Is Richard Hanania Okay?

On Confession, Cruelty, and the Philosophy of Moral Evasion

I've been following

Richard Hanania

for some time on X. I've found some of his critiques of the populist right amusing. But as I've followed him, and filled in details about his past—including the fact he used to post under a pseudonym “Richard Hoste” for white supremacist publications, expressing support for eugenics and racist views against Black and Hispanic communities—I’ve grown worried. He has since disavowed these views. Which is good. I believe in moral redemption. But as I read his piece “The Death Penalty as Sacrifice to the God of Progress,” the philosopher in me is struck by what appears to be moral derangement on naked display.

Hanania begins by admitting that images of a particular murder case have haunted him “on at least a monthly basis” for a decade. He then builds his entire argument not from principles of justice or careful ethical reasoning, but from his psychological fixation with this case and his emotional reactions to it.

What follows is not philosophy but confession. He openly admits to harboring what he calls “rightoid instincts”—racism, sexism, homophobia—which he claims to have intellectually overcome while acknowledging they “never completely went away.” His solution? Channel these admittedly primitive impulses toward criminals, who serve as acceptable targets for our baser natures.

“Killing murderers makes us feel good,” he writes, positioning executions as a '“safety valve to prevent us from going full rightoid on other issues.” This is moral reasoning at its most primitive: not asking whether cruelty itself might be questioned, but merely identifying socially acceptable targets for it.

The intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking. Hanania presents himself as having transcended primitive instincts through intelligence and honesty, yet his entire argument reduces to “I need somewhere to direct my admittedly primitive instincts, and criminals are socially acceptable targets.” He rejects targeting immigrants or LGBTQ+ people not because it's inherently wrong, but because he can't intellectually justify it.

Most disturbing is his casual discussion of expanding the death penalty beyond first-degree murder to “lifelong criminals who we can be certain contribute nothing to humanity.” The casualness with which he contemplates state-sanctioned killing based on subjective assessments of human worth reveals the danger of his framework.

His conclusion descends into outright derangement: a fantasy where before each execution, officials explain to the condemned that they're being killed as “scapegoats” so society can progress without becoming “too gay.” He writes, “He can take solace in that fact, as he dies knowing that he has a role to play in the great story of humanity, and that our lack of charity towards him makes all the progress we've achieved not seem that gay, and therefore possible.”

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And no amount of intellectual posturing can conceal what this essay truly reveals: not a coherent moral philosophy, but a troubled mind attempting to rationalize its own darkness.

What's most concerning isn't Hanania's support for the death penalty—reasonable people can debate that issue on various grounds. What's concerning is his explicit framing of execution as an outlet for primitive instincts he admits are problematic in other contexts. This isn't philosophy; it's pathology presented as thought.

The piece ultimately tells us far more about Hanania's internal struggles than it does about criminal justice. His fixation on sexual details, his emotional investment in execution methods (“South Carolina just executed someone by firing squad, which is pretty cool”), and his elaborate rationalization for directing cruelty at “acceptable” targets suggests someone working through personal demons rather than offering serious moral reasoning.

Is Richard Hanania okay? Based on this disturbing window into his moral framework, I'm genuinely not sure.