Victor Davis Hanson

[[File:Victor Davis Hanson.jpg|thumb|right|165px|You see his face and start fearing for your term mark.]]{{pundits}}
'''Victor Davis Hanson''' {{Lived|1953}} is a retired [[United States|American]] historian turned pundit. He is an expert on ancient warfare and a professor emeritus of classical studies.<ref name=tempest>Rone Tempest, [http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/25/local/me-hanson25 Right Way to Farm the Classics]. ''Los Angeles Times'', 25 February 2004.</ref> During his academic career from 1985 to 2004, he founded a classics program at California State University Fresno and published a few well-respected studies on ancient Greek farming and warfare with academic journals and university presses.  But beginning in the 1990s, he also published a series of angry books and articles with titles like ''Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom'' and ''Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Ideal''.  These expressed his decidedly [[Conservative#United States|conservative]] or reactionary views on, well, everything, really. In 2004, he retired as professor emeritus to [[wingnut welfare|focus on his political writing and speaking]].<ref name=tempest /> This lets him present himself as a respected scholar to the public, while not submitting his ideas to peer review, marking endless Latin exams, or engaging with advances in knowledge since 2004.<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/44834999/Citation_Scores_for_Greco_Roman_Historians_in_North_America_2019_with_2021_update_ Citation Scores for Greco-Roman Historians in North America, 2019 (with 2021 update)] After 2003, his only academic publications are a chapter in the 'Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare' (published 2007) and a chapter in a conference proceedings called 'Men of Bronze' published in 2013.  In 2019, ancient historian Walther Scheidel listed Hanson among influential "scholars who ... have since largely (though not necessarily entirely) moved on to other areas of specialization (than ancient history)" and noted his "**early** record of research in ancient history" (ie. his frequently cited academic publications from the 1980s and 1990s)</ref>  

Of course, he has decided that knowing a lot about [[classical antiquity]] means [[Ultracrepidarianism|he knows everything about everything]].  He has written books proclaiming that it was the power of ancient Greek culture that led to Western [[Imperialism|hegemony]] over the rest of the world (explicitly rejecting geographical/environmental factors, for example). He proudly proclaims the vast superiority of Western culture and how it will always triumph, while at the same time constantly fretting over its possible decline due to the lack of classics education since the [[good old days]].  Much like [[Noam Chomsky]] or [[Jordan Peterson]], he uses past academic glories to give his punditry authority.

The archetypical example, and arguably Hanson's claim to fame, is his voluminous [[cherry picking]] foray into military history, entitled {{wpl|Carnage and Culture|''Carnage and Culture''.}} This is an interesting pre-[[9/11]] [[Neoconservatism|neocon]] triumphalist ode to a particularly US [[conservative]] conception of "[[The West]]", its characteristics and virtues, dressed up as a sort of {{wpl|longue durée}} perspective on historical armed clashes between "The West and The Rest". Following 9/11 the book immediately gained new popularity as "evidence" of why "we" would beat "them" into a bloody pulp and win in [[Afghanistan War|Afghanistan]] and [[Iraq War|Iraq]] and events clearly have demonstrated both the salience of his central thesis and the quality of Hanson's scholarship.

He also is a constant contributor to the ''[[National Review Online]]''. From that perch, he has consistently banged the (oil) drums for war, both in [[Iraq War|Iraq]] and [[Iran]], while at the same time expressing his extreme ignorance of modern warfare. For example, upset that [[Barack Obama]] had apparently turned against the idea of "victory", he attempted to write an article expressing that victory was not an obsolete concept, even in the "[[War on Terror]]".<ref>Victor Davis Hanson, [http://global.nationalreview.com/article/229109/victory-how-quaint-idea-victor-davis-hanson Victory - How Quaint an Idea!,] ''National Review'', February 10, 2010</ref> However, what Obama was talking about (a formal end to war done with a peace treaty signed by representatives of both [[Government|governments]] that can be seen and immediately recognized by the entire world) is not at all what Hanson tries to put forward as victory conditions. Instead, he puts forward three very amorphous "victory" conditions that would be very arguable, even if they were possible. At the same time, however, he sets as his goals things that are not fully within the power of the [[United States]] to achieve, as these goals rely heavily on decisions made by non-enemy governments and domestic constituencies within the US. In short, he is attempting to put a [[state]]-based concept onto a much more amorphous situation, and failing to see how it doesn't line up.

And this, in essence, is how Hanson approaches all of [[politics]]: He looks back to [[history]] (usually [[Greece]] or [[Roman Empire|Rome]]) for something he feels is vaguely analogous, and [[Shoehorning|tries to make them fit]].<ref>An example: [http://www.hoover.org/research/mob-coming-you The Mob Is Coming For You,] ''Hoover Institution'', September 30, 2015</ref>  When he refuses to carry his arguments far enough to please people even further on the right such as [[F. Roger Devlin]],<ref>F. Roger Devlin, [https://web.archive.org/web/20190223033450/http://www.toqonline.com/archives/v3n4/TOQv3n4Devlin.pdf The Case of Victor David Hanson: Farmer, Scholar, Warmonger]. ''The Occidental Quarterly'', v3n4, Winter 2003/2004. Archived from toqonline.com.</ref> it is usually because he identifies ideas such as [[racialism]] with Nazis and Confederates and Nazis or Confederates as the opposite of Americans. If he compares someone to his favorite bad guys, he usually decides that anything they do is wicked, while if he compares them to his favorite good guys, he finds ways to justify their behavior.

Hanson remained a major [[George W. Bush]] fan boy in 2013, writing that "his tenure was without corruption", calling Bush a "[[centrist]]", and going so far as to say he may be "a model ex-president".<ref>Victor Davis Hanson, [http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/346623/bushs-warranted-rehabilitation-will-come-victor-davis-hanson Bush's Warranted Rehabilitation Will Come,] ''National Review'', April 25, 2013</ref> Apparently, any day now historians will recognize Bush as another under-appreciated [[Harry Truman]]-like president and soon he will rise through the historical rankings of presidents. Yep, any day now... still waiting... but it'll come... any day now... Whereas his early writing admired small farmers and enlisted men, his writing after 2001 embraces heroic male commanders like Themistocles and David Petraeus (''The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq'', 2013).

With [[Donald Trump]] in the White House, Hanson once again demonstrated his loyalty to any kind of Republican POTUS by framing the problem as one of Democratic obstruction and Republican infighting,<ref>Victor Davis Hanson, [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449874/donald-trump-his-critics-attacks-must-stop Trump's Circular Firing Squad], ''National Review'', July 27, 2017</ref> rather than a problem with Trump, by calling Trump a good "wrecking ball" and claiming that the Democrats and Obama were much worse,<ref>Victor Davis Hanson, [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448562/donald-trump-ironies-wrecking-ball-long-overdue-may-benefit-country The Endless Ironies of Donald J. Trump], ''National Review'', June 13, 2017</ref> and even trying to defend Trump's "government by tweet" antics.<ref>[http://www.npr.org/2017/07/08/536125090/in-defense-of-trumps-tweets In Defense Of Trump's Tweets], ''[[NPR]]'', July 8, 2017</ref> Hanson also continued to wreck whatever is left of his professional reputation by joining Trump’s ludicrous {{wpl|1776 Commission}} and continuing to defend [[The 1776 Report|its final report]], despite it being trashed by pretty much every historian who read it. In 2019 he published a book on ''The Case for Trump'' in time for his hero to catastrophically fail to handle [[COVID]], lose reelection, and encourage the [[2021_U.S._coup_attempt|January 6 coup attempt]].  <ref>Gabriel Schoenfeld, [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/sophistry-in-the-service-of-evil Sophistry in the Service of Evil], ''The Bulwark'', March 7, 2019</ref> Nevertheless, there are still depths that not even Hanson will stoop to, even in the era of Trump’s second administration, and he thus publicly countered and rebuked Nazi apologist {{wpl| Darryl Cooper (historian)|Darryl Cooper,}} following the latter’s infamous interview with [[Tucker Carlson]].<ref>[https://www.thefp.com/p/victor-davis-hanson-the-truth-about Victor Davis Hanson: The Truth About World War II,] The Free Press, September 5, 2024</ref> Sadly, the criticism of Cooper by Hanson (and plenty of others) wouldn’t keep [[Joe Rogan]] from hosting Cooper at his podcast six months later.

==References==
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Categories: California, Chickenhawks, Declinists, Historians, Political pundits, Living people, Neoconservatives, Political pundits, Racists, Right-wing activists