152: Who the Hell is Richard Hanania? feat. Christopher Mathias & Henry Burke
From 2008 to 2012, Richard Hanania wrote under the name “Richard Hoste” for white nationalist websites, where he argued for forcibly sterilizing people with IQs under 90 and warned that “race mixing” was destroying the white gene pool. Then he went to law school, got a PhD, founded a think tank, and reinvented himself as an “anti-woke” pundit beloved by Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and Vivek Ramaswamy. Now he’s a repentant Trump voter writing for the Boston Globe, being praised by liberals, and defending Jeffrey Epstein. What are we to make of a guy like this?
Jared and Mike are joined by Christopher Mathias, the reporter who unmasked Hanania’s alt-right past in 2023, and Henry Burke, a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project who shared a mountain of research for this episode. Together they trace how Hanania was accepted by three political worlds in turn: the white nationalist fringe, the MAGA-adjacent tech right, and liberals hungry for MAGA converts.
(Richard Hanania answered some of our questions by email for this episode but not others.)
Links for Christopher Mathias:
Bluesky: @letsgomathias.bsky.social / X: @letsgomathias
Links for Henry Burke:
Transition Music: “RIVULET” by TRIAGE
Join us at NYU on Oct. 28: RSVP Here
Comments (12)
This episode is pissing me off so much. This guy is such a turd.
you ever done stuff on trs? mcnabb, peinovich, sven, and morrakiu are some funny characters
To the tune of ABBA’s “Mamma Mia”: Ha-na-NIA, here we go again.
Catching a stray listening to this in my gaming chair with magnetic pillow. I have back pain! I swear I go outside!!!
Man, I knew Hananas was bad, but now I know HOW bad. What a treat to hear my music used to transition between his badness. Spooky in so many ways. Happy Hallowe’en everybody!
That’s good- he’s Hananas, completely Hananas
This is besides the point of this episode, but I would pay a lot of money for Mike to release a special edition audio book read in his Kash Patel’s voice. Mike’s liver would fail BUT it would be legendary
If someone raises the money for a production I’ll read Kash’s books in audiobook format
George Hawley the University of Alabama PoliSci professor who at one time appeared to have been scheduled as a defense witness for (since convicted) racist troll Douglass Mackey (based on the publicly released pre-trial court documents) before abruptly “deciding” against that big brain plan for “reasons unknown?” That George Hawley?
The very same
Vivek rhymes with cake motherfuckers
And fake too