The Hanania Show

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comIn this podcast, I review Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023). The producer made the movie center around the relationship with Josephine. I thought that there was a missed opportunity to show her time in prison, which would have added depth to the character. This is from Andrew Roberts’ biography. From April 22, 1794 until shortly after her husband’s execution on July 22 that year, Josephine was herself imprisoned as a suspected royalist in the crypt underneath the church of Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes in the rue de Vaugirard. One of her cellmates, an Englishwoman named Grace Elliott, recalled how ‘the walls and even the wooden chairs were still stained with the blood and the brainsof the priests’. Josephine had to endure truly inhumane conditions: air came only from three deep holes to the underground cells and there were no lavatories; she and her cellmates lived in daily fear of the guillotine; they had one bottle of water a day each, for all uses; and since pregnant women weren’t guillotined until after giving birth, the sound of sexual couplings with the warders could be heard in the hallways at night. It is cold down in the Saint-Joseph crypt even in midsummer, and inmates’ health broke down fast, indeed it is possible that Josephine survived only because she was too ill to be guillotined. Her husband was executed just four days before Robespierre’s fall, and had Robespierre survived any longer Josephine would probably have followed him. There was a paradoxical symmetry in the way that the Thermidor coup released Josephine from one prison and simultaneously put Napoleon into another. The stench, darkness, cold, degradation and daily fear of violent death for weeks on end makes the Terror well named, and it is likely that for months, possibly even years, afterwards Josephine suffered from a form of what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder. If she was later sexually self-indulgent, became involved in sleazy business deals and loved luxury — her dress bills became higher than Marie Antoinette’s — and married for stability and financial security rather than for love, it is hard to hold this against her after what she had been through.Here’s the X review, for paid subscribers only. The transcript of the podcast review is below, not checked for accuracy, but hopefully more readable than last time because I took some speaking advice.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comThis week I’m doing something new. Rather than having a guest every time, I’m going to begin sometimes doing an audio monologue about issues of the day. You can give me feedback on whether you like the new format.Last night saw Trump’s expected blowout victory in the Iowa caucuses. Since the polls were almost exactly on point, we don’t have to really update anything in our model of the world. Rather, I’m going to take this opportunity to share some thoughts on the Trump movement, namely the relationship between the really crazy people, who I’ve come to think are truly in control, and more educated and normal Republicans going along for the ride. People talk about the Trump cult as the core of the party, and the rest as either anti-Trump or Trump-friendly and persuadable. That division is mostly correct, but one thing that is overlooked is how and why the Trump-friendly middle group always ends up supporting him in the end, and never decisively breaks against him.In this podcast, I explore what I call Bullying Grandma Syndrome, which refers to the ways in which the QAnon supporters and Trump NFT-buyers are setting the tone of the Republican Party. This is a moral and aesthetic nightmare, and has the potential to be an electoral one too, though I’m not too sure about that part. Bullying Grandma Syndrome explains why Trump is almost certainly going to be the 2024 nominee, and the theory implies that, if the former president loses the general this time, he’ll still be the favorite to be the GOP candidate in 2028 and maybe even beyond that. I’ve had a long record of predicting Trump’s continuing hold on the party. In spring of 2021, I said he was going to be the nominee in the aftermath of January 6 when people were counting him out. I’d actually been arguing Trump would be the 2024 nominee before he even lost in 2020, but I don’t have a public record of that. For a few weeks after the 2022 midterms I thought that DeSantis had a shot, but saw how he was afraid to criticize Trump, realized that his grip on the base was solid, and quickly went back to arguing that the Florida governor didn’t have what it takes. In June of last year, I said the DeSantis campaign was close to over and he needed to throw a Hail Mary by challenging Trump to a physical fight. He didn’t, and instead continued to feed the narrative that American politics was a Manichaean struggle between Trump and the forces of darkness.I’m not sure that there’s anything anti-Trump Republicans can actually do. The Bullying Grandma wishes we could go back to the 1950s, wants Trump to execute imaginary pedophiles, and takes her hero both literally and seriously. The modern right-wing intellectual’s understanding of her is worse than that of any liberal, but without realizing it he has surrendered his agency to her whims. He doesn’t believe Dominion voting machines were hacked, but social media censorship basically means the election was stolen, right? And maybe it’s hard to believe all the stuff under #DiedSuddenly, but they’ve lied to us so much, who’s to say what is true and what isn’t? The Bullying Grandma is driving the car and normal Republicans are only coming along for the ride. Hopefully, Trump can at least cut taxes, bust some unions, and defend Israel along the way. Relevant linksMe versus Rob Henderson and Zach Goldberg on blacks and white liberalsConservatism as an Oppositional CultureWashington Post exit pollThe Economist on Trumpism as a religionThere are two AI-generated transcripts of the monologue, and readers can pick which one they prefer. The first you can get by scrolling below, where I added headings, and the other is a tab built into the Substack platform, which tracks the audio. Neither has been checked for accuracy.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comNathan Cofnas is the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He joins the podcast to talk about his latest essay, “Why We Need to Discuss the Right’s Stupidity Problem”, which is framed as a response to Chris Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution and my The Origins of Woke. The topic of how honest society should be about group differences is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and my views have developed even since my conversation with Amy Wax last month. The more I debate this with people and ask them how exactly individuals will behave and talk in a society more honest about race, the harder it is for me to see how it can work, at least without deeper changes in our culture. That said, it’s fair to point out that I don’t necessarily have a great alternative, even though I can point to the French example to argue that different laws can at least make things somewhat better. People who want us to “talk about HBD” often imply you could do that and not change everything else about our society. I get Cofnas to acknowledge that it would require something of a cultural revolution for such ideas to be accepted. Maybe it’s worth it, but like all cultural revolutions this one is bound to have unforeseen consequences. I want a society that puts more value on truth, but would hesitate before demanding unfiltered truth in this one area of life without thinking more carefully about what we’re doing. Part of me feels that going straight to the science puts the cart in front of the horse. People are attracted to certain values, which lead them to accept particular social science theories, not the other way around. We also touch on Cofnas’ experience on college campuses, attempts to cancel him, and the differences between American and British academia. I express surprise that someone with a history of writing about biorealism could receive a prestigious fellowship, which I take as confirming what I’ve heard about there being more right-wing representation at elite British universities, particularly in areas like philosophy and classics. Subscribe to Nathan’s Substack or follow him on X. You can find his academic writing on his website.The video and transcript of our conversation are below. Note that the transcript is AI-generated and has not been checked for accuracy.

Anatoly Karlin, a guest on the podcast, discusses his political evolution, AI timelines, Russian nationalism, and the problem with the 'rightoid international.' They explore disillusionment with conservatives, the dangers of AI, and the shift in thinking towards Putin. They also analyze Putin's goals in Ukraine and compare decision-making processes in democracy and autocracy.

This conversation is too good to paywall, so I’m sharing it with the world. My last discussion with Amy Wax, which focused mostly on immigration, went viral (see podcast and video and transcript), and since she recently reviewed my book for The American Conservative we decided it was the perfect time to talk again.We of course begin by discussing the review, which focuses on the question of how honest we should be about the sources of racial differences in achievement. At the beginning it looks like we disagree, but I came to realize that we both in practice advocate what Amy calls “soft realism,” that is, the idea that we should denounce the theory that racism is the source of group disparities while stressing that government cannot change them.This leads to a discussion of birthrates more generally, and the problem of fewer people having babies, particularly the most accomplished among us. I bring up the issue of biotech, and it turns out that we think about these things in different ways. I don’t get the sense that Amy actually disagrees with me all that much on issues like surrogacy, but it seems that she’s much more forgiving of delusional egalitarian impulses coming from her own side, and finds reasons to give social conservatives the benefit of the doubt on assumptions that I’m pretty much willing to dismiss completely. I ask her about the possibility of getting around uncomfortable questions about group differences by putting our faith in things like genetic engineering and embryo selection, which would require supporting the left. We also discuss how the influence of Christianity on the right reinforces the left’s faith in blank slatism... 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.comThis week, I talk to Alec Mouhibian, also known as “The Filthy Armenian” (follow on X), a writer, podcaster, and film maker.We originally met when he interviewed me for his own podcast a few months ago. At the time, I enjoyed talking to Alec, as it was a different kind of interview from what I was used to, focusing more on my personal background than most shows I have done. In this conversation, he starts out by talking about how he grew up and his initial dream of becoming a political writer. This gets us to the history of how people have been able to make a living in that industry, and what it means to be a writer today compared to previous decades. We then shift to his current job as a film producer, and I ask some basic questions regarding how he learned to make movies. We discuss the concept of “Hananiacs”, which apparently refers to homosexuals who are the only ones with sophisticated enough tastes to appreciate my complete body of work. About a half hour in, we get to his 2021 documentary “I Am Not Alone,” about the 2018 political turbulence in Armenia.We touch on topics having to do with Armenian culture, the general trajectory of that nation, the recent war with Azerbaijan, and how the 1915-1923 genocide affects its collective memory. I ask whether it plays a constructive role in how Armenians see themselves, and whether it might not be better to simply forget and move on. We discuss how civilized the events of 2018 were relative to other political conflicts one might compare them to, which Alec attributes to Armenians having a strong sense of national identity.Alec will be hosting a party on January 6 in the Los Angeles area, which I plan to attend. Instructions for getting tickets are at the link. Look forward to seeing anyone who can make it. In addition to the audio of the podcast, you can watch the video below, if you’re reading on Substack, or by clicking through to the webpage if you’re reading this on your podcast app.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comInez joins me to talk about my recent article on surrogacy. She acts as sort of my explainer of social conservatives, whose beliefs I often find odd. Inez gives me a secular defense of the idea that we should be skeptical of reproductive technology. We go back and forth, and it ends up sounding to me that we at heart have differences that are more empirical in nature than reflective of differing values. For those interested in the basics of behavioral genetics, I highly recommend The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris. I ask Inez the question of whether she would rather be born with a 125 IQ and a broken family, or an 85 IQ and both parents, and I’m shocked by her answer. We then get into the future of humanity, how much we should fiddle with nature, and the extent to which biotechnology does so. I don’t disagree that two biological parents are probably ideal, I just think genes matter a lot more, and that there’s a lot of evidence to back up this idea. Inez says we shouldn’t necessarily trust biased researchers, but I note that one interesting thing about the behavioral genetics literature is that its results were the last thing that academia wanted to find. But the truth has kept revealing itself. We end with some discussion about what Republicans will do on the abortion issue. I’m of the opinion that there’s a good chance that Trump just goes completely pro-choice by the general election, which will be a hilariously ironic outcome to the last several years of our politics. Of course, he’ll probably appoint the same judges as any other Republican would, so the actual results with regards to abortion rights will be the same. That being said, if any single individual can shift Republican opinion on this issue, it is certainly Trump. For those who asked, we’re back to recording video this week. Part of my problem with doing it before was you had to create a new post, and I didn’t want to clutter the website. But now that Substack allows everything in the same post, that’s one less reason not to do it. I can’t promise video every week, but I’ll try to release it whenever I can going forward.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comLast night was the fourth Republican debate, and only the second I’ve watched in full. I’m glad I did, as it was pretty fun. The process has winnowed out the other candidates who weren’t going anywhere, and we’ve ended up with the alternative to Trump (DeSantis), the crazy outsider (Vivek), the establishment politician (Haley), and the establishment politician who hates Trump (Christie). Inez thinks that DeSantis won the debate. In my view he sort of blended into the background, but a post-debate poll shows that many Republican viewers agree with her.We talk about the “paranoid style” in conservative politics, and the pluses and minuses of personalizing what you are fighting against. Inez and I both agree that it becomes an issue when politicians begin to believe that individual actors in the system are the main problem. This leads to a discussion of how Trump is one of those politicians, and Inez puts forth some speculation regarding whether his thirst for personal vengeance might or might not facilitate achieving conservative political goals in a second administration. In the last ten minutes, we go into the recent testimony of elite college presidents in front of Congress. As I’ve pointed out, I have a deep aversion to this language of safety, bullying, harassment, etc. But Inez reminds me that it was the Critical Race Theory issue that led to the expansion of school choice programs across the country, and maybe we’ll see something similar with the universities. It would require a Republican president being able to wield power effectively though, and at best we’re going to get Trump next time, so I doubt this goes anywhere anytime soon. In the long run, however, the universities can’t survive as they are with one major political party considering them the enemy, and the influence of right-wing hatred of colleges, which Gallup shows has increased only very recently, should make itself felt on the scale of decades.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comAfter a two week break of talking about other things, we’re back to Israel-Palestine. I’ve been wondering why I, like so many others, care so much about this issue, given that there are fewer people in Israel and the Palestinian Territories than there are in Florida, and the conflict is not going to lead to nuclear war like say the dispute over Taiwan might. Clearly, the war symbolizes something very important. For many Americans, there is the religious significance of the region, while for more secular Westerners it reflects their own grievances at home: barbarism versus civilization on the right, and oppressor versus oppressed on the left. My view is that there’s no way that this conflict will ever not be significant to Americans, and given that it’s going to always be intertwined with our domestic politics we are going to need to talk about it.Philippe has a new piece out on the Zionist dilemma, which can be read as in part a response to my own article on how Israel should crush Palestinian hopes. He argues that Zionism came too late, and that Israel cannot solve the conflict by force alone, which Inez and I disagree with. My view is that the status of the Palestinians is an extremely unnatural situation, rooted in unique pathologies of Arab culture combined with a misplaced sense of charity on the part of the international community. We also talk about broader questions of morals and practicality. One of my critiques of Philippe’s piece is that its main argument is to a large extent circular: Israel can’t do with it takes to defeat the Palestinians, and it can’t because it and the rest of the world feel like it shouldn’t. We go into different kinds of scenarios and what are actually plausible ways to solve the conflict, debating whose plan is more unlikely. I like that Philippe is honest and admits that what he wants Israel to do may not work. There are also deeper moral assumptions here, which we don’t get into, but have always been lurking in the background of these conversations when not at the forefront. See the previous discussions between me, Philippe, and Inez here and here.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.richardhanania.comDue to Thanksgiving, Inez is taking the week off. Instead of our normal programming, I decided to do something different, and interview one of the most interesting and provocative voices I know from X. I am usually not a big fan of anonymous accounts. Friends often recommend them to me, and I find that what impresses them is people who think exactly like they do but feel free to express themselves in cruder forms. RFH, a self-described “radical feminist” (don’t ask what the H stands for!), is something completely different, and because of that I invited her on to have a conversation. As right-wingers with a deep revulsion towards online “trads,” we bonded over our dislike of the same people, and discuss the ways in which they are similar to the woke left. We also talk about her background, which includes growing up with a hot mom, starting out as a libertarian, supporting Trump in 2016, and having a child.RFH tells me about her fear of male sexuality growing up, and how that drove her to first become a trad, and later to her current idiosyncratic politics. We discuss whether men or women have more power in modern society, and whether that is even the right way to frame the issue. I think that any reasonable understanding of the state of the relations between the sexes has to acknowledge the male fear of rejection alongside the female fear of being raped, assaulted, or manipulated into sex and then cast aside. These two are not equivalent though; female problems are much more serious and outside of an individual’s control. By acknowledging this, I am also a radical feminist in my own way. RFH says men should maybe take some shrooms to see the perspective of women, while I argue that the reasonable things feminists talk about are discredited by blank slatism, socialism, and things like the trans issue. The answer to modern feminism isn’t some kind of “men’s rights” movement that switches the identities of the oppressors and oppressed, but a real understanding and appreciation for sex differences and how in many ways women do actually have it harder. I ask RFH what books I should read to continue my journey of becoming an understander of women, and she recommends works by bell hooks and Andrea Dworkin. RFH’s enthusiastic endorsement of the latter’s Right-Wing Women, which apparently captured her own experiences, made me want to check it out. Perhaps at some point I’ll have her back on to discuss. LinksRFH on Xbell hooks, The Will to ChangeAndrea Dworkin, Right-Wing WomenMe, Why Women Rebel against Pro-LifeLouis CK on dating as a woman