to vote against their interests; then surely running your left-wing party by technocrats (or perceiving to do so) will only exacerbate the situation further? Again, wouldn’t demonstrating class solidarity and participatory egalitarianism be a better approach to de-fanging culture wars?
Or, in short, doesn’t this just go back to what degree a counter-hegemony is necessary to provide an alternative ideological framework?
MisterMr 10.10.23 at 1:17 pm
@TM 50
“middle” as between “capitalists” (top 1% or less) and “workers” (bottom at least 50% but IMHO much more).
“even if you are in the upper part of the income distribution (but not at the top), you do benefit from leftist economic policies such as free or affordable education and health care and child care, you do benefit from having legal worker rights, and so on. To claim otherwise is bizarre.”
yes but since affordable health care etc. have to be paid by someone, and rich people pay more taxes than poor people (even in a case of flat taxes), people above mean income are presumably paying more for those service than they would if they payd them privately but without paying taxes.
The mean in the USA is I think around the 75th percentile (I can’t find a direct calculation, I did an eyeballing calculation some times ago and it looked like that).
So people above the 75th have reason to think that they are losing from redistributive policies, or at least it is dubious that they are advantaged by them.
@engels 53
“We tried this: it was called Stalinism (it didn’t work out very well).”
and therefore we are going to try again a more moderate version and adjust until it works better: unfortunately history seems to work that way.
nastywoman 10.10.23 at 8:50 pm
@’just joking’ (II)
‘The mean in the USA is I think around the 75th percentile (I can’t find a direct calculation, I did an eyeballing calculation some times ago and it looked like that).
So people above the 75th have reason to think that they are losing from redistributive policies, or at least it is dubious that they are advantaged by them’.
Such an old joke of the oldest members of the LA Country Club
is just
NOT
funny anymore!
engels 10.11.23 at 7:27 am
Technocracy in today’s context surely means managerialism, with scientists and even professionals getting ground under the boot almost as roughly as the proles… not my revolution.
nastywoman 10.11.23 at 9:48 am
‘not my revolution’.
mine neither as a I generally have a problem with the ‘revolution’ sink as I looked up the word in all kind of definitions at it always says that ‘revolution’ has something to to with
‘Gewalt’ or ‘Cutting of Heads’ – etc-etc AND that’s just NOT my kind of ‘sink’ as I thought we went waaaay beyond such… may I call it ‘horrific deeds’ and even when I –
once upon a long, long time ago was dreaming about discovering ‘The Last Tribe of Man Eaters in the Amazon Jungle –
(with the hope that they would be entirely focused on ‘MAN’ and NOT woman eating) –
I now very strongly believe that -(especially where I currently live)
THERE SHOULD BE NO MAN EATING REVOLUTIONS ANYMORE
(just ‘sink’ how it would reduce the amount of CT Commenters)
MisterMr 10.11.23 at 10:03 am
“Technocracy in today’s context surely means managerialism”
Yes and no, managerialism as is used today is sort of halfway IMHO, a battleground definition.
MisterMr 10.11.23 at 10:45 am
@nastywoman 57
I fear I don’t get the joke.
TM 10.12.23 at 10:35 am
MisterMr 56: “So people above the 75th have reason to think that they are losing from redistributive policies, or at least it is dubious that they are advantaged by them.”
75th or 80th or perhaps 85th. In the current framework, I assume that a significant part even of the top quintile actually benefits more from state services than they pay in taxes. People notoriously underestimate the benefits they derive from functioning government (that is true not only of the rich but the rich are notorious for this). Otoh the current tax system in most countries is barely progressive any more. Meaningful leftist redistributive measures would certainly have to raise taxes on at least the top 30%.
So yes the high income groups cannot be expected to support that. But the quibble was about the use of the term “middle class”. It is a mess and there is hardly any coherent non-arbitrary definition (as I tried to allude; the wikipedia article on the subject reflects this mess).
But in actual political discourse, middle class is almost always used as synonym for middle income. E. g. Pew here uses middle class and middle income interchangeably and defines it as those having “two-thirds to double the national median income”: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/
That I believe is also how Alex used the term in 24. I would suggest to drop the term altogether but it is deeply ingrained in the US political discourse, and usually not used in the sense you are suggesting.
““middle” as between “capitalists” (top 1% or less) and “workers” (bottom at least 50% but IMHO much more)” . These categories are not clearly defined and they do not align with the income distribution as you suggest. How do the non-working non-capitalists make a living? There are small business owners and the self-employed. But many of those do not have high incomes. They are precisely in the group of those who would benefit from redistribution but oppose it anyway, for ideological reasons. Otoh there are employees who are not in top management and have high incomes. They are considered middle class but they are workers.
Other attempts at defining the middle class using education etc. as criterion are just as hopeless. I think it’s best and most consistent to refer to income groups.
someone who remembers when this post was made 10.12.23 at 11:10 pm
remember when a hundred thousand bigbrain superpundits marched around shouting that RICHARD HANANIA HAS NEVER BEEN RACIST AND UR JUST A CANCEL CULTURE LOW IQ HATER? well anyway today hanania posted a full throated defense of Steve Fuckin Sailer’s point of view on black people. will this cause anyone paid for their intellectual analysis to think twice about defending hanania’s antiracist bona fides? it will not: https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1712183521014665216
engels 10.13.23 at 8:06 am
in actual political discourse, middle class is almost always used as synonym for middle income
No, that’s American political discourse. In other ccountries it means a class structurally in between rulers and ruled, with no assumption about its numerical size. (As well as being sociologically cluelees the American “middle incomes quintiles” use is also anti-socialist and racist but that’s another discussion.)
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