The Hanania Show

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMurtaza Hussain (X, Substack) is a journalist who reports on the Middle East and foreign conflicts more generally. He joins me to discuss Israel, Gaza, his travel to Syria, the future of the Muslim world, and immigration to the West. I disagree with Murtaza on most things related to American and Israeli policy, but have always found that his work provides an interesting perspective. We discuss a few of his articles here, including “Did Al Qaeda Win the War on Terror?” and “The Iran War and What Comes Next.” See also his reflections on his time recently spent in Syria. Note that Trump’s ceasefire announcement broke as we were recording this episode.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comTrump just bombed Iran. Here are my initial thoughts. I begin by talking about how “Bombing Iran” has been a meme in the culture over the last two decades. After serving as a nightmare scenario for noninterventionists all these years, it has finally happened. The results are unlikely to be as dire as they’ve always claimed. I discuss why there won’t be American ground troops, why we won’t see World War III, and what the real potential risks are. I also talk about the history of regime change, and what lessons the collapse of the Soviet Union have for today.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey is back for a discussion of whether we will soon be at war with Iran. Some of you have complained about Michael, but he’s very knowledgeable and the perfect interlocutor for when I haven’t had enough time to follow geopolitical events as closely as I would like. Here, he helps clarify Steve Witkoff’s role in Trump administration policy. When you understand Witkoff as a pro-Israel partisan, the approach to negotiating with Iran begins to make a lot more sense. Michael informed me about his “red line” comment on enrichment, which made all the pieces click. We go into Witkoff’s different postures on Russia and Iran, and how they reflect Trump’s own instincts. We’ve been hearing about Iranian nuclear proliferation and the threat of war for over two decades. Right now, an American strike seems much closer than ever. By the time you listen to this podcast, it may have happened already. Polymarket as I type these words gives a 63% chance of an American attack by July.Near the end, we discuss what American policy should be towards Iran. I lay out my case for regime change, and Michael is unsurprisingly skeptical. My position is based in part on the belief that there is a very small chance that the US would send in ground troops. People keep going back to Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think the way these interventions were conducted should be seen as a historical aberration. Since Vietnam, we’ve never tried to do large-scale nation building in a foreign country under dangerous conditions, except for Iraq and Afghanistan, which were both launched within a year and a half of 9/11. There is simply no appetite for doing anything similar again, anywhere on the right or left. A policy of regime change towards Iran therefore wouldn’t mean American soldiers walking the streets of Tehran, but the attempted toppling of a government from a distance and hoping something better emerges afterwards. Michael and I discuss other times states have fallen, and what the outcomes have been for the nations involved. He surprises me by expressing a bit of skepticism over whether the collapse of the Soviet Union was in the end a good thing, though it seems like I may have been able to convince him that it was.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comNew livestream on the LA Riots, if you can even call them that. I discuss how this is another instance of MAGA desperately trying to create a narrative in which Americans are threatened by foreigners, while reality refuses to cooperate. I go on to talk about how attitudes toward immigration have changed over the last two decades. Immigrants themselves have become much more MAGA since 2016, and I explain why. A lot of new arrivals are simple people not too interested in left-wing status games. The first generation runs a store or works in engineering, the second goes to college, and tries to be a journalist or TikTok influencer. The vibes that the two parties give off matter much more than actual positions on immigration, which are malleable based on which side people feel more attachment towards. There’s an irony here in that all of this tears down yet another nativist argument. Finally, I go into the latest on the Trump-Elon feud, what it tells us about the myth of oligarchy, and take a few questions.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comI just did a livestream where I talked about Yarvin’s bizarre thread on German WWII POWs, the Korean incel election, Trump’s war on Elite Human Capital, and what I think about the Big Beautiful Bill. Korea might be a warning of where we are all headed. Check out these age and gender gaps. Right now, Korea has societal traits that we are observing across the developed world but in a more extreme form due to specific characteristics of the population. See my previous articles “The East Asian Package” and “Why Asia Stopped Having Kids.”I finally got access to a magical new technology called an ethernet cable, so look forward to no more choppy video like in previous weeks. I have no idea why this happened. Nothing changed with my internet. There just started to be problems with Substack Live and nothing else. Anyway, I’m glad that we solved the issue.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comJust did a fun livestream with friend of the show Radical Feminist Hitler (X, Substack). I looked back at our last podcast and realized that it was all the way back in 2023. I’m glad that so much of my life is documented online because I have no sense of time at all. Sorry about the video quality on my end. I don’t know what it is, but the last two livestreams have been really bad, even though I’m using the same internet and nothing has changed. I’ll hopefully figure this out. RFH recently facedoxxed herself, and so I thought it would be a good time for us to talk again. Contrary to the wishes of the haters, she’s actually gorgeous, which makes me happy because watching her terrorize the chuds is one of my great pleasures in life, and this only further humiliates them.There are a lot of people who receive hate on Twitter and you can see that it gets to them. With RFH, I never feel that she’s just pretending it doesn’t bother her. She actually has faced much less personal harassment than I would have thought, which drives home the point that internet trolls really do go after the weak. They don’t sense they can hurt her, and they’re right. We reflect on our alt right days near the beginning, talking about what the mood was like back in the mid-2010s. Over time, the racist part of the movement became deemphasized as the sexism and inceldom took over. A handful of us with higher intelligence, openness, and honesty than the norm became disillusioned with the whole thing, while the vast majority of that old crowd slipped seamlessly into their roles as MAGAs in good standing. RFH and I veer off into discussing drugs, dental health, nutrition, her skincare routine, her hatred of JD Vance, and why Mitt Romney is our ideal politician. Finally, we open things up to the audience at the end, which leads to us answering questions about whether men should ask women to kiss them, the benefits and limitations of evolutionary psychology, and whether it’s even theoretically possible for women to have “grape fantasies.”If you listen to this conversation, I think you’ll see why I consider RFH one of the coolest people I’ve met online. Most accounts with a schtick are predictable. There’s the alt right guy, the “based trad,” the ditzy egirl, and so forth. RFH brings a unique perspective, as a former alt righter who hasn’t gone completely woke but at the same time has seen the truth about the misogynists and the chuds. And she trolls them without any fear, shaming the pro-masculinity types who, in a delightful irony, prove daily that they’re less capable than she is of thinking rationally or controlling their emotions. Ok fine, I know what you’re thinking, and yes it’s true. I like her because she reminds me of myself, just more Asian looking. Articles and podcasts mentioned:Me on Mitt Romney, women’s tears, the autism horseshoe, and overcoming anxietyRob Henderson and I on play-by-play pick up artistry, and on dating more generallyRFH, “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Skincare.”

Just did a livestream discussing Trump’s trip to the Middle East, and a new Free Press piece on the influence of Qatar. I go over the differences between campaigns by foreign governments targeting Elite Human Capital and Low Human Capital. Later, I discuss some further thoughts on my article on Yarvin’s case for populism, and whether we can build a decent case for the idea that something like MAGA is needed to check the power of American elites. I note how Yarvin, at this point perhaps the most prominent independent figure still actively defending Trump on broad intellectual grounds, starts from the premise that his movement is made up of people who are stupid and crazy. I played that role a bit before the election, but I think the difference is I had a plausible case of how the stupidity gets us to better outcomes, while now it’s much harder to see the path. Moreover, I didn’t defend authoritarian populism itself; I thought it was a cancer that could be minimized, and we would otherwise get many sensible right-wing policies in a second Trump administration. Yarvin, in contrast, defends MAGA as preferable to normal conservatism. There was a connection problem here unfortunately and the video quality is not very good. The audio appears unaffected. 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.comInspired by Scott Alexander’s piece today on how Moldbug sold out, I discuss my Unified Theory of the Far Right. It explains the transition from Moldbug the Monarchist to Yarvin the Right-Wing Populist, and also why Bronze Age Pervert under all his eccentricities always ends up supporting immigration restrictionist politicians and parties. JD Vance can be seen as someone steeped in this world, who fused white identitarianism with electoral politics by taking the white victimization narrative, dropping the human biodiversity component, and leaning more heavily on anti-capitalist messaging. This really should be an article, but articles are something that takes time away from the book, so I’m trying to write fewer of them.There’s a glitch in the Substack system where I could not see the chat, so there was no ability to interact with the audience. Near the end, I discuss the thumbs up/thumbs down feature that they appear to be rolling out on X, and why that could be what finally drives me off the site. LinksDebate with Jared TaylorMe, “Defeat Racism by Hightening the Contradictions.”Me on Nietzschean Chuddery

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLast week I shared a five-minute video on X of a woman hitting on various men around a university campus that has now received nearly four million views. It’s such a beautiful social experiment because you see a series of young men put in the exact same situation and watch their reactions. You can observe the gradations in how confident men are and their readiness to capitalize on opportunities that come before them. We see everything from a guy freezing to one treating the situation as something that happens all the time. I thought the video was so interesting that I suggested to Rob that we watch it and do a play-by-play. Watch the video here rather than listen to the audio alone in order to get the full experience. We critique what the men say, their facial expressions, and body language. What I love about the video is you get at least one of each of various types of guys you see in the world: confident black guys, the completely frozen guy, the nervous guy who just wants the situation to end, the boring guy, and even the guy who seems to be doing most things right but has something about himself that’s just off. Men should watch this while asking themselves which prototype they’re closest to. I made the mistake of looking at the comments to my original post and saw a stream of incels making excuses for failure, which I then responded to. I don’t begrudge the men who lacked confidence or were unprepared. What I hate is the twitter guys who don’t see anything wrong with it. This culture of inceldom needs to be destroyed. Back in my day we had guys who couldn’t find women to have sex with them. What was less common was this sense of dejection, which is reflected in misogyny and the belief that looks matter for women anywhere near as much as they do for men. I noticed that a lot of them were MAGAs and one elsewhere complained about Hunter’s laptop. To be an incel is Low Human Capital. The pieces all fit together. I don’t think being shy around women, or most people really, is something any man should accept. It’s fundamentally a reflection of a feeling of inferiority. You don’t become nervous around those you see yourself as above or equal to. I dislike people brushing aside shyness like it’s some harmless trait that is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a failure and should be treated as such. Knowing exactly what to do in social situations is less important than having the right attitude. Every interaction with others – from the direction of one’s eyes to the speed and cadence of speech to how one smiles or walks – speaks volumes about an individual’s beliefs about himself and the situation he finds himself in. Understanding the subtleties and nuances that create one frame or another is the first step towards building better relationships with other people. After we’re done watching the video, Rob and I share some general thoughts on self-improvement and meeting women, and why we disagree with Bryan’s advice that you should ask a girl to hold hands. I explain why it’s not a coincidence that the two best performing men in the video were black, which you would have expected if you read my article “Black Guy Hitting on Girls.” Finally, I put forward a view that I think might be an unpopular position, which is that developing social skills is one of those things where someone may be able to go from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. Most other areas of life, like athletics or intelligence, don’t work like this. If you want more on these topics, see the previous conversation between Rob and me under the title “The Sexual Marketplace as the Last Vestige of Our Darwinian Past”, and me on “How I Overcame Anxiety,” and “The Autism Horseshoe.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comMichael Tracey wasn’t around today, so I went solo. I start by discussing this video of Pam Bondi claiming that Trump has saved 258 million lives, a day after she put the number at 119 million. We can chalk this up to stupidity, but there’s actually something more complex going on. The nation is now living under a regime that operates in a space where it knows that it’s completely unrestrained regarding what it can say and still hold on to its base of support. I discuss how there is no incentive for anyone in the administration like Vance to push back on the craziness. If I were advising him in terms of his political future, I’d say he should just glue his lips to Trump’s ass for the next four years. This serves as a launching pad to discuss the future of the conservative movement. I explain why Vance will likely be the 2028 nominee, why Trump won’t go away, and why we’re in a terrible equilibrium where there isn’t anyone with the tools or motivation to fix things. The problem at its core is the Republican base, by which I partly mean the voters, but much more so the influencer class – the Loomers and Posobiecs of the world with massive followings and their audiences, which are simply insane people who will demand Trump-like qualities from any politician they might support. In the second half of the podcast, I take some questions from the audience, including on whether I’m worried about a left-wing populist faction hijacking the Democratic Party in the same way that MAGA took over the right.