Four years ago, Richard Hanania was a little-known right-wing intellectual, one of many posters building a brand with tweets and Substack posts attacking wokeness and other conservative bugbears. But in the middle of 2021, one of his ideas took off. In an article called Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law, Hanania argued that many issues conservatives worry about arent just cultural, but also stem from civil rights law and specifically from Executive Order 11246, an order signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 that requires most federal contractors to take affirmative action in their hiring. In 2023, Hanania expanded on the article in a book, The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics.That year, Hanania appeared on Vivek Ramaswamys podcast, where he talked to the then-presidential candidate about EO 11246 and suggested that the next Republican president should repeal it and replace it with an order banning affirmative action from government contractors. Ramaswamy said he liked the idea.On President Donald Trumps first day in office, he followed Hananias blueprint to the letter. I was happy, Hanania recently told Today, Explained co-host Noel King. I wasnt anybody special. I didnt have any reason to think anyone would listen to me. And eventually I saw the outcome that I wanted.This episode is not unique. Many Trump 2.0 decisions, from purging the federal workforce to re-hiring a DOGE employee who made racist comments online, have their origins in a small group of ring-wing intellectuals, what Voxs Andrew Prokop has called the very-online right. This group encompasses well-known figures like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, as well as posters like Hanania.Today, Explained co-host Noel King recently spoke with Hanania about his journey from anonymously posting racist and misogynist diatribes to wielding real political influence in the early days of Trumps second administration, and why hes now grown disenchanted with the movement that adopted his ideas. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. Listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.In the summer of 2023, you were a public intellectual. Youd been writing op-eds for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic. And then that August, the Huffington Post reported that years earlier youd written racist, misogynist posts on right-wing websites. Im going to read a couple of those here: For the white gene pool to be created, millions had to die. Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or a piece of art. Its shameful. Hispanic people dont have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first-world nation. You said Muslims cant assimilate because of genetic and IQ differences between them and native Europeans. And you suggested that people with low IQ might be sterilized. Were those sincere beliefs that you held?Yes. I cant lie to you and tell you that those werent sincere beliefs. Some of the ways I phrased it was sometimes getting a rise out of people. But I cant deny that I did hold those views. This, I should note, was around 2010, 2011. So by the time it came out of the Huffington Post, it was about 12, 13 years later. But, yeah, I had some views that I now consider repugnant, and [that] I was actually writing against, before that August 2023 exposition. What led to you holding those views?I think I was just young and angry. I saw these ideas that you couldnt talk about, certain things like male-female differences, the idea that America was a racist country, which I didnt believe at the time and I dont believe now, or at least racist enough to explain disparities between groups of people. I didnt like censorship. I didnt like a lot of the things that conservatives in later years would turn against, [like] DEI, which was at an early stage right there. And so I was angry. I was looking for people who were angry like me. And I think it was probably a lot of personal things going on in my life. By about 2012, 2013, I had sort of grown out of it, which I think often happens.In November of 2023, after the Huffington Post exposed you, you tweeted, people complain about Jews running America. Do they actually believe it should be run by the voters of Baltimore or Appalachia? Doesnt seem that anti-Semites have thought this through. So that was years after you were young.Well, I would make a distinction between that and the earlier stuff. Theres a long intellectual tradition of people not believing in a kind of naive form of direct democracy, going back to the American founders, to today and even before the American founders, going back to the ancient Greeks. I said Appalachians and inner-city Baltimore I was saying generally poor communities, which are on average less informed about politics and have views that might not be the most coherent about making policy. Bringing up the Jews in that context was defending Jews, saying, Accepting your premise, if Jews do control America, whats the alternative? They are disproportionately a smart, educated group of people. And I say smart, educated people having disproportionate power in society is a good thing. So I dont see that as as racist or hateful or anything like that. While those quotes you read at the beginning, I will grant you that those are things that I wouldnt stand by and nobody else should.By the summer of 2023, you had built a broad audience in both mainstream media and also on Twitter and Substack. What was the thrust of your main argument?I had an article which eventually turned into my book, The Origins of Woke, which argued that a lot of the cultural issues that conservatives were mad about a lot of the ideas about disparate impact, a lot of the ideas that, you know, you couldnt be hard on crime because it has an impact on one group of people more than the other group of people, or you couldnt have standardized tests or and so forth a lot of that was kind of baked into civil rights law. Not necessarily the text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but a lot of judicial interpretation and executive action that came in the years and decades that followed. So I was arguing that conservatives were upset about this thing they called DEI or wokeness, and they were seeing it as mainly a cultural issue. Oh, look at Target, look at the State Department, look at what theyre all doing. And my argument was [that] there is a policy agenda here that you can focus on.When did it become clear to you that this argument that you were making was resonating?It was right away. It was something that conservatives were already interested in and they needed to understand that there was a policy solution to the problems they were concerned about. Vivek Ramaswamy, when he was unknown before he was running for president, wrote a book called Woke, Inc. I reviewed it for a publication called American Affairs. I criticized it based on some of my ideas, that he didnt talk about civil rights law. We were concerned about the same things, but he didnt bring up the kind of history that I talked about here. He actually reached out and we started to be in touch based on that. I explained to him a lot of these things. I appeared on his podcast. He started talking about it. He started going on campaign stops later when he was running for president and saying, First day, I will repeal Executive Order 11246 [the law requiring affirmative action in federal contracting], and this was the executive order that I mentioned in my book that Johnson signed in 65. Trump actually gets into office and Trump does sign a repeal of Executive Order 11246. It does a lot of the other things that I recommended. So it was quite a journey where I think I played a role in putting these ideas on the map.What was the goal of ending 11246? What did you want to happen?Ending Executive Order 11246 was part of a broader project to take the government out of the idea that it should be taking consideration of race and sex, or enforcing such considerations onto the private sector, in terms of hiring, in terms of promotion. Theres perhaps a role for the government to play in terms of ensuring non-discrimination as discrimination was understood. The concept was understood in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed. But a lot of cultural changes within institutions were adopted as a defense against potential lawsuits and against potential loss of government contracts. So I wanted less DEI, less race- and sex-based governance, and less encouraging institutions to take positions that a lot of Americans dont agree with.Richard, was corporate America actually complaining? Because it seems like if you run a big American corporation [you] would look at the idea of diversity and would say, this is a good thing, because I want to sell things to American people and therefore having people within the company at a very high level who understand how to sell things to American people is a great thing. Its good if they come from all kinds of backgrounds.Well, thats true. I would respect business decisions on these things. If they want to have a program, thats one thing. But these were mandates coming from the government and also the subjects of lawsuits. And sure, you can say, I want to do market research on Hispanics, or maybe have someone in the room who knows something about womens products or things like that. I dont think that theres necessarily a strong correlation between that and, say, demographic balancing based on census categories. And I go into how the census categories were determined. Its kind of arbitrary, right? I mean, its like the government cares that you have a certain number of Blacks or Hispanics, they dont care if they are immigrants who just came here yesterday, or they are people who are culturally completely assimilated into the mainstream, as long as they have a Hispanic name. So there are good corporate reasons to sometimes take into account race, sex, cultural background. I dont deny that. I dont think that thats necessarily what civil rights law has been forcing on companies. The Trump administration did what you wanted. It eliminated DEI. And then it put Pete Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon, and Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, and Dan Bongino as the deputy director of the FBI. These gentlemen are not merit picks. And these are obvious examples. But this is why Americans who are skeptical of your argument will say, look, youre never really going to get merit. If we eliminate DEI, were going to go back to the president picks a guy who he thinks looks handsome on TV. Do you put any stock in that argument?Absolutely, Noel. Ive had some contacts with the Trump administration. I think one reason I have not been even closer to the Trump administration is that Ive been highly critical of a lot of the non-DEI-related actions that hes taken. I agree with you. I think some of these picks are certainly not merit-based. They dont even rise to the level of public decorum and ethics you often expect from someone whos going to be the FBI director or the head of the Department of Defense. I dont think those are the only two choices: DEI/race-based governance or people that Trump thinks looks good on TV. I think you could have a merit-based system that looks at people, takes them as individuals, takes into account their qualifications, takes into account what the president is trying to accomplish, and that has more responsible people in positions of power. Youve clearly become disenchanted with MAGA. You wrote a piece this week thats making the rounds. Its called Liberals Only Censor. Musk Seeks To Lobotomize. What happened, Richard?When it looked like Trump was going to be the nominee and he might be president, I wanted my ideas to be listened to, and I wanted them to do certain things. At the same time, I dont just write about DEI. I write about a wide range of topics. I say what I believe on those topics. I think theres a level of corruption here, a level of blatant sort of corruption to the way government is working that is unprecedented, at least in our recent history. I was always against social media censorship. I thought this was a way to suppress conservative voices. But then Elon Musk buys Twitter. Im happy. I say, Okay, were going to have free speech. And my goodness, its become a sewer! And I think that honesty and virtue and politics matter, and what Ive seen from the conservative movement, that Ive seen from MAGA, the conservative movement in general, as its become MAGA-fied, has just horrified me. And Ive felt the need to speak out about this.How do you feel about this movement that you are a part of, descending into what we have today?Im unhappy. We all know Trumps flaws. The first administration, though, we saw him surround himself with mostly responsible people. And so you can have a distaste for Trump and say, Look, hes still putting the same judges on the federal judiciary that DeSantis or in many cases, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush would have. And so you could say, Well, I dont like Trump, he can be sort of distasteful, but the movement is more than just Trump. Now, you cant really say that anymore. I mean, hes picking people who nobody would have believed it possible to have a high-level government position, like Robert F. Kennedy [Jr.], like Kash Patel. These are people who would only be chosen, appointed by Trump. The Trump administration, if youre just looking in terms of pure policy, theres a lot I like, theres no reason to be too upset there. But if youre looking at where the movement is going, [when it comes to] how political movements and how people in power should behave and act in their relationship to truth and the relationship to the rest of society, I think its gotten pretty bad. See More: