How to handle MAGA exits

As the regime rounds out its first 100 days, I foresee a future wave of “I was wrong about Trump” discourse from public MAGAists and the openly MAGA-curious. This class of folks includes writers, bloggers, intellectuals, tech bros, and public figures who may or may not have outright endorsed Trump in 2024 but publicly expressed support for Trump and/or parts of his agenda.

Some folks that fall into this category:

Richard Hanania
Mark Zuckerberg
Jeff Bezos
Gary Tan
Marc Andreessen
Joe Rogan
Theo Vaughn
Dave Portnoy
Chamath Palihapitiya
Jason Calacanis
Bill Ackman
Peter Thiel
Lex Fridman
etc…

It’s hard to know exactly who in the MAGA and MAGA-curious will openly distance themselves from the movement; folks like Peter Thiel seem impossibly entangled in neo-fascist ideology, while others like Dave Portnoy aren’t particularly ideological and more vibe-driven. However, there are bound to be breakaways over the next four years as the regime continually asks people to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Richard Hanania is the first of these prominent figures to announce his turn, and his exit illuminates the potential structure of future MAGA exits, which has implications for how we handle them. Before diving into the structure, and how the non-MAGA public should respond to it, I’ll briefly answer the question:

Who is Richard Hanania?

Richard Hanania

Richard Hanania is a prominent right-wing thinker. He was affectionately called “The man who helped kill DEI” by Vox’s Today Explained Podcast. He gained real prominence in 2023, publishing a novel ‘The Origins of Woke’ where he argues that the origins of ‘woke ideology’ are chiefly the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and following judicial decisions and; the bulk of his political project sought the dismantling of civil rights as it relates to hiring in the federal government and the contractors working with the government. He is chiefly responsible for providing a policy agenda to MAGAists and cultural warriors who did not have a literal understanding of actual DEI policies.

He is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, and has since written that the Trump administration has enacted every recommendation that he makes in “Origins of Woke”. Examples include repealing Executive Order 11246 and ending disparate impact liability. In short, Hanania achieved the bulk of his anti-DEI project by way of Trump.

Some other interesting context a reader should know about Hanania:

Hanania used to write under the name “Richard Hoste” for white supremacist and neo-nazi sites until around 2011 while he was in his mid 20’s
He has since denounced these views, although many commentators point out that throughout his blog and twitter there is racism aplenty
He has deep ties to Silicon Valley and is close friends with Marc Andreessen

I’m undecided on whether I believe Hanania has moved on from his white supremacist viewpoints. On one hand, he denounces racism and dissects his old ways of thinking in blog posts; on the other hand, his policy agenda is repealing civil rights protections and he openly flirts with race science, which are things I would typically associate with white supremacy. So I won’t litigate whether or not he is still a white supremacist, but do want to point out that he is abundantly aware and has written at length about the prevalence of white supremacy in the MAGA movement

Additionally, understanding the tech shift rightward on social lines would not be complete without a deep dive on Hanania, however; the purpose of this piece is to look at Hanania’s MAGA exit. For context, Hanania endorsed Trump. In a substack post, he rationalized his support while simultaneously lamenting it. To sum up his justification:

Fundamentally, my main consideration is that economic growth is what matters. I care about freedom too, but that’s also partly a function of wealth … in this election, one side threatens democracy and the other threatens capitalism. My sympathy towards Republicans is based on my belief that capitalism is simply much more important, and also a lot more fragile

Readers of my previous post will recognize this kind of enlightened capitalist view that we find among the technologists and Wall Street financiers, a take that despite all the obvious problems with Trump and MAGA, economic gains are divine.

The problem I have with his justification, is it makes no mention of his DEI priorities, despite that being the entire topic of a book he wrote, as well as what he contributed to Project 2025. Does it not seem strange to write a piece about why you are voting for Trump that doesn’t touch on your entire political project?

On April 28th, Hanania walked back his Trump support in a substack post, and before this had been doing “a media tour on [his] Trump regret.” In the piece he outlines his issues with the Trump regime, and what he got wrong. Ultimately, Hanania had taken Trump’s potential economic strength seriously while discounting all the other crackpot ideas in the movement, from MAHA, to strict immigration enforcement.

However, he notes that his political project was largely completed by the Trump admin. He laments that he wanted to get rid of DEI and replace it with meritocracy, except what it’s being replaced with is worse:

Going after DEI is great, but instead of simply doing that, we have an administration demanding that MAGAs get more representation in the Harvard physics department, which would require affirmative action practiced at a level beyond anything we have ever seen before

Hanania clearly fails to grasp that these Civil Rights policies were intended to undo years of discrimination and bring talent that was previously excluded into the workplace. Folks in Trump’s administration have stated their goals outright of undoing DEI with white kakistocracy, for example, Darren Beattie, acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs:

Darren Beattie

For Hanania not to see this coming means he didn’t understand the Civil Rights policies that he was railing against, and that they’d had a positive impact on merit by fighting white supremacy in hiring (opening up applicant pools to untapped talent promotes merit, gee who would have thought?). It’s pretty wild that Hanania cannot make this connection, but alas, if he were to make this connection it would reveal him to have knowingly been promoting the policies of white supremacists (which he was).

Back on topic, so what should we make of Hanania’s Trump regret tour?

On one hand, it’s good to see former Trump supporters renounce their support and write about the issues within the regime and the MAGA movement; It’s particularly illuminating to read Hanania’s pieces, given his ex-neo-nazi perspective he can really shed light on just how dark things have gotten among MAGA’s intellectual and young capitol hill class. In this sense, one could imagine Hanania playing a role in deprogramming people who follow him.

On the other hand, Hanania, given his ex-neo-nazi perspective, has been abundantly aware this entire time of the moral rot and “low human capital” within MAGA and despite this, threw his support behind Trump for president. While he didn’t discuss it in his endorsement post, I’d imagine he chiefly threw support behind Trump to see his anti-DEI project carried out. In other words, Hanania was an opportunist.

Hanania’s exit may act as a template for future exits:

Admit support of Trump
Describe goal that was sought
Why this goal was noble
Why you had never anticipated how bad the regime would get
Point out what you find bad in the regime
Psychoanalyze yourself
Bonus: Blame the libs for your own moral failings

We are going to see a wave of MAGA exits, maybe Zuck will be next, or maybe Portnoy, and maybe we could even hold out hope for Ben Shapiro. It may not just be political figures, but people in your personal life, which begs the question:

How should we respond to people that exit MAGA?

An emotional reaction:

From a political pundit perspective, opportunists like Hanania need to be ejected into the sun (conditionally). Attaching yourself to a fascist movement in order to achieve your political aims – whether they be as repugnant as repealing civil rights protections or as noble as fighting climate change – can never be lived down. These folks must be barred from the public square, and when they intrude into it, they must be dressed down, accosted for their opportunism.

What do you call someone who supported fascism but begrudgingly because they thought it would be good for the economy? A fascist.

What do you call someone who supported fascism but not all of it, only one part? A fascist

In a liberal democracy, supporting fascism is a near unforgivable sin and repentance must be eternal. If these figures dare enter the public square, the “marketplace of ideas”, and fighting fascism is not a core part of their political project, they must be thrown into the bottomless chasm of irrelevance.

While cathartic, that’s not constructive, anyway, here is a more measured reaction:

Supporting and exiting a fascist movement is better than supporting and NOT exiting a fascist movement, so we should really encourage people to exit and intuitively this means welcoming people back with open arms when they decide to exit. However, opportunists will exploit this loophole to attach themselves to fascist movements and seek forgiveness when they exit.

We’d like to encourage exit, while also discouraging fascist opportunists from taking advantage of forgiveness. So our forgiveness must be conditional; conditional on fighting fascism.

To those who genuinely supported MAGA and exit, I imagine that fighting fascism will come naturally, as many ex-cultists often find when they exit their cults, and I don’t expect that an expectation of fighting fascism will put an undue burden on folks we’d like to encourage to exit.

As for opportunists, the burden of fighting fascism for the rest of their life probably outweighs whatever they seek to gain from supporting fascism, and hopefully this would discourage would-be-opportunists from ever actually joining the movement.

My takeaway:

Have that emotional reaction in a journal, but ultimately, we need people to exit and fight fascism, so with these public figures we need to take a more measured response. Hanania and his ilk can avoid being thrown into the sun, as long as they spend the rest of their days fighting fascism.