What Caught My Eye forAugust 13 - 19 (#26)

It’s true that left-wing American political activity in recent years has been defined by the recognition that the chicken will always come home to roost. That someone would risk her life to stand with her neighbor who is being detained by ICE, or to achieve one small act of sabotage against genocide, is perhaps baffling to the likes of Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller. But perhaps it is also sincerely threatening to them. Now we’re seeing the lengths they will go to sabotage this kind of solidarity.

The party of “I got mine so fuck you” can’t seem to fathom that there are people out there who follow Jesus’ teachings of love your neighbor.

A good monologue talking about how the media are completely missing what’s actually going on, blowing certain things out of proportion while ignoring what is actually happening in the world.

There is a revoultion happening right now. It’s not woke one. It’s an authoritarian one, an autocratic one, a revolution on behalf of people who want nothing more than to smother the rights of ordinary Americans, so that they, and their wealthy allies can rule unmolested by accountability or consequences. That is the challenge right now, not some grad student who bothered you on Twitter five years ago.

This is an older article, written in 2023, but still rings true today.

Trans youth who receive gender-affirming care are 60% less likely to have depression and 73% less likely to experience suicidality. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus supporting the gender-affirming model of treatment, which is endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the Endocrine Society.

But the GOP is uninterested in these endorsements. Their bills are often cookie-cutter pieces of legislation crafted by a coalition of Christian dominionists determined to reshape America according to a far-right, fundamentalist interpretation of scripture. Earlier this year, leaked emails obtained by Mother Jones showed groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal powerhouse that has advocated sterilizing trans people, collaborating with Republican legislators to draft the bills currently sweeping through statehouses.

Normalizing and sane-washing figures like him, or allowing them to position themselves as somehow “moderate” or in the “center,” amounts to a complete surrender of the Overton Window to fascism. Hanania deserves our scorn—but so, too, does a media establishment that continues to elevate him.

The media would love nothing more than to show some redemption story and show how they’re trying to bring in someone more in the center of things. It doesn’t even have to be true, it just has to feel true.

I’d argue a “former” white nationalist would not be one of the country’s foremost “anti-DEI” pundits, agitating like Hanania has for ending "diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs; nor would he be listed as a “contributor” to Project 2025, the MAGA blueprint for an authoritarian presidency. He would not call the Supreme Court decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, which safeguarded racial equality in elections, a “great day for our democracy.” Moreover, a “former” white nationalist would not be a public Trump supporter throughout the 2024 campaign, when the president was using explicitly fascist rhetoric, promising to mass deport, or “remigrate,” millions of immigrants while falsely claiming Haitian immigrants were eating their pets.

Facts be damned. He sounded sorry, that should be good enough for everyone.

I do not believe Hanania has taken these steps. It is a sobering indictment of the American media that people believe he has.