Back when Claire Lehmann was on Bluesky she cheered my listing members of her goon squad, including Charles Murray, "Cremieux," and Bari Weiss.
I recently discovered Lehmann also talked about it on Twitter/X with Richard Hanania and Cathy Young.
Claire Lehmann, Cathy Young and Richard Hanania are on wingnut welfare.
Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available.
Claire Lehmann founded Quillette ten years ago, and it's known that in addition to far-right Australian Mark Carnegie, Quillette has been funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel is a whacked-out religious fanatic who raves about "the antichrist" - they mocked him on South Park for that.
Cathy Young was one of the cheerleaders of the woman-hating mob known as "Gamergate." Her association with the Koch-funded, Ayn Rand-worshipping Reason Magazine goes back over 30 years.
Both Lehmann and Young harbor a deep hatred for women as a group. I discussed how they and the equally detestable Christina Hoff Sommers went apeshit over a short story that presented a male character in an unflattering way.
I think much of it was driven by jealousy. The author of the short story, "Cat Person," has never had to get her work into a publication based on how obedient she is to the wills of right-wing ghouls. Although to be fair, I don't think Lehmann, Young and Sommers express misogyny only because their paymasters demand it - I think they come by their gender-based self-hatred honestly.
Richard Hanania became fairly well-known in 2023 when it was revealed that he is a rabid white supremacist who got wingnut welfare from far-right billionaires.
As Jamelle Bouie wrote in the NYTimes:
But more interesting than either Hanania — whose recent notoriety has not lifted him too far from his previous obscurity — or his rancid views are his backers. According to Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, Hanania’s organization, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, has received at least $700,000 in support through anonymous donations. He is also a visiting scholar at the Salem Center at the University of Texas at Austin — funded by Harlan Crow.
A whole coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have lent their time and attention to Hanania, as well as elevated his work. Marc Andreessen, a powerful venture capitalist, appeared on his podcast. David Sacks, a close associate of Elon Musk, wrote a glowing endorsement of Hanania’s forthcoming book. So did Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of right-wing causes and organizations. “D.E.I. will never d-i-e from words alone,” wrote Thiel. “Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon.” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, also praised the book as a “devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.”
The question to ask here — the question that matters — is: Why does an otherwise obscure racist have the ear and support of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley? What purpose, to a billionaire venture capitalist, do Hanania’s ideas serve?
Look back to our history, and the answer is straightforward. Just as in the 1920s (and before), the idea of race hierarchy works to naturalize the broad spectrum of inequalities and capitalist inequality in particular.
If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.
In other words, they hired Hanania to help promote race pseudoscience. Or more broadly, hereditarianism.
Harlan Crow also funded Bari Weiss.
Lately Hanania has been trying to present himself as a centrist. But it's only a thin veneer of bullshit - he truly loves his fellow racists, including Nathan Cofnas. Earlier this week he expressed his admiration for Cofnas.
Hanania could be seen promoting neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard on X/Twitter, a year after his white supremacist activities were revealed and he was presumably starting to build his centrist façade.
I guess if I sold my soul to a pack of obscenely wealthy psychopaths, as Hanania, Lehmann and Young have done, I could get more traction. And I could make Pinkerite - an evil version of Pinkerite - a full-time career.
But in spite of my doing this blog in my spare time out of duty, rather than for dark money, my audience has increased over the years - do we call that traction? During September of this year, according to Blogger statistics, this blog received 256,925 views.
It looks like his current career is entirely based on the wingnut welfare provided by his long-time sugar daddy Michael O'Fallon.
But back to Hanania - Christopher Mathias, who initially exposed Hanania's extremist career, isn't buying Hanania's centrist façade, and wrote a post about him a couple of months ago, including:
There is maybe a genuine debate to be had about where on the political spectrum a white nationalist can land to be considered a “former” white nationalist. I’d argue, however, that spending the last three years promoting a book—Hanania’s “The Origins of Woke”—which calls for overturning the advances won by the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, is not a sufficient act of atonement. The Trump administration in its second term has attacked the Civil Rights Act, with Hanania even taking credit for inspiring Trump to repeal Executive Order 11246, a directive requiring affirmative action when hiring federal contractors.
Hanania's dead-lifting buddy Nathan Cofnas is on the record advocating for the overturn of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
If you are a regular reader of this blog you already know that Steven Pinker is a devout supporter of Richard Hanania. Because that's what racist weasels do.
