As we speak, the gears are shifting and the attempt to disengage from Tyler Robinson and his clique of transgender gamers is gathering steam. Claire Lehman:
And now here’s Richard Hanania, who has moved from groyper to sensible centrist skeptic to leftist with breathtaking speed. If you want to know which way the wind is blowing, while getting your head spun in two different directions, read Hanania.
On September 10, before Tyler Robinson was identified, he wrote this post.
This particular quote rankled me:
Beyond that, I don’t think individual political assassinations have anything to tell us about our politics. These are stochastic events. This is a country of 350 million people, and widely available firearms. Some of our fellow citizens are insane, like in any country, and if you’re a public figure, one of the risks you face is that an unstable individual might come after you.
My immediate reaction was that he misused the word “stochastic”—but I wasn’t sure, so I looked it up and wrote an unflattering quote. Here’s the definition:1
Stochastic, outside its strict scientific or mathematical context, is often used to describe events that are random in occurrence but statistically inevitable over time. In other words:
Individually unpredictable, but
Collectively foreseeable given certain conditions or inputs.
We had an exchange on Substack Notes about the word, in which I wrote, “Assassinations aren’t stochastic. What’s stochastic is the exact moment the trigger gets pulled.” His first reaction was a feeble attempt at bullying: “Nope you’re in over your head here.”
Because I am not Richard Hanania, I subsequently admitted that I wrote hastily and incorrectly. I don’t change notes after the fact to save face. I could, but I won’t.
So again, I was wrong to write “Assassinations aren’t stochastic.” I corrected my error in an answer in Notes.
But let’s analyze the post itself, The “Left” Did Not Kill Charlie Kirk. (BTW, I’m not saying at this point that “the left” killed Kirk. I’m simply exposing Hanania’s bad writing and flimsy logic.)
Hanania opens his piece on the assassination of Charlie Kirk with a bold claim: political assassinations tell us nothing about our politics. These are stochastic events.2
But if you keep reading, you’ll notice that most of the essay is devoted to proving the opposite. He argues that Trump is a uniquely toxic political figure, that his followers can never claim civility, and that America’s lax gun laws explain why these kinds of tragedies occur here more often than elsewhere. All of that is political analysis — exactly what he just told us assassinations don’t warrant.
This is the central contradiction: Hanania begins with “no meaning here, just random noise,” and then immediately builds a case for what the event means.
Stochastic doesn’t mean meaningless. It means you can’t predict the exact event — the particular shooter, the moment the trigger is pulled. But you can describe the conditions that make such events likely. That’s why we study things. We can’t predict the individual case, but we can analyze the environment that produces them.
Political assassinations are no different. You can’t predict who the next gunman will be, but you can observe that political figures are disproportionately targeted, that American gun culture amplifies the risk, and that partisan rhetoric supplies motives. That is politics.
By calling assassinations “stochastic,” Hanania tries to sweep away the messy question of political meaning. But then he re-politicizes the event to dunk on Trump and the right.
If assassinations are random, then Trump’s rhetoric is irrelevant.
If Trump’s rhetoric is relevant, then assassinations aren’t just stochastic accidents.
He wants the insulation of statistical language without giving up the polemical opportunity.
There’s an honest version of his argument: Trump is an inciter and a buffoon, his movement is reckless with words, and in a heavily armed society those words can spill into violence. That’s a defensible position.
But that’s not what Hanania says. He claims these events “tell us nothing about our politics,” while simultaneously using them to tell us everything he wants to say about Trump, conservatives, and gun laws..
Hanania’s essay collapses under the weight of its own contradiction: either political assassinations are meaningless accidents (whatever the hell you want to call them), or they’re proof of systemic rot. He tries to say both, and ends up saying neither convincingly.
I’ve noticed this problem with Hanania from the start. He’ll begin with a sweeping statement, start strong, and then somewhere the thread from the cheap suit comes loose.
Now, let’s talk about Tyler Robinson, shall we?
Later.
I can just see Hanania now, sneering at me for having to look up a word. Yeah, guys, I do look up words if I’m not 100% sure what they mean.
Again, distorting and misusing the word “stochastic.” He simply meant “random.”
He’s at his best when his work is well researched, long form, or when he’s speaking in person/on video. He’s at his worst when he’s off the cuff or tweeting. It feels like two different people! It’s when he’s most contrarian, attention seeking, and snarky. When you read vs watch him talk it’s genuinely difficult to imagine some of the shit he says online coming out of his mouth on stream; on steam he’s affable, polite, and argues in good faith. He’s none of these things in twitter/substack notes and I think he just gets off on being this way. He thinks people on the right hate him because he’s unafraid to speak truth (and there are lots of people like that to be fair) but a large amount of it is because he just acts like an asshole to everyone he disagrees with.
The proof of the moral rot of Trump and his movement is not dependent on any particular assassination, so I did not do what you said.