The deadly agenda of a “right-winger”

In a world full of people diligently working to obscure what they actually think with polite euphemisms, it can be oddly refreshing to encounter someone who simply says the evil part out loud. It’s not pleasant, but it is clarifying.

Enter Richard Hanania, whom Wikipedia describes as “an American political researcher and right-wing political commentator”—a bio so vague it could encompass everyone from Ryan T. Anderson to Chris Rufo to Richard Spencer (who, for the unaware, is literally a Nazi). Hanania is a well-known opponent of wokeism and runs his own organization, The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. Hanania made headlines this year when it was discovered that he had published white supremacist material under an old pseudonym. Of course, this perfectly suited a leftist commentariat that would like to lump all “right-wingers” into one giant basket of deplorables. 

Meanwhile, Hanania made a carefully calculated apology, though not everyone was convinced of his sincerity. His alleged reinvention as “a small-L liberal” pointed up the irony that depending on the issue, Hanania’s conclusions can be indistinguishable from a leftist’s, even if he gets there by his own route. This is instructive to observe as part of a broader pattern where fringe “right” thought wraps around to meet the left on the other side of the dialectical horseshoe.

Most recently, he exchanged some sharp words with Andrew Walker, sparked by the discourse around a gay pundit’s announcement of his child’s surrogate birth. Hanania mocked the “low-IQ social conservatives” who hold a traditional Christian position, then set up a series of bizarre straw men. “Abortion should be banned so poor people can be forced to give birth,” one tweet disingenuously summarized, “IVF and surrogacy should also be banned to prevent smart and successful people from reproducing. Do I have that right?” 

These tweets display Hanania’s running obsession with status markers like IQ, wealth, and beauty—the alt-right path by which he shakes hands with leftists on abortion in general and selective abortion in particular. He rails against the Texas Republicans who advocated for the disabled unborn child of Kate Cox, wishing them “good luck ever winning elections again.” Two years ago, he anticipated with deep distaste a future where red states banned abortion, envisioning that they might gain five times as many children with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Who wants a world like that? He seems to think the question answers itself.

As far as Hanania is concerned, any political program that reduces the surplus population of weak, stupid, or otherwise “low-value” people is a success. He has applied a similar analysis to Canada’s euthanasia regime. He doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. People who want to die are receiving assistance in dying, and the rest of society is relieved of having to care for them? Win-win! Hello, “moral progress”!

Hanania perfectly illustrates what Louise Perry has called the “repaganization” of the West. In a “cut-flower” society no longer rooted in Christian ethics, thinkers like him are perfectly placed to re-seed it. Nominally Christian virtues like “compassion,” taken in isolation, will inevitably serve the cruel and the powerful at the expense of the weak, from unwanted children to the terminally sick or suicidal. Hanania’s work helpfully makes this crystal clear as he couches his “small-l liberal” appeal in nakedly pre-Christian language. His arguments for euthanasia cast a nostalgic look back at the Roman notion of “patriotic suicide,” which he believes can still resonate “despite two millennia of Christian influence.” As that influence wanes, he may not be wrong.

Now more than ever, Christians must boldly point to the better path, as Rachel Roth Aldhizer does in her article on the recent Texas case and her own experience mothering a disabled child. No, she insists, such a child does not threaten a mother’s life. What it does threaten is our conception of what makes life good. What it does threaten is Richard Hanania’s conception of what makes life valuable. And not just Hanania, but figures like Ann Coulter, a former darling of edgy right-wing punditry. She added her own voice to the chorus attacking social conservatives for their “cruelty” towards the Texas mother, because “Trisomy 18 is not a condition that is compatible with life.”

There is certainly cruelty on display around this case, but it’s not coming from social conservatives.

In the end, the post-Christian right’s virulent contempt for us and everyone we advocate for is a good sign. It means we are standing in the way of the West’s repaganization. To quote Stanley Hauerwas, “I say in a hundred years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have been doing something right.”

Hanania may rightly criticize the excesses of wokeism, but that does not make him an ally in the culture wars. In the meantime, we should pray for Hanania. His cold, aloof, and anti-human atheism must be countered with the gospel of life.