Contrasting my Political Journey with that of Richard Hanania

How I became who I am, as a Woke Chad Centrist

source: @richardhanania on X

Political commentator, Richard Hanania, is known for his political transformation from an Alt-Right White nationalist to a pro-immigration, libertarian, neoliberal. In response to Hanania’s doxing, he wrote an essay, Why I Used to Suck, and (Hopefully) No Longer Do, in which he admits, “My posts and blog comments in my early twenties encouraged racism, misogyny, misanthropy, trolling, and overall bad faith.” However, Hanania is still fundamentally of the Right and a race realist.

While Richard Hanania’s detractors call him an opportunist or grifter, I can relate to his trajectory, even if I have major disagreements with him. For starters, Hanania is almost exactly two months older than me, so he experienced current events at the same age. Hanania strikes me as honest and genuine, though I assess his views changed due to him becoming more personally successful and being embarrassed by his younger self, which is natural. While much of the Left still considers Hanania a fascist, he is an example of someone who was doxed and a target of cancel culture yet has thrived.

Like Hanania, I am basically a centrist and an elitist. However, I am politically homeless and differ from Hanania in that he is to the left of me on immigration while to the right of me on economics. While he denounced his alt-right background, I can still appreciate the higher IQ creative energy of the original Alt-Right. Like Hanania, I dislike the chuds who ruined the online dissident right scene. This is also applicable to Richard Spencer, who was the de facto leader of the Alt-Right, and as an elitist and centrist, detests everything about the dissident right. In 2016, I tepidly supported Trump, but like Hanania and Richard Spencer, I have grown to be very critical of Trump and MAGA.

Dark Stark

My political evolution was shaped by my class and demographic background, as well as the alienation of youth. I grew up on the Westside of LA, from a White middle class background, the demographic that is being squeezed out of California. LA also has a racialized class demographic structure, with a Jewish elite and a heavily Latino working class. I was exposed to different classes, being middle class, while living in a wealthy neighborhood, but attending a ghetto middle and high school. Also, being an artist granted me exposure to more elite circles. This created an identity crisis and stress growing up, but it granted me knowledge about society and made me who I am.

I became aware of racial issues in 6th grade, due to experiencing racial bullying at a middle school in West LA, where a lot of African American kids were bussed in. Then for 7th Grade, I transferred to another middle school on the Westside, that had a more affluent White demographic, which I also found alienating. High school was better than middle school, though still an alienating experience.

I read Pat Buchanan’s, Death of the West, which resonated with me due to noticing the rapid demographic changes in California. I became aware of Amren and Steve Sailer’s old blog around 2005-2006. I then became active in the Ron Paul movement and was part of that Libertarian to Alt-Right pipeline. It is notable that Hanania was also a Ron Paul supporter. However, I also had some more socially liberal views. For instance, in 2008 I voted for the ultra Paleoconservative, Chuck Baldwin for president, but also voted against California’s Prop 8 to ban gay marriage. My economic views fluctuated from a right-libertarian into Austrian economics in the late 00s to a social nationalist with more socialist economic views, in the 2010s. Now I am basically a centrist on economics.

I went through an anti-Semitic phase from about 2009 to 2011. My initial anti-Semitism was a reaction to how Ron Paul was smeared as anti-Semitic by pro-Israel Jewish neocons, even though Ron Paul was not the least bit anti-Semitic nor even anti-Israel. However, I did meet some people with anti-Semitic or White nationalist views through the Ron Paul movement. I am of partial Jewish ancestry, with ancestors impacted by Pograms, and never came anywhere close to Nazi-type exterminationist anti-Semitism. My most extreme view at the time might have been that Jewish oligarchs should have their wealth confiscated. As a Ron Paul supporter, I was an idealistic patriotard, but as I became more politically disillusioned, I later became a Third Positionist, Third Worldist, both of which I now find cringe.

I got into Alex Jones via the Ron Paul movement, and Jones’s conspiracy theories were also a sort of a gateway to anti-Semitism, a case ADL types often make. I wrote for the defunct citizen journalism site, examiner.com as the LA nonpartisan examiner from about 2009 to 2011. My articles were outspoken against both Zionism and immigration. I was sort of a proto-Nick Fuentes.

From 2010 to 2012, I hosted my first podcast on the defunct Voice of Reason Radio Network, which platformed White Nationalists and anti-Semites. On my early shows on Voice Of Reason, I came across as more shrill, while now I am much more irreverent. Regardless, I interviewed a lot of really interesting guests, was allowed some leeway to have more eclectic guests, and it helped me build the confidence to create my own identity.

Like Richard Hanania, my podcast was hosted by the White Nationalist site, Counter-Currents from 2012 to 2014. Counter-Currents’ Greg Johnson did not view me as a White Nationalist, but rather as someone who was independent-minded yet willing to engage with White Nationalists. I was never a hardcore White Nationalist but I was a soft White Nationalist or pro-White American Nationalist. However, I ended up being for a more radical decentralized politics that allows for different groups to have autonomy. Now I am for positive White identity, a flexible version of ethnopluralism, and for positive eugenics, but against hardline nationalism and negative eugenics.

Despite Counter-Currents’ hardline ethno-nationalist positions, it tends to not only be higher IQ but also appeal to more artistic and cosmopolitan sensibilities. For instance, Greg Johnson promoted something called West Coast White Nationalism, White Nationalism that is more cosmopolitan and includes views often associated more with the Left, and found more on the West Coast. Regardless, I parted ways with Counter-Currents because I found their views too extreme and wanted to rebrand. I went through a phase in the late 2010s where I focused more on culture and aesthetics rather than politics.

Now I promote multi-culturalism, though a very different kind from liberal multiculturalism. I am basically a cosmopolitan from LA who appreciates urbanism and multiculturalism, and I had SWPL sensibility since I was literally a kid. I also love the San Francisco Bay Area, despite its problems and leftwing politics, and would hate living in exurban Red America.

Starkian Bay Area Aesthetic

Despite, experiencing racial bullying in middle school, California’s race relations are overall affable. The main issue is that California is very atomized and functions as an economic zone, without a rooted identity. Despite enjoying the multiculturalism of LA, I subconsciously knew something like enclavism was needed to provide security and social capital to Whites, in a place as deracinated as California.

Rightwing populists protest how California limousine liberals maintain exclusive enclaves while taking part in multiculturalism. However, their lifestyle should be available to more people and not just a luxury. In the past, I was more critical of ethnic and immigrant groups in LA, who are more clannish and tribal. However, instead of complaining that these groups won’t assimilate, White Californians should emulate them. In my first show on Voice of Reason, I proclaimed that LA was not an American city, but rather a cross between Tel Aviv and Mexico City. To be honest, LA becoming more like Mexico City and Tel Aviv would be an improvement over how it is now.

While I have come to have contempt for anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, and rightwing populists, sometimes I wonder if part of this contempt is because they remind me of my former self. It is analogous to how someone grows to hate a band they used to be a fan of before that band got big and feel superior to the new fans. I do feel ahead of my time, in that fringe views I once held have been adopted in mass by rightwing normies and major figures like Tucker Carlson.

Regardless, I am disgusted by the anti-intellectualism of the current populist right, both MAGA and what is now known as the dissident right. The highbrow Evolutionary Psych-based critique of Jewish identity politics of Kevin MacDonald has been replaced by really crude obnoxious low IQ anti-Semitism and grifters like Sneako. This is similar to how brilliant Manosphere bloggers like Chateau Heartiste were replaced by trashy, anti-intellectual grifters like Andrew Tate. Not to mention batshit insanity, like flat earthers, becoming normalized on the Right. While I am not pro-censorship, I believe that the best ideas and culture and the highest intellects should be promoted.

Unlike Richard Hanania, I dislike the current elites, yet I am also cautious against blind reactionary populism. The flaw of populism is that it holds the masses in high regard. I don’t believe the average person’s opinions matter much nor should they be running the show. Not to mention that a lot of average middle class people are boring.

Regardless, I want to see higher caliber elites with a sense of noblesse oblige, and see elites held to a higher standard. The declining caliber of elites is not easily explained by conspiracies that old money families, like the Rothschilds, secretly control everything. A major reason that our current elites suck is that a lot of them were initially middle class strivers, due to massive upward mobility.

Calisexuality: Upper Class Californian Blonde Jewish female physiognomy (Actress Halston Sage)

Class-based narratives that the rich are evil and sociopathic are often copes to help people in bad economic situations feel morally superior. HBD/Hereditarianism ironically counters certain anti-Semitic and conspiratorial populist arguments, even if these arguments are sometimes based on partial truths. The girls I had crushes on growing up tended to be from affluent backgrounds, and maybe this is more of a California thing, but the class component to beauty is something I contemplated while being heavily into populist politics. Notable, I had a thing for blonde Jewesses.

Richard Hanania went from promoting White victimhood identity politics to bootstrap politics, that losers get what they deserve from life no matter their demographic background. Hanania is a Social Darwinist who celebrates the inequalities of neoliberal capitalism and shows disdain for left behind Americans, though he opposes eugenics. Hanania posted a chart to explain the victimhood politics of populism. I am probably in the center, with a slight tilt toward populism. Most people are losers as atomized individuals and there is nothing wrong with seeking strength and a sense of belonging from being part of an identity group.

source: @RichardHanania on X

Hanania is a believer in democracy but admits and embraces that mass democracy serves oligarchic functions. For instance, Hanania wrote an elitist case for abolishing the Electoral College because the GOP would have to pay attention to more educated coastal conservatives rather than pandering to backward rural voters. Hanania also debated monarchist, Curtis Yarvin, in favor of Classical Liberal views. I am skeptical of both mass democracy and capitalism, because of their anti-aristocratic functions, yet support certain positive aspects of Classical Liberalism and the freedoms and rights it grants, a topic that I’ll dedicate an essay to in the future.

Hanania epitomizes mercantile or Vaishya values, as a neoliberal. Basically, he views people, places, and things as economic units, measured by GDP. This explains why he shills for America over Europe. I am much more Brahmin and Bohemian, in that I am a cultural elitist who views the talented artist or intellectual as the natural aristocrat. Capitalism often incentivizes the lowest common denominator.

Hanania said “I generally hate when people play the “mental illness” card, in part because it’s too easy,” and that “Around 2008, I had few friends or romantic successes and no real career prospects. Naturally, this led me to look around, and come to the only logical conclusion, which was that I was naturally superior to everyone else and women in particular shouldn’t have any rights. Strangely enough, now that I have a fulfilling personal life and objective career success, such ideas don’t appeal to me anymore.”

Robert Stark’s Painting

I struggled to make it into LA’s elite art world. While I had some successes in the arts, and I am far from the archetypical loser, I became very resentful that I couldn’t become this rich high status artist in LA, and I channeled some of that resentment into politics. There are different archetypes of the artist, and while the stereotypical artists is a lefty, the artist can be fascistic in that they have a very specific vision for how the world should be and look. I had a sense of grandiosity and vulnerable narcissism.

I didn’t have some moral reckoning that my old views were bad but rather my views gradually evolved. A person who has a bigoted past must repent in a quasi-religious way. Even people who are secular embrace this Abrahamic morality of putting everyone and every idea into categories of good versus evil. It is much healthier to accept that people evolve and that one’s past phases are part of a necessary process to become a better person. I am inspired by Alan Watts’s way of looking at how we play different roles, like actors, depending upon the circumstances that we are thrust into.

source: @RichardHanania on X

I put forth a new philosophy in my article, The Radical Center’s Psychosocial Approach to Race Relations. Hopefully, this philosophy can help people better understand their instincts, emotions, opinions, and decisions, and help them decipher which are constructive and what are the causes behind them. People are subconsciously influenced by a wide range of factors, including material needs, relationships, personal biases, mental health, social status, identity, tribalism, and environmental factors. This approach can help people make smarter decisions. However, this approach is dualistic and different from the woke implicit bias or the rationalist approach, in that it doesn’t try to suppress natural biological instincts but rather alchemize them. Regardless, this way of thinking requires some degree of intelligence.

I feel as if I had the same views as a teenager as I have now, at least subconsciously. I just lacked the courage to embrace them or didn’t have the mental tools to articulate them. Thus I felt the need to join different political tribes which I felt a need to signal or conform to. Even my current views are evolving. For instance, with my promotion of enclavism, I don’t care if people find the concept to be racist or discriminatory. However, I wonder if enclavism could lead to more neo-feudal societies that hinder the advancement of civilization.

I believe that a lot of knowledge is hidden in our subconscious, an almost gnostic or Jungian revelation. This leads me to a greater interest in mysticism and spiritualism, but also relates to Freudian psychology. In the past, I did things or had opinions based on subconscious motives. Now I am fully conscious and honest with myself, ironically becoming woke in the true sense.