John, I appreciate this piece and yesterday's immensely, on a personal level, as a Jew. I feel like I wake up every morning deeper in crisis, and I don't have anything smart to say about it either. I don't know how to engage intellectually with a Jewish woman-who has spoken at my synagogue!-who launders, supports, promotes Nazi propaganda. Thank you for your clear-eyed and unambiguous analysis of this fucking bullshit.
Also at CPAC, Bannon referred to anti-Zionist Jews as 'enemy number one' of the Jewish people—a position that Bari Weiss explicitly shares. She has consistently worked to punish those with dissenting views on Israel, so it's hardly surprising she now finds herself aligned with actual fascists.
At least online I've openly seen instances where Zionist Jews openly said that neo-nazis et al are fine and helpful and it's no problem to align with them
Funnily enough, Bari Weiss and Richard Hanania are also getting a lot of trumpist backlash because their piece admits, even if it's to water it down, that these are actual and intentional Nazi salutes.
This split happens often on the right. I'm reminded of January 6th when half of the right was posting that this was horrible and it's all a antifa psyop and not actual conservatives doing it and the other half was posting from the capitol saying "this is awesome and we're actual conservatives doing this"
But were those people actually at odds with one another? I always figured it was like neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust and neo-Nazis who celebrate it--although you'd think those two views contradict one another, in fact it's the same people advancing both.
This and your Jordan Neeley piece are your best writing. Not your most thought provoking, or your most interesting, or best written. But there is something so refreshing reading something that cuts through all the bullshit, and just lays out honestly and directly what's going; that pulls no punches but doesn't resort to anything fancy to make its point.
It shouldn't be so hard to find someone writing blatantly obvious truths with no gimmicks, who can just say forcefully and clearly and plainly say: "homeless people are still people and don't just forfeit their right to life", or "Nazism entering American political life is fucking horrifying" but for whatever reason it is hard to find such people, so I really appreciate you writing stuff like this.
I started reading you for French third republic shit, I loved your book, I loved your Girard stuff, I think you're an interesting talented writer who has enriched my worldview in many ways, but when all the chips are down, the stuff you write that stays with me the most is the dumbshit-obvious how does everyone else not see this?! stuff that anyone _should_ be able to write but not enough people do.
These assholes always walk right up to the point and miss it - even if it’s trolling, ITS STILL GROTESQUELY RACIST AND ANTISEMITIC. Just bc you did it to be an edgelord doesn’t change that!!!
Agreed. Nick Catoggio over at The Dispatch posted a good essay in which he wrote: "The term for jokes that aren’t quite jokes is “kidding on the square.” It was popularized years ago by yet another comedian who ended up in politics, Al Franken. 'Kidding on the square' is when you present an idea as a joke—but you mean it." https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/boilingfrogs/trump-trolling-seriously-literally-king/
i wake up and i check the news and there has been yet another rhinoceros rampage here in france. and the next day i talk to my friends and they think that's impossible, there aren't rhinoceroses in france. and the next day - am i really just going to condemn the rhinoceros phenomenon without even trying to understand it? and the next - that humanism is dead, that those who follow it are just old sentimentalists, that we have as much right to live as you humans do
Hey, John, I don't think there are ENOUGH typos. Make it longer, and angrier, with even more receipts. I want a higher typo count out of you next time, man. I will basically pay you a bounty for each typo if you do the above. I want to be barely able to decipher the next piece through all the nuclear fire of your excoriation. I want you to eventually reach a point where it's utter gibberish, but Hanania's (and the next target, and the next, and the next...) head explodes like in Scanners. If I can make out a name, then check the news to see reporting on these inexplicable, grisly mysteries, I will bequeath you my house.
Reminds me of a meme I remember from 4chan around the time when the Nazi bullshit went from annoying side show to the center stage. “Hide your power level” was some double entendre for gaming and white power. The usual thrust being, “Don’t let the PC police see the racism you are openly expressing here.”
Now X is 4chan circa 2016 thanks to Elon
Fwiw, I think Haninia is a cynical asshole and he is writing this to try to calm down more normie type conservatives, the corporate crowd that reads Bari Weiss. The basic thrust of her work is how the left is more extreme and dangerous than MAGA, and aren’t we so sensible for saying so. So damage control around the rampant Nazi salutes is essential to keep them on board.
This same group (that promised to abandon Trump after Jan 6) has been strung along with Elon Musk’s promises and involvement. But those seem to be wearing thin too. The most successful businessman in the world can’t be an actual Nazi, right? But he doesn’t appear to be actually doing what he says he would and this is becoming undeniable.
So I think Haninia is right in a sense. Their movement is coming apart because its revealing its true goals and intentions too quickly. The frog might actually jump out of the pot imminently
Oh please, don't be a grammar nazi. Knocking out multiple pieces of writing on a regular basis will produce typos. None of them make the piece unreadable.
I've made the same argument on another substack on which the author publishes several times each week, sometimes twice in one day. I appreciate the SUBSTANCE of their essays, so I see but am not dismayed by the STYLE (e.g., perfect grammar, etc.). I'm okay with a more informal style here because I value the content. These people have other obligations, and when they do publish in formal outlets, they employ all the elements of formal style.
I’m not talking about grammar. I am talking about misspelled words, missing punctuation, etc. Ganz is a big boy and a professional, and I assure you the publishers of his work employ copy editors to ensure his arguments are presented in the best possible light. Yes, everyone who writes prolifically will produce typos, and that’s why reading one’s work over before publishing it is a good practice. It helps make one’s argument stronger when there isn’t ambiguity about, say, where a quote from another person begins due to a missing open quotation mark.
Ironic Nazism makes me think of someone ironically wearing, say, a Nickelback t-shirt. At the end of the day, whatever your motives, you're just wearing the t-shirt.
“As someone whose brain has undergone the same process as many on the right”
What in the hell does that mean? Why do these chuds always write like the brain is some kind of mystical, ensouled computer? (I know, it’s cause they’re Nazis….)
Because the brain is an organ that we know some things about and not others.
Stop talking like it is just the 21st century equivalent of a soul!
“Once again, anybody who reads the newspaper in the morning should know this: it was in the New York Times. “
Marshall McLuhan I ain’t but is has been on my mind for a while that the loss of the actual, physical newspaper is key to our current era.
To read the newspaper was, at least in theory, having to sit with an object and determine what the object as a whole has to say.
If I read the whole front page of NYT and peruse its pages I got a full idea of what the editors at that paper thinks is of importance and can judge it as a whole.
One can simulate or mock-up this experience by reading the NYT homepage and understanding, from one’s experience with physical papers, what pieces are op-Ed’s, what is branded content, what is reporting.
The atomization of that format via the internet means that a lot Americans have lost those mental muscles or never built them in the first place.
I guess to shorten my point, the Bannons of the world are betting that no one truly reads the paper anymore.
Well said, John! I wondered who this Hanania character was. Talk about damning oneself with one's own words. Plus he comes complete with the IQ ideology. Man, there's something about the siren song of DNA that these guys cannot resist, ever. I wonder which one is going to start wearing the regalia as a performative act? Forced to do so by the snowflake que ball wielders who are the only ones with true agency, forcing the poor right-wingers to do their bidding!
Well done. Hanania seems determined to try to put lipstick on the fascist sow he still tends to. Weiss, like so many others on the genteel Kahanist squad, has painted herself into a corner - once you go to bat for mass murder, you can’t really be out there calling people Nazis. Or rather, Nazis become “Nazis”.
John, I appreciate this piece and yesterday's immensely, on a personal level, as a Jew. I feel like I wake up every morning deeper in crisis, and I don't have anything smart to say about it either. I don't know how to engage intellectually with a Jewish woman-who has spoken at my synagogue!-who launders, supports, promotes Nazi propaganda. Thank you for your clear-eyed and unambiguous analysis of this fucking bullshit.
If they are ironically nazis we can ironically Nuremberg them with an ironic short rope and ironic long drop.
Also at CPAC, Bannon referred to anti-Zionist Jews as 'enemy number one' of the Jewish people—a position that Bari Weiss explicitly shares. She has consistently worked to punish those with dissenting views on Israel, so it's hardly surprising she now finds herself aligned with actual fascists.
At least online I've openly seen instances where Zionist Jews openly said that neo-nazis et al are fine and helpful and it's no problem to align with them
The new Panjak Mishra book gets into the history of this brand collab
Funnily enough, Bari Weiss and Richard Hanania are also getting a lot of trumpist backlash because their piece admits, even if it's to water it down, that these are actual and intentional Nazi salutes.
This split happens often on the right. I'm reminded of January 6th when half of the right was posting that this was horrible and it's all a antifa psyop and not actual conservatives doing it and the other half was posting from the capitol saying "this is awesome and we're actual conservatives doing this"
But were those people actually at odds with one another? I always figured it was like neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust and neo-Nazis who celebrate it--although you'd think those two views contradict one another, in fact it's the same people advancing both.
This and your Jordan Neeley piece are your best writing. Not your most thought provoking, or your most interesting, or best written. But there is something so refreshing reading something that cuts through all the bullshit, and just lays out honestly and directly what's going; that pulls no punches but doesn't resort to anything fancy to make its point.
It shouldn't be so hard to find someone writing blatantly obvious truths with no gimmicks, who can just say forcefully and clearly and plainly say: "homeless people are still people and don't just forfeit their right to life", or "Nazism entering American political life is fucking horrifying" but for whatever reason it is hard to find such people, so I really appreciate you writing stuff like this.
I started reading you for French third republic shit, I loved your book, I loved your Girard stuff, I think you're an interesting talented writer who has enriched my worldview in many ways, but when all the chips are down, the stuff you write that stays with me the most is the dumbshit-obvious how does everyone else not see this?! stuff that anyone _should_ be able to write but not enough people do.
Hear hear!
These assholes always walk right up to the point and miss it - even if it’s trolling, ITS STILL GROTESQUELY RACIST AND ANTISEMITIC. Just bc you did it to be an edgelord doesn’t change that!!!
Agreed. Nick Catoggio over at The Dispatch posted a good essay in which he wrote: "The term for jokes that aren’t quite jokes is “kidding on the square.” It was popularized years ago by yet another comedian who ended up in politics, Al Franken. 'Kidding on the square' is when you present an idea as a joke—but you mean it." https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/boilingfrogs/trump-trolling-seriously-literally-king/
i wake up and i check the news and there has been yet another rhinoceros rampage here in france. and the next day i talk to my friends and they think that's impossible, there aren't rhinoceroses in france. and the next day - am i really just going to condemn the rhinoceros phenomenon without even trying to understand it? and the next - that humanism is dead, that those who follow it are just old sentimentalists, that we have as much right to live as you humans do
Hey, John, I don't think there are ENOUGH typos. Make it longer, and angrier, with even more receipts. I want a higher typo count out of you next time, man. I will basically pay you a bounty for each typo if you do the above. I want to be barely able to decipher the next piece through all the nuclear fire of your excoriation. I want you to eventually reach a point where it's utter gibberish, but Hanania's (and the next target, and the next, and the next...) head explodes like in Scanners. If I can make out a name, then check the news to see reporting on these inexplicable, grisly mysteries, I will bequeath you my house.
What a takedown, thank you
Reminds me of a meme I remember from 4chan around the time when the Nazi bullshit went from annoying side show to the center stage. “Hide your power level” was some double entendre for gaming and white power. The usual thrust being, “Don’t let the PC police see the racism you are openly expressing here.”
Now X is 4chan circa 2016 thanks to Elon
Fwiw, I think Haninia is a cynical asshole and he is writing this to try to calm down more normie type conservatives, the corporate crowd that reads Bari Weiss. The basic thrust of her work is how the left is more extreme and dangerous than MAGA, and aren’t we so sensible for saying so. So damage control around the rampant Nazi salutes is essential to keep them on board.
This same group (that promised to abandon Trump after Jan 6) has been strung along with Elon Musk’s promises and involvement. But those seem to be wearing thin too. The most successful businessman in the world can’t be an actual Nazi, right? But he doesn’t appear to be actually doing what he says he would and this is becoming undeniable.
So I think Haninia is right in a sense. Their movement is coming apart because its revealing its true goals and intentions too quickly. The frog might actually jump out of the pot imminently
Good piece, but so many typos. I get that the topic is infuriating, but worth another pass through to clean them up.
Oh please, don't be a grammar nazi. Knocking out multiple pieces of writing on a regular basis will produce typos. None of them make the piece unreadable.
He's not being a grammar nazi. He's just trolling and embracing the aesthetics of a grammar Nazi.
I very nearly said something similar, but decided to engage in good faith.
I've made the same argument on another substack on which the author publishes several times each week, sometimes twice in one day. I appreciate the SUBSTANCE of their essays, so I see but am not dismayed by the STYLE (e.g., perfect grammar, etc.). I'm okay with a more informal style here because I value the content. These people have other obligations, and when they do publish in formal outlets, they employ all the elements of formal style.
I’m not talking about grammar. I am talking about misspelled words, missing punctuation, etc. Ganz is a big boy and a professional, and I assure you the publishers of his work employ copy editors to ensure his arguments are presented in the best possible light. Yes, everyone who writes prolifically will produce typos, and that’s why reading one’s work over before publishing it is a good practice. It helps make one’s argument stronger when there isn’t ambiguity about, say, where a quote from another person begins due to a missing open quotation mark.
"Uh my writing always has lots of typos because I hate proofreading lol" - https://substack.com/@johnganz/note/c-90560818
Evidently he don’t give af. He don’t need no proofreadin’.
https://x.com/lionel_trolling/status/1894439738561405012
Thanks, disappointing but informative.
"...people like Hanania have no place in respectable society."
Is there still such a thing as "respectable society"?
The whole project of wannabe *bien pensants* like Bari Weiss is to launder people like Hanania into respectable discourse, such as it is.
Ironic Nazism makes me think of someone ironically wearing, say, a Nickelback t-shirt. At the end of the day, whatever your motives, you're just wearing the t-shirt.
Also, what is up with this shit?
“As someone whose brain has undergone the same process as many on the right”
What in the hell does that mean? Why do these chuds always write like the brain is some kind of mystical, ensouled computer? (I know, it’s cause they’re Nazis….)
Because the brain is an organ that we know some things about and not others.
Stop talking like it is just the 21st century equivalent of a soul!
“Once again, anybody who reads the newspaper in the morning should know this: it was in the New York Times. “
Marshall McLuhan I ain’t but is has been on my mind for a while that the loss of the actual, physical newspaper is key to our current era.
To read the newspaper was, at least in theory, having to sit with an object and determine what the object as a whole has to say.
If I read the whole front page of NYT and peruse its pages I got a full idea of what the editors at that paper thinks is of importance and can judge it as a whole.
One can simulate or mock-up this experience by reading the NYT homepage and understanding, from one’s experience with physical papers, what pieces are op-Ed’s, what is branded content, what is reporting.
The atomization of that format via the internet means that a lot Americans have lost those mental muscles or never built them in the first place.
I guess to shorten my point, the Bannons of the world are betting that no one truly reads the paper anymore.
Well said, John! I wondered who this Hanania character was. Talk about damning oneself with one's own words. Plus he comes complete with the IQ ideology. Man, there's something about the siren song of DNA that these guys cannot resist, ever. I wonder which one is going to start wearing the regalia as a performative act? Forced to do so by the snowflake que ball wielders who are the only ones with true agency, forcing the poor right-wingers to do their bidding!
Well done. Hanania seems determined to try to put lipstick on the fascist sow he still tends to. Weiss, like so many others on the genteel Kahanist squad, has painted herself into a corner - once you go to bat for mass murder, you can’t really be out there calling people Nazis. Or rather, Nazis become “Nazis”.