In Defense of Elites, with Richard Hanania

Richard Hanania is a political scientist, writer, and one of the more interesting and unpredictable thinkers working today. He first came to prominence as a critic of woke ideology and the legal architecture that enforces it, most thoroughly in his book The Origins of Woke. His new book, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, goes in what appears to be the opposite direction. It’s a rigorous case against antiestablishment politics and the forces driving it, arguing that, for all its appeal, rule by the crowd tends to produce worse outcomes than rule by institutions.

I’ve wanted to have Richard on for a while, partly because his intellectual journey is worth taking seriously. A few years ago, it emerged that he had spent time posting under a pseudonym in alt-right circles, saying things that were racist and indefensible. He didn’t hide from it. He addressed it directly, explained how his thinking had changed, and moved on. That kind of honesty is rare, and I think it gives him credibility on these topics that most people don’t have.

We cover a lot of ground. We get into what an “elite” actually is, why experts tend to be right more often than their critics, and where the line is between healthy skepticism of institutions and the kind of conspiratorial thinking that leads people off a cliff. We also talk about the military industrial complex, whether it’s real, and why foreign policy is one area where even credentialed experts may not know much more than anyone else.

We end on something more personal. Richard has a theory about what drives young men toward political extremism, rooted in his own experience, and his advice for anyone going down that road is some of the most direct and useful I’ve heard on the subject.