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I haven't checked any of the claims HuffPo makes but I'd be surprised if they were false, based on what the article contains. Interestingly enough, the claim that Hanania was Hoste had appeared on random replies to his tweets for a long time. Searching on twitter, the claim, as far as this one search goes, appeared on November 2022 here, getting 3k likes.
I'm confident he won't disappear, pretty sure he won't deny. I lean a bit towards ignore over own, he seems to enjoy the retweets he gets from people like Steven Pinker, he co-hosts a podcast with Inez Stepman who's a more mainstream conservative, which I think makes ignoring feel like a better option. Although Hanania's bluntness and contrarianism could lean towards owning / mentioning it so idk. Maybe we'll get a Reflections On My Past As A White Supremacist or something.
His book, The Origins Of Woke, comes out in Sep 19, published by HarperCollins. Will they kill that deal? He can just publish the book elsewhere if they do, so it'd be more annoying than anything else.
If there is significant public backlash to this, e.g. the book cancellation, it'd be a fun demonstration of how random social media politics is. There's a lot of slack in who gets cancelled, it's not an "efficient market". Everyone involved is acting on narrow, local incentives - 'cancellers' are either actually Offended or just trying to write pieces that'll get attention, corporations or individuals who cut ties with 'cancelled' people are just trying to avoid shame, etc. This isn't what it would look like if there was some competent and efficient conspiracy trying to suppress right-wing views. (said suppression does happen and is still bad, but it's very distributed and unplanned and there are way more unnecessary self-owns than there would be if I ran it.)
Hanania is yet another example of how far-right ideas and individuals genuinely are mixing with the more mainstream GOP. Even if you dislike nazis, this isn't necessarily bad - maybe Hanania is the right-wing equivalent of the college socialist who tames his radicalism and becomes a neoliberal, keeping the good motivations and ideas of his youth and throwing out the bad. But that is happening, "trump staffers who read BAP", etc.
Hanania seems pretty uniquely vulnerable to cancel culture because he’s blue tribe, just with far right beliefs. On a deep and fundamental level the opinions of fellow blues matter to him in a way that red triber’s don’t. This isn’t about his actual business model, which isn’t very cancellation vulnerable, but this isn’t Matt Walsh or somebody who genuinely doesn’t care if the NYT blacklists him from writing op Ed’s.
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