Hanania is championed by tech moguls and a U.S. senator, but HuffPost found he used a pen name to become an important figure in the “alt-right.”

Richard Hanania, a prominent conservative writer, used the pseudonym Richard Hoste in the early 2010s to write racist articles supporting white supremacy and eugenics. He argued that Black people are inherently less intelligent and more prone to crime than white people. Though he has moderated his rhetoric, Hanania still maintains racist views and cites white supremacists in his work. Powerful tech billionaires and millionaires have supported Hanania’s rise, funding his think tank and promoting his upcoming book, despite his racist past. Hanania’s story shows how extremist views can gain mainstream acceptance through the backing of wealthy benefactors.

  • Arotrios@kbin.social
    23·
    1 year ago

    Holy shit, this is beyond fucking vile:

    After all, he had years of practice writing about eugenics as Richard Hoste, advocating for precisely those types of policies.

    “The maintenance of the quality of the population requires not just a stable population at all levels but the active weeding out of the unfit,” Hoste wrote in 2011 for Counter-Currents, the white supremacist site.

    “There is no rational reason,” he wrote, “why eugenics can’t capture the hearts and minds of policy makers the way it did 100 years ago.”

    To make matters worse:

    Hanania has his own podcast, too, interviewing the likes of Steven Pinker, the famous Harvard cognitive psychologist, and Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer. Another billionaire, Elon Musk, reads Hanania’s articles and replies approvingly to his tweets. A third billionaire, Peter Thiel, provided a blurb to promote Hanania’s book, “The Origins of Woke,” which HarperCollins plans to publish this September. In October, Hanania is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Stanford.

    For those you wanting to make a statement regarding publishing and promoting Nazi filth, here’s the link to contact the Stanford Ombudsman, the Harvard Ombdusman and here’s the contact info for Harper Collins Publishing:

    ADDRESS
    HarperCollins Publishers
    195 Broadway
    New York, NY 10007

    HARPERCOLLINS RECEPTIONIST
    212-207-7000

    HARPERCOLLINS CUSTOMER SERVICE
    800-242-7737

    Make sure they know exactly who they’re promoting and supporting, and that we know it now, too.

    Don’t bother talking to Musk or Thiel, they’ll take it as encouragement.