Richard Hanania Profile picture
Sep 9, 2020 19 tweets 5 min read Read on X
I've seen a lot of talk about the US heading towards civil war. I think this view is wrong, and it's wrong for interesting reasons, as the argument reveals fundamentally mistaken assumptions about the causes of political violence. Thread. 1/n
For example, here's @robertwrighter, who I'm a big fan of. In this view, civil war is a matter of psychology. If people hate each other enough, they'll start killing each other in the streets. David Kilcullen, less insightful, makes a similar argument. 2/n nonzero.org/post/avoiding-… ImageImage
Scholars of civil war have divided theories of its causes into two categories: grievance and opportunity. In the grievance model, civil war happens when people are mad enough at their government or fellow citizens to take up arms. 3/n
In the opportunity model, violence is ubiquitous, and when government is weak, criminals, demagogues, etc. will always be there in order to tap into grievances, whether real or imagined. 4/n
The models have different policy implications. The opportunity model puts a premium on "law and order" and fighting the threat of violence directly, while the grievance model leads to a "root causes" approach. 5/n
The statistical literature is clear that the opportunity model is correct. Some things that predict civil war (opportunity): weak states, transition periods, mountain ranges and other geographical features that make establishing govt control difficult. 6/n
Some things that tend not to, or weakly predict civil war: dictatorship, discrimination, violations of human rights, ethnic fractionalization. Fearon and Laitin is the classic work in this genre. 7/n Image
Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler formulate the question as "greed versus grievance," and find similar results. Disorder breeds opportunity, and natural resources increase the potential payoff of rebellion. 8/n ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7…
Within civil wars you see the same pattern. Governments tend to hold cities, while rebels are more successful in the countryside. It's not because city dwellers are inherently less hateful and more satisfied, it's because violence emerges where the state is weak. 9/n
The American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan provided a sort of experiment for testing these theories. The US removed brutal dictatorships in the belief that the people would be so grateful they'd welcome American troops, but increased opportunity for gangs, militias, etc. 10/n
"Hearts and minds" counterinsurgency, pushed by Kilcullen, Petraeus, and others, was based on the grievance model, and America's disastrous experience over the years in nation building have proven it wrong. 11/n
GDP is correlated with civil war because poorer countries have less resources they can put towards establishing order. No country as rich as the US has ever faced a civil war. A rich govt will always work well enough to prevent it no matter how much we hate each other. 12/n
CHAZ/CHOP showed how easily a "rebel movement" can be crushed with the most minimal govt effort. One or two shootings was enough for even the most liberal city to put its foot down, even though it shouldn't have gone on for that long. 13/n
In recent years, we've been getting better at controlling violence of all kinds in first world countries, including crime. Grievance theories of crime have likely reversed that trend recently, but that doesn't mean we're close to a civil war, or that it's likely. 14/n
The civil war literature has broader lessons we can apply to violent crime. The idea that police are the problem is dangerous, and has and will continue to lead to deaths. Civil war is a different matter. The state will tolerate crime, it won't tolerate ideological rivals. 15/n
I hope this discussion can lead us away from worrying about something that is very unlikely to happen, civil war, and towards worrying about crime, which is at absurdly high levels compared to other rich countries and likely getting worse. 16/n
People are more likely to surrender their civil liberties when you call something a "national security threat" like white nationalism or Islamic terror. But street crime will kill many more Americans every year for the rest of our lives, and we are much more tolerant of it. 17/n
See here for my critique of counter-insurgency theory, seen in light of the civil war literature. 18/n ndisc.nd.edu/assets/320266/…
I've seen people mention Peter Turchin's theory of violence. It's basically another grievance model, and therefore incorrect. See this thread for my critiques of it. 19/n

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More from @RichardHanania

Nov 30
Ayn Rand on racists as losers: “The overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the illusion of a ‘tribal self-esteem’ by alleging the inferiority of some other tribe” Image
“Observe the hysterical intensity of the Southern racists; observe also that racism is much more prevalent among the poor white trash than among their intellectual betters.” Image
“The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify—particularly for people of limited intelligence—the least demanding form of ‘belonging’ and of ‘togetherness’ is: race.” Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 19
If you haven't looked into their claims, you are always going to underestimate just how much and how blatantly anti-vaxxers lie.

If you are on the right, I want you to open your mind and realize that no matter what problems you have with the left, Robert F Kennedy is a uniquely sinister figure who should have no role in public life. Here's just one example as to why.

RFK wrote the foreword for a book by an anti-vaxx organization he once led that claimed to list young people dropping dead from the covid vaccine. The 12-year-old boy on the cover hadn't even been vaccinated against covid. He was just a random kid who died for unrelated reasons, anti-vaxxers put him on the cover of a book, and RFK promoted it.

When the family tried to tell them about this, the publisher ignored them.

The AP reports:

When 12-year-old Braden Fahey collapsed during football practice and died, it was just the beginning of his parents’ nightmare.

Deep in their grief a few months later, Gina and Padrig Fahey received news that shocked them to their core: A favorite photo of their beloved son was plastered on the cover of a book that falsely argues COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike of sudden deaths among healthy young people.

The book, called “Cause Unknown,” was co-published by an anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, who is now running for president. Kennedy wrote the foreword and promoted the book, tweeting that it details data showing “ COVID shots are a crime against humanity.”

The Faheys couldn’t understand how Braden’s face appeared on the book’s cover, or why his name appeared inside it.

Braden never received the vaccine. His death in August 2022 was due to a malformed blood vessel in his brain. No one ever contacted them to ask about their son’s death, or for permission to use the photo. No one asked to confirm the date of his death — which the book misdated by a year. When the Faheys and residents of their town in California tried to contact the publisher and author to get Braden and his picture taken out of the book, no one responded.

They finally took the boy off the cover of the book after it became a story during Kennedy's 2024 run. Kennedy supporters have harassed the boy's parents, maybe because they believe they're lying about the covid vaccine and part of the conspiracy.

12-year-old Branden Fahey isn't the only person they were lying about. They were just taking random people who died and made a book about them. One even died in 2019, before covid vaccines were invented.

The AP found dozens of individuals included in the book died of known causes not related to vaccines, including suicide, choking while intoxicated, overdose and allergic reaction. One person died in 2019.

AP asked Kennedy’s campaign, CHD, Dowd and Skyhorse president Tony Lyons several questions about the book, including why they chose to feature Braden, why they didn’t speak to his family first and what steps they took to fact check.

Kennedy's former organization says that Fahey's obituary didn't list a cause of death, so they just decided to take his picture and put it on the cover of their anti-vaxx book. I'm serious. This is how anti-vaxxers reason. "Maybe your son who died in 2019 actually died because he was vaxxed? Just asking questions! Why are you afraid of debate? What are you hiding?"

In emails, Lyons did not address why Braden specifically was chosen for the cover but defended his inclusion by saying that news stories and his obituary did not mention his cause of death.

Hundreds of deaths are cited in the book, though Lyons said it only attributes nine of them to the vaccine. Lyons said Braden’s death and others are never explicitly attributed to the vaccine, and that the book explores many possible reasons for deaths that have appeared in headlines since 2021.

Still, the book several times refers to its “thesis” that mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike in deaths. Braden’s parents said his appearance in the context of the book implies he died of the vaccine, putting his death in a false light.

Anti-vaxxers are very dedicated and put out a lot of material. People see this and assume that there must be something to what they're saying. How can they produce so many books, papers, and podcasts if vaccines are safe? What's wrong with opening up a debate?

You'll never have the time to go through all of their claims. The thing to realize is that these are some of the stupidest and most dishonest people in public life. They've been shunned from mainstream institutions for good reason, and it's a troubling sign that they're now being given political power.

If you think elites are the problem, know that they at least want nothing to do with anti-vaxxers. I consider this a litmus test. The degree to which institutions reject these people can be taken as a direct measure of how well they're functioning.Image
Remember that RFK personally lobbied against vaccines in Samoa, where over 80 children died due to lowering rates.

Oh yeah, and here's the story about how he drove his wife to suicide after she found a notebook of all the women he cheated with.
More on the claims of anti-vaxxers here. richardhanania.com/p/vaccines-and…
Read 4 tweets
Oct 26
NYT on one of the first things Kamala Harris did after becoming vice president:

Paging through intelligence reports just weeks after she was sworn in as vice president, Kamala Harris was struck by the way two female foreign leaders were described. The reports used adjectives that, in her view, were rarely used to describe male leaders.

Ms. Harris, the first woman to hold her office, ordered up a review that scrutinized multiple years of briefing reports from various intelligence agencies, looking for possible gender bias.

The study found some questionable word choices but no widespread pattern, according to a senior intelligence official, one of five who requested anonymity to discuss the review. (None would disclose the words flagged by Ms. Harris because the reports were classified.)

Still, the exercise had an impact: Intelligence officials added a new training class for analysts on how to judge and assess female foreign leaders, according to another official.

Remember all the race craziness during covid? Guess who was the driving force behind it in the administration:

During the pandemic, she repeatedly asked her vice-presidential staff for demographic breakdowns on Covid vaccination recipients and pressed the administration’s health officials to address gaps, according to two former administration officials.

She pushed the federal bureaucracy to incorporate concerns about equity into routine business — so much so that her advisers seldom briefed her on domestic policies without having prepared a ready answer about their impact on women, Black and Hispanic people and other racial minorities.

When Trump says that these are stupid, unserious people, stories like this are what make his charges sound credible.Image
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She doesn’t talk about it during the campaign. But this is where her heart is at. nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/…
Her staff knew that DEI was her obsession. This ended up influencing everything about how they did their jobs. They knew that Kamala would have DEI-related questions on every issue and prepared with that in mind.

She pushed the federal bureaucracy to incorporate concerns about equity into routine business — so much so that her advisers seldom briefed her on domestic policies without having prepared a ready answer about their impact on women, Black and Hispanic people and other racial minorities.

“She was always interested in race and gender,” said one former aide who requested anonymity because of lack of authorization to speak publicly. “We all knew it was really important to her, so we would proactively add that to her briefings. She didn’t have to ask for it.”Image
Read 4 tweets
Sep 16
The human capital problem on the right is bad and getting worse. Eating pets and imaginary whistleblowers today. What's next? Diagnosing it is easy. Finding solutions is hard.

I do have one though: conservatives should help abolish the electoral college.
richardhanania.com/p/the-conserva…
My theory of our politics would suggest it's hopeless. There are lots of stupid people out there, and they used to be kept out by gatekeepers and distributed across the parties. Now they're increasingly in one party, and have the internet. A simple story of supply and demand.
But the electoral college makes it much worse.

For most of US history, the electoral college hasn't mattered. But two things have changed since 2000 that have made the electoral college go from an afterthought to vitally important to presidential politics.
Read 17 tweets
Sep 2
Happy Labor Day.

To celebrate, I've written an article on why you should not support labor unions.

They are anti-meritocratic cartels that achieve gains by harming the rest of society. If you are concerned with poverty, there are better ways to help. richardhanania.com/p/unions-are-n…
We can have reasonable debates about the size of government or how much it should distribute wealth. But the way to help the working class is not to favor one group of people and let them take from everyone else, lower economic efficiency, and harm consumers and other workers. Image
The story of American ports. They are the least efficient in the world because unions fight technological innovation. Labor bosses actively benefit from making everything function worse.
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Read 13 tweets
Aug 26
How to understand the RFK phenomenon? I explain Dale Gribble voters. The ultra paranoid have always been around, but before they were divided between the parties.

Now they've consolidated in the GOP, and they are making its human capital problem worse. 🧵richardhanania.com/p/the-rise-of-…
Top two podcasts in the country are Rogan and Tucker. They're considered on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but both are RFK fans. Other alt media personalities like Alex Jones and Bret Weinstein are also part of this group. It's not right/left, but something diff. Image
What binds them isn't ideology as traditionally understood, but paranoia and a belief that the world is run by shadowy forces. A "they" who are keeping the truth from you. Gribbles love talking about UFOs, ancient technology, Atlantis, etc and believe they have hidden knowledge. Image
Read 11 tweets

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