I agree with you, this was all perfectly knowable in advance and it's a pretty glaring blindspot for Hanania not to see it. Other anti-woke writers like Jeff Giesea and Michael Huemer could clearly see it, and Hanania was aware of all their arguments.
The thing is, he's obviously not the only one who made this mistake. There are plenty of pro-Trump writers on Substack, so why go after Hanania? Firstly, because he is somewhat popular of course. Secondly, because he has publicly stated that he changed his mind. If he beligerently maintained course and doubled down, we'd leave him alone because you expect him to be that way. If we all dump on the people who change their mind, that's a pretty strong incentive to never publicly do it, and we don't want to live in that world. While I'm frustrated that he missed the obvious, I'm glad that he did change his mind and I hope he can convince others to do the same who see the world through a similar lens. So I'm more inclined to give him an atta-boy than to complain about him.
I VERY much agree with you about the false moral equivalencies and the way that it degrades all sense of morality. We can see this in the way that Trump and his followers constantly say that all politicians are corrupt. It's pretty tough to push back against that idea, there are different levels of corruption and what politician is perfect? But if you accept it as a premise then the level of corruption doesn't matter, which works to the benefit of whoever maximizes corruption. Claiming that both sides are equally authoritarian excuses and enables the worst authoritarian actions.
I wrote about that once, and specifically called out Hanania for abusing the concept of authoritarianism to describe things that aren't actually authoritarian (so obviously, like you, I can't help but want to talk about Hanania. What is it about him...?). What I also find strange about his belief in the authoritarian is that he complains about masks and school closures but not lockdowns or mandatory vaccinations. Obviously lockdowns are the most authoritarian measure that was taken, masks are almost nothing by comparison. Plenty of people would argue that mandatory schooling is itself an imposition against our rights, so how does shutting them down become authoritarian? Obviously Hanania's problem isn't that masks are authoritarian, it's that he believes they don't work as an intervention. If they worked as well as vaccines, he wouldn't have any problem with it. So it's not authoritarianism at all, it's simply a difference of opinion on how effective interventions are and how much evidence a medical intervention should need in order to make it mandatory. But in our age of hyperbole, everything I don't like must be tyranny, and every little problem is proof that the end of human existence is nigh.
I think the choice of Hanania specifically was to do with his popularity, yes, but also because I think he represents a really good example of even very knowledgeable, informed people being swept up in the ‘Both-Sides’ trope. It’s not all Southern rednecks or embarrassed MAGA folks.
I 100% give him credit for improving his views. Maybe I should made that clear in the piece! He is definitely worth discussing because, as you said, he has publicly made his views known, and how they’ve changed, and why. I give him immense credit for that, given most Trump voters are either too scared or too uninformed to think too deeply about it like some others you named.
The both sides, moral equivocation — I think — is THE cancer of the nation. Yes, Woke Socialists and MAGA Cult members are in plain sight, but I think much of that has to do with the idea that both parties are more or less the same evil: MAGA keeps allegiance to Trump, not the GOP. Same for wokists and Bernie or AOC or Stein or whoever is supporting them at the moment.
I like much of Hanania’s work, but his explanations for his vote fall way short logically and morally. I think you’re definitely right about what he was really upset about (shutting down schools, businesses, particular interventions of the state). But I don’t think he could make any of those arguments because Trump was president during COVID. He shut the country down. We can say he did'n’t want to or that individual states made it worse, but that’s missing the mark a bit, I think. And the reason I think he knows this is because he opted for the explanation that only dealt with Democrats. It’s a perfect example of the mental gymnastics needed to create any sort of balance between the two sides. And even that wasn’t substantiated in research.
Hopefully he can just accept being an anti-MAGA conservative or liberal or even moderate who knows MAGA isn’t the answer: all of those are miles better than whatever was going through his head 6 months ago!
Thanks so much for reading and replying with these great points!
This point OMG: "Plenty of people would argue that mandatory schooling is itself an imposition against our rights, so how does shutting them down become authoritarian?"
While Trump was President during COVID, most public interventions are made at the state level, so I think it's important to be fair about that. Trump had nothing to do with any school closures and even if he told people they should wear masks, he never did it himself. I wish people like Hanania cared more about how many people died because Trump failed to implement the pandemic plan we had in place, failed to quarantine travelers into the country, and created a chaotic free-for-all that prevented states from getting proper PPE than how long liberals kept schools closed. But oh well.
You're totally right, we need to call out moral equivocation, it really is the cancer of the nation. I think about it as the difference between cynicism and skepticism. Skepticism is assuming that things are probably true but might not be. Cynicism is when you assume that all public knowledge is wrong and everyone has bad intentions. Cynics think they are being realistic and everyone else is naive, but in reality they just end up in a separate bubble where they only trust other cynics, who have fewer incentives to be truthful than traditional credentialed sources.
Definitely states have lots of control, but red states were doing it too. It's too nuanced of an issue in either case for Hanania to be using it as a tool to try to balance the moral extremes. I totally agree about your point on cynics: they impede improvement and progress in many ways. Healthy, constructive criticism is always better!
If you’re a predictor and your predictive model is producing *fractally* bad predictions, then you require more than an “I’m sorry”. Admitting you were wrong is not the end of the process: it’s the beginning of a long process of introspection and self-correction that ends with major changes to the way you think, or else retirement. Hanania isn’t going to do any of that.
The difference between Hanania and the rest of them isn’t that the bad ones are better. It’s just that they’re being a little bit more honest about the fact that they can’t be trusted. Hanania’s goal is to repair his credibility without doing any of the work.
The guy got impeached TWICE, not just for January 6th. It beggars the imagination to think of reasonable, thoughtful people, the kind that RH presents himself as being, putting that aside and voting for him over Harris.
I don’t think many people expected his foreign policy to be this bad which I think Hanania was very concerned about. I also don’t think it was crazy to think trump would be much better on the economy. Hanania also was correct in thinking that he would have more influence on the trump administration then the Harris administration and he believed wokism/affirmative action was a huge problem. Most importantly though, as Nels mentioned, shaming him creates a terrible incentive structure and is exactly the opposite of what we need now. Interesting article though and I agree with much of what you said.
I see no good explanation for expecting anything less than what Trump has shown in terms of foreign policy, so I really hope Hanania doesn't make the mistake of using that as an example. It was definitely crazy to think he would better on the economy, given it was destroyed the first go around and saw no real progress in terms of manufacturing until Biden. But that wasn't his argument. His argument had to do with non-MAGA people constraining Trump: that was a very bad idea. Harris nor Biden were woke, but they tolerated it. Now Trump is tolerating Woke Right but I'll give him that wasn't too obvious at the time, but there were flurries of evidence of the mentality sprouting. I'm not shaming him, or not meaning to, I'm simply making the case that all his given arguments for voting for Trump were nonsense and he knew it if he'd thought about it for more than 10 seconds-- he's too informed not to know the fact I provided. I'm not too concerned with incentive. I think it is fair and actually good to call people out for really bad ideas, especially when they have huge audiences and got absolutely brainwashed or deluded by the what I term 'Both-Sides-Are-Evil' attitude.
I appreciate you reading and offering some good substantive feedback! Hopefully Hanania can join the anti-MAGA coalition once and for good and we can grow together in combatting the movement for 2026!
I am not sold on the article's thesis. It is no small feat to extricate oneself from years of seeing the world in a partisan framework. You are left with a more nuanced challenge of acknowledging the good things a party does while seeing how much of reality is foreclosed. It takes years of falsifying claims and assumptions, as well as guarding against a cherry picking mindset, to earn one a more independent or centrist position. Invariably you will see both sides behaving similarly given the nature of political ideology.
I’m fine with this slow process of becoming not-as-wrong when you’re my cranky uncle at Thanksgiving. When you’re an influential pundit/influencer it’s a five alarm fire. You can just retire.
Hanania is not a centrist. He’s a conservative who has rejected Trumpism and MAGA. That’s not centrism.
Both sidism isn’t doesn’t have anything to do with centrism in particular. It’s actually most commonly used by partisans when faced with their sides or their leaders failings.
And why now? Hanania is not just admitting he was wrong, but he’s been attacking the culture and thinking of MAGA and other hard right commentators for a while.
I wrote this article early last year. I just reposted it for additional arguments.
I said he embodies the moral blindness of centrism by the arguments he was making to Krystal Ball and to Destiny in the post I wrote.
Both sidesism is exactly what centrism means—you must stand in arms length from good and evil equally. Or else it’s not centrism, it’s just partisan hackery as you explain here. The centrism he embodies is shown by his constant both siding of the arguments. He could’ve just said he was being dumb and wishful thinking, but he laid out coherent arguments that were utterly irrational for his caliber of thinking.
I’m glad he’s come around but that doesn’t mean he isn’t part of the reason for Trump being here. This is why voting is important.
I’ve read it and agree that the centrist label doesn’t describe an accurate reality.
I don’t think that’s relevant to your critique of Hanania, who is not centrist and his both sideism likely comes from the mental gymnastics he performed to stay on the conservative side/vote Republican even though Trump worried him.
Yes. Exactly. I may have conflated his embodiment of it without stating the distinction of him being a conservative who was presenting the centrism mentality. If that’s more your issue then I think you’re right.
The centrist position often mistakes procedural fairness for moral clarity, as if finding the middle ground between democracy and authoritarianism represents some higher wisdom rather than a failure of conviction. This "moderation" becomes particularly dangerous when it treats the erosion of democratic norms as just another policy debate to be split down the middle. What distinguishes legitimate centrism from mere cowardice is the willingness to draw bright lines around non-negotiable values, even when that means abandoning the comfortable middle ground.
I agree with you, this was all perfectly knowable in advance and it's a pretty glaring blindspot for Hanania not to see it. Other anti-woke writers like Jeff Giesea and Michael Huemer could clearly see it, and Hanania was aware of all their arguments.
The thing is, he's obviously not the only one who made this mistake. There are plenty of pro-Trump writers on Substack, so why go after Hanania? Firstly, because he is somewhat popular of course. Secondly, because he has publicly stated that he changed his mind. If he beligerently maintained course and doubled down, we'd leave him alone because you expect him to be that way. If we all dump on the people who change their mind, that's a pretty strong incentive to never publicly do it, and we don't want to live in that world. While I'm frustrated that he missed the obvious, I'm glad that he did change his mind and I hope he can convince others to do the same who see the world through a similar lens. So I'm more inclined to give him an atta-boy than to complain about him.
I VERY much agree with you about the false moral equivalencies and the way that it degrades all sense of morality. We can see this in the way that Trump and his followers constantly say that all politicians are corrupt. It's pretty tough to push back against that idea, there are different levels of corruption and what politician is perfect? But if you accept it as a premise then the level of corruption doesn't matter, which works to the benefit of whoever maximizes corruption. Claiming that both sides are equally authoritarian excuses and enables the worst authoritarian actions.
I wrote about that once, and specifically called out Hanania for abusing the concept of authoritarianism to describe things that aren't actually authoritarian (so obviously, like you, I can't help but want to talk about Hanania. What is it about him...?). What I also find strange about his belief in the authoritarian is that he complains about masks and school closures but not lockdowns or mandatory vaccinations. Obviously lockdowns are the most authoritarian measure that was taken, masks are almost nothing by comparison. Plenty of people would argue that mandatory schooling is itself an imposition against our rights, so how does shutting them down become authoritarian? Obviously Hanania's problem isn't that masks are authoritarian, it's that he believes they don't work as an intervention. If they worked as well as vaccines, he wouldn't have any problem with it. So it's not authoritarianism at all, it's simply a difference of opinion on how effective interventions are and how much evidence a medical intervention should need in order to make it mandatory. But in our age of hyperbole, everything I don't like must be tyranny, and every little problem is proof that the end of human existence is nigh.
https://open.substack.com/pub/letsberealistic/p/what-is-authoritarianism-actually?r=h4vef&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I think the choice of Hanania specifically was to do with his popularity, yes, but also because I think he represents a really good example of even very knowledgeable, informed people being swept up in the ‘Both-Sides’ trope. It’s not all Southern rednecks or embarrassed MAGA folks.
I 100% give him credit for improving his views. Maybe I should made that clear in the piece! He is definitely worth discussing because, as you said, he has publicly made his views known, and how they’ve changed, and why. I give him immense credit for that, given most Trump voters are either too scared or too uninformed to think too deeply about it like some others you named.
The both sides, moral equivocation — I think — is THE cancer of the nation. Yes, Woke Socialists and MAGA Cult members are in plain sight, but I think much of that has to do with the idea that both parties are more or less the same evil: MAGA keeps allegiance to Trump, not the GOP. Same for wokists and Bernie or AOC or Stein or whoever is supporting them at the moment.
I like much of Hanania’s work, but his explanations for his vote fall way short logically and morally. I think you’re definitely right about what he was really upset about (shutting down schools, businesses, particular interventions of the state). But I don’t think he could make any of those arguments because Trump was president during COVID. He shut the country down. We can say he did'n’t want to or that individual states made it worse, but that’s missing the mark a bit, I think. And the reason I think he knows this is because he opted for the explanation that only dealt with Democrats. It’s a perfect example of the mental gymnastics needed to create any sort of balance between the two sides. And even that wasn’t substantiated in research.
Hopefully he can just accept being an anti-MAGA conservative or liberal or even moderate who knows MAGA isn’t the answer: all of those are miles better than whatever was going through his head 6 months ago!
Thanks so much for reading and replying with these great points!
This point OMG: "Plenty of people would argue that mandatory schooling is itself an imposition against our rights, so how does shutting them down become authoritarian?"
*Fire emoji's*
While Trump was President during COVID, most public interventions are made at the state level, so I think it's important to be fair about that. Trump had nothing to do with any school closures and even if he told people they should wear masks, he never did it himself. I wish people like Hanania cared more about how many people died because Trump failed to implement the pandemic plan we had in place, failed to quarantine travelers into the country, and created a chaotic free-for-all that prevented states from getting proper PPE than how long liberals kept schools closed. But oh well.
You're totally right, we need to call out moral equivocation, it really is the cancer of the nation. I think about it as the difference between cynicism and skepticism. Skepticism is assuming that things are probably true but might not be. Cynicism is when you assume that all public knowledge is wrong and everyone has bad intentions. Cynics think they are being realistic and everyone else is naive, but in reality they just end up in a separate bubble where they only trust other cynics, who have fewer incentives to be truthful than traditional credentialed sources.
https://open.substack.com/pub/letsberealistic/p/the-difference-between-skepticism?r=h4vef&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Definitely states have lots of control, but red states were doing it too. It's too nuanced of an issue in either case for Hanania to be using it as a tool to try to balance the moral extremes. I totally agree about your point on cynics: they impede improvement and progress in many ways. Healthy, constructive criticism is always better!
If you’re a predictor and your predictive model is producing *fractally* bad predictions, then you require more than an “I’m sorry”. Admitting you were wrong is not the end of the process: it’s the beginning of a long process of introspection and self-correction that ends with major changes to the way you think, or else retirement. Hanania isn’t going to do any of that.
The difference between Hanania and the rest of them isn’t that the bad ones are better. It’s just that they’re being a little bit more honest about the fact that they can’t be trusted. Hanania’s goal is to repair his credibility without doing any of the work.
The guy got impeached TWICE, not just for January 6th. It beggars the imagination to think of reasonable, thoughtful people, the kind that RH presents himself as being, putting that aside and voting for him over Harris.
I don’t think many people expected his foreign policy to be this bad which I think Hanania was very concerned about. I also don’t think it was crazy to think trump would be much better on the economy. Hanania also was correct in thinking that he would have more influence on the trump administration then the Harris administration and he believed wokism/affirmative action was a huge problem. Most importantly though, as Nels mentioned, shaming him creates a terrible incentive structure and is exactly the opposite of what we need now. Interesting article though and I agree with much of what you said.
I see no good explanation for expecting anything less than what Trump has shown in terms of foreign policy, so I really hope Hanania doesn't make the mistake of using that as an example. It was definitely crazy to think he would better on the economy, given it was destroyed the first go around and saw no real progress in terms of manufacturing until Biden. But that wasn't his argument. His argument had to do with non-MAGA people constraining Trump: that was a very bad idea. Harris nor Biden were woke, but they tolerated it. Now Trump is tolerating Woke Right but I'll give him that wasn't too obvious at the time, but there were flurries of evidence of the mentality sprouting. I'm not shaming him, or not meaning to, I'm simply making the case that all his given arguments for voting for Trump were nonsense and he knew it if he'd thought about it for more than 10 seconds-- he's too informed not to know the fact I provided. I'm not too concerned with incentive. I think it is fair and actually good to call people out for really bad ideas, especially when they have huge audiences and got absolutely brainwashed or deluded by the what I term 'Both-Sides-Are-Evil' attitude.
I appreciate you reading and offering some good substantive feedback! Hopefully Hanania can join the anti-MAGA coalition once and for good and we can grow together in combatting the movement for 2026!
We should shame influential people that make bad predictions (with consequences) and focus more on credibility repair than actual improvement.
I am not sold on the article's thesis. It is no small feat to extricate oneself from years of seeing the world in a partisan framework. You are left with a more nuanced challenge of acknowledging the good things a party does while seeing how much of reality is foreclosed. It takes years of falsifying claims and assumptions, as well as guarding against a cherry picking mindset, to earn one a more independent or centrist position. Invariably you will see both sides behaving similarly given the nature of political ideology.
I’m not really sure what this means but I don’t think I agree with much of it.
You might consider inquiring specifically about a statement that I made in order for me to clarify.
I’m fine with this slow process of becoming not-as-wrong when you’re my cranky uncle at Thanksgiving. When you’re an influential pundit/influencer it’s a five alarm fire. You can just retire.
I have to say this is a weird post.
Hanania is not a centrist. He’s a conservative who has rejected Trumpism and MAGA. That’s not centrism.
Both sidism isn’t doesn’t have anything to do with centrism in particular. It’s actually most commonly used by partisans when faced with their sides or their leaders failings.
And why now? Hanania is not just admitting he was wrong, but he’s been attacking the culture and thinking of MAGA and other hard right commentators for a while.
I wrote this article early last year. I just reposted it for additional arguments.
I said he embodies the moral blindness of centrism by the arguments he was making to Krystal Ball and to Destiny in the post I wrote.
Both sidesism is exactly what centrism means—you must stand in arms length from good and evil equally. Or else it’s not centrism, it’s just partisan hackery as you explain here. The centrism he embodies is shown by his constant both siding of the arguments. He could’ve just said he was being dumb and wishful thinking, but he laid out coherent arguments that were utterly irrational for his caliber of thinking.
I’m glad he’s come around but that doesn’t mean he isn’t part of the reason for Trump being here. This is why voting is important.
The myth of the middle is my theory for this concept of “centrism” if you want to understand my argument further: https://preservingprogress.substack.com/p/moderation-centrism-and-the-myth?lli=1
I’ve read it and agree that the centrist label doesn’t describe an accurate reality.
I don’t think that’s relevant to your critique of Hanania, who is not centrist and his both sideism likely comes from the mental gymnastics he performed to stay on the conservative side/vote Republican even though Trump worried him.
Yes. Exactly. I may have conflated his embodiment of it without stating the distinction of him being a conservative who was presenting the centrism mentality. If that’s more your issue then I think you’re right.
I don’t think you’re describing the “centrist mentality” accurately or fairly.
But there aren’t enough centrists in America anymore for this to matter.
He’s either disingenuous or just doesn’t understand politics/people. Given that he’s on the spectrum, it’s more likely the latter.
The centrist position often mistakes procedural fairness for moral clarity, as if finding the middle ground between democracy and authoritarianism represents some higher wisdom rather than a failure of conviction. This "moderation" becomes particularly dangerous when it treats the erosion of democratic norms as just another policy debate to be split down the middle. What distinguishes legitimate centrism from mere cowardice is the willingness to draw bright lines around non-negotiable values, even when that means abandoning the comfortable middle ground.