Why Populism Ends in Disaster with Richard Hanania

Richard Hanania is a political scientist and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. He spent about a decade as one of the most influential voices on the online right — first writing pseudonymously in the alt-right, later as one of the intellectual influences on the Silicon Valley tech right. Then he watched his own ideas take power, and changed his mind.

His new book is Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster. Kakistocracy is Greek for rule by the worst. The argument inside it is one very few people are willing to make right now: that Western elites are not overrated but underrated, and that our institutions work far better than we give them credit for.

Zoe and Richard get into Australia's populist surge, what actually makes someone an elite, the backlash against skilled immigration and the H-1B fight in the States, whether Sydney's housing crisis is really about immigration, and what frightens him most — which turns out to have a lot to do with fertility.

Also: is Zoe an elite? Are you? There's a test.

00:00 Who is Richard Hanania

02:27 The case that elites are underrated

04:50 What actually makes someone an elite

07:04 Do people care about the truth?

08:45 When federal bureaucrats became shitposters

09:38 Populism as rule by the id

11:33 Australia's populist surge

15:57 The awkward part: immigration