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On Friday, the Huffington Post exposed Substack writer Richard Hanania, a prominent media personality in mainstream conservative/center-Right circles, as a “white supremacist” who wrote for several dissident Right websites, including Counter-Currents, in the early 2010s under the pseudonym “Richard Hoste.” “Hoste” wrote about race realism and human biodiversity (HBD), and advocated for eugenics and immigration restriction. His subsequent transformation into an advocate for multiracial capitalism and open borders illustrates why we must supplement race-realist arguments with a philosophical defense of White Nationalism that undermines the moral legitimacy of multiracialism and globalism.

The Huffington Post article — no doubt intentionally — leaves the reader with the impression that Hanania’s worldview has remained unchanged and emphasizes his connections to tech billionaires such as Peter Thiel, fueling Leftist paranoia about the existence of a secret cabal of powerful White Nationalists. It neglects to mention that today, Hanania spends most of his time attacking the Right and — much like Richard Spencer — revels in mocking conservatives and espousing contrarian viewpoints. He supports Biden and hates Trump, defends the CIA/FBI, describes the mainstream media as “honest and good,” and is pro-immigration.

In his response to the article, Hanania denounces his former views and asserts that he “firmly believe[s] in classical liberalism.” He claims that he was “trolling” and that being anonymous made him “more extreme and uncivil” than he otherwise would have been. He also blames his former views on the fact that he had “few friends or romantic successes and no real career prospects” at the time, which led him to arrive at the “only logical conclusion” that he was “naturally superior to everyone else and women in particular shouldn’t have any rights.”

On the one hand, Hanania — again, like Spencer — comes across as the sort of megalomaniac who would reason in this manner, but this rote apology rings hollow. It is a transparent attempt to deflect responsibility and demonstrate his loyalty to the establishment. A troll would not write lengthy, well-crafted book reviews. Ascribing his views to mere emotional impulses and harping on the dangers of anonymity also conveniently excuses him from having to describe his views on race in detail. He does not say he was persuaded by actual arguments because he would then have to discuss the arguments that convinced him to abandon his views — which he cannot do, because there are no arguments that single-handedly undermine race realism, and he knows it.

It is clear that Hanania was a bona fide race realist who arrived at his positions through reason. He even stated as much in an article at Counter-Currents entitled “Why I Write”:

I never was robbed or beaten up by a black person, nor has a Mexican ever taken one of my jobs. If there were a movie made about my life, some bad experiences with NAMs [non-Asian minorities] would have to be put in there, because a story about a guy coming to his life philosophy through reading books and thinking wouldn’t make for interesting viewing.

It is also clear that Hanania has not repudiated his race-realist beliefs. In a recent tweet, he pointed out that Hispanic children in America have higher IQs than the children of black African and Caribbean immigrants despite the fact that the latter are more likely to be well educated, insinuating that he believes there is a biological basis for this gap. The data he cited was from Human Varieties, an HBD blog that makes frequent mention of race and IQ. A few months ago, he critiqued the mainstream conservative argument that “culture” and “values” are responsible for East Asians’ high levels of academic achievement and economic growth and low levels of crime. Hanania has also written about black crime and mocked the notion that racism is the cause of black criminality. It makes sense; once one has become aware of racial differences, it is impossible to return to a state of blissful ignorance. But whereas Hanania’s race-realist beliefs once compelled him to oppose immigration, they now have become integrated into a classical liberal, capitalist, pro-open borders worldview.

In a 2010 article at Counter-Currents, Hanania expressed opposition to immigration on the grounds that Hispanics have low IQs compared to white people:

This goes back to our reasons for opposing immigration in the first place. Hispanics are a bad fit for America not because they have the wrong values or are putty in the hands of Leftist activists, as some mainstream conservatives may argue. They simply as a group don’t have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation. . . . The ultimate goal should be to get all the post-1965 non-White migrants from Latin America to leave.

What changed Hanania’s mind on immigration was not the revelation that Hispanics have the same cognitive potential as whites, but rather the notion put forth by libertarian economists Bryan Caplan and Alex Nowrasteh that “we can benefit from the division of labor” afforded by a diverse citizenry. Hanania elaborates on his reasons for supporting immigration in a recent article entitled “Diversity Really Is Our Strength.” The influx of low-IQ Hispanic immigrants does not faze him because “it all approximately balances out” if we import high-IQ Asian immigrants as well. In fact, the alleged subsequent economic gains from immigration could subsidize genetic engineering research, and he argues that our national gross domestic product is higher than one would predict based on the national average IQ thanks to free-market economics and the suppression of unions and workers’ rights. He further contends that the social cohesion that comes with homogeneity facilitates the welfare state. (This is the most interesting argument to me. He acknowledges that diversity results in a lack of social cohesion, but somehow the big, bad “welfare state” is worse than widespread social unrest, crime-ridden cities, and alienation.) And last but not least: We need Mexicans to mow our lawns and do our gardening. You can’t make this up.

Hanania is not deterred by the crime rates of blacks and low-IQ immigrants, either. His proposed solution is “heavily policing, surveilling, and incarcerating more black people.” His multiracial state would essentially entail a mixed Asian, Jewish, and high-IQ white elite violently suppressing and exploiting a mixed black, Hispanic, and low-IQ white underclass, resulting in extreme instability. An important and under-discussed benefit of homogeneity is that elites are much less likely to exploit a populace to which they are genetically and culturally bonded. Thus, although Hanania commends the “noblesse oblige” that compelled John F. Kennedy to serve heroically in the Second World War, it would not happen in his multiracial utopia.

The shortcomings of Hanania’s worldview were already evident in the essays he wrote as “Richard Hoste.” In his review of Richard Lynn’s Eugenics that was published at Counter-Currents in 2011, he discusses the possibility that the Chinese will genetically engineer high-IQ embryos and “take over the world.” He admits this is not “the most comforting idea in the world,” but concludes the review on an optimistic note: at least “intelligence and civilization will continue somewhere.” He cannot articulate his vague discomfort with this outcome because his worldview does not allow it. From a strictly cognitive elitist/HBD perspective, there is no reason why one should not be perfectly content with a high-IQ Chinese global empire that would enslave the rest of the world.

Similarly, in his review of Frank Dikötter’s Imperfect Conceptions, also published at Counter-Currents in 2011, Hanania muses that China’s existence as a lone high-IQ, anti-liberal nation “should give us hope” — for “humanity,” I presume — and that the “silver lining” of the decline of the West is that we are powerless to weaken the Chinese.

In “Why I Write,” Hanania states that he supports White Nationalism because “truth, classical music, freedom of speech, capitalism, beauty, science, and technological innovation” have historically been championed by white people. This is all well and good, but it means his support for White Nationalism was conditional. He probably came to the conclusion that preserving the white race was not necessary in order to secure the continued existence of capitalism, science and technology, and so on, just as he came to believe that depriving women of the right to vote was not necessary in order to preserve free speech.

It’s tempting to wonder if Hanania’s current persona is an elaborate 4D-chess maneuver or publicity stunt, or if he is perhaps controlled by his donors. But given that the seeds of his current worldview are present in his “Richard Hoste” articles, the most likely possibility is that he is simply a reptilian with a monomaniacal fixation on IQ and the gross domestic product who is uninterested in other measures of societal wellbeing. His fundamental premises have remained the same over the years; only his conclusions have changed.

Race realism is important because the reality of racial differences negates the egalitarian myths at the heart of Leftist social policies. (I myself have written about racial differences.) At the same time, although becoming acquainted with race realism and HBD can, and often does, lead one to embrace White Nationalism, race-realist talking points can be assimilated into classical liberalism and can even be used to justify positions that are anathema to White Nationalists. One could argue that white-Asian marriages are “eugenic,” for instance, or that miscegenation is necessary in order to erase racial differences. I also suspect that there are millions of white Americans who are quietly aware of racial differences on some level, but who still believe in the moral rightness of a multiracial America founded on the notion that “all men are created equal,” and hold out hope that we can make it work.

The Alt Right’s endless fixation on race and IQ was a symptom of its intellectual impoverishment (Counter-Currents being a major exception to this trend) when compared to its European counterpart. Mere factoids are useless unless they are contextualized within a larger worldview and can be weaponized by intellectuals to support the most valuable narratives. The only thing that can ultimately defeat a dangerous worldview is a competing worldview.

As the reality of racial differences becomes more difficult to ignore, I predict that the establishment will promote Hanania’s fusion of race realism and multiracial capitalism in center-Right circles in order to siphon racially-aware conservative and libertarian intellectuals away from White Nationalism and direct them toward positions that do not pose a threat to globalism, international finance, and elite institutions. This is more or less what happened with Hanania: Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University and a close colleague of Tyler Cowen, befriended him and “won him over.” Hanania writes that he hopes to do the same with young Right-wingers himself.

Hanania is important to address because, as Greg Johnson pointed out, an astonishingly high number of White Nationalists were once libertarians. The libertarian-to-White Nationalist pipeline is real, and the establishment will try to hijack it. We need to stop the impending wave of Hanania clones and focus on crafting appeals to libertarians that make an intelligent case for the necessity of white collectivism.

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