 | |
 Front page on 17 October 2010 | |
| Editor-in-chief | Will Chamberlain |
|---|---|
| Senior News Editor | Jeff Webb |
| Senior Editor | Jack Posobiec |
| Publisher | Jeff Webb |
| Founder | Felix Morley Frank Hanighen Henry Regnery |
| Founded | February 2, 1944; 81 years ago (1944-02-02) |
| Final issue | February 18, 2013 (print) |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Washington, D.C. |
| Language | English |
| Website | humanevents |
| ISSN | 0018-7194 |
| OCLC | 818923121 |
Human Events is anAmerican conservative political news and analysis website. Founded in 1944 as a print newspaper,Human Events became a digital-only publication in 2013.
Human Events takes its name from the first sentence of theUnited States Declaration of Independence: "When in the course of human events...".[1] The magazine was published inWashington, D.C., most recently by Eagle Publishing, the owner ofRegnery Publishing, a subsidiary of Phillips Publishing.Thomas S. Winter waseditor-in-chief and Cathy Taylor was editorial director of the print edition.[2] As of 2021, the website is co-published byJeff Webb and Will Chamberlain.
Human Events was founded in 1944 byFelix Morley,William Henry Chamberlin,Frank Hanighen, andHenry Regnery.[3][4][5] Morley was previously editor ofThe Washington Post from 1933 to 1940.[6] Regnery formerly worked for theResettlement Administration, aNew Deal-era federal agency.[4] In its early years,Human Events was "a small-circulation weekly news sheet concentrating on foreign policy," wrote George H. Nash inThe Conservative Intellectual Movement in American Since 1945.[3]Human Events had only 127 subscribers in its first year.[7]
Returning from a trip to Europe in 1949, Morley criticized theCold War, leading to disagreements with Hanighen and Regnery about combating Communism. After Hanighen and Regnery denied his proposal for sole editorial control of the magazine, Morley resigned asHuman Events editor in 1950, a move that Nash recounted as "[a]nother product of the friction betweenOld Right andNew Right."[8] In 1951,Frank Chodorov, former director of theHenry George School of Social Science[9] inNew York, replaced Morley as editor, merging his newsletter,analysis, intoHuman Events.[10]
By the early 1960s, Allan Ryskind (son ofMorrie Ryskind) and Thomas Winter had acquired the publication.[11] Contributors toHuman Events from the 1960s to the 1980s includedSpiro Agnew,James L. Buckley, Peter Gemma,Pat Buchanan,Ralph de Toledano,Russell Kirk,Phyllis Schlafly,Murray Rothbard andHenry Hazlitt.[12] By 1964, the circulation ofHuman Events surpassed 100,000 copies.[7] During thepresidency of Richard Nixon,Human Events became "perhaps the most influential conservative journal in the Washington political community," wrote Nash.[7] Other regular writers includedRobert Novak,Ann Coulter, Terence P. Jeffrey, and John Gizzi, its chief political editor. Contributors have includedSean Hannity,Newt Gingrich,Paul Craig Roberts,Cliff Kincaid, andPat Sajak.[citation needed]Newsweek reported that althoughHuman Events did not have a large readership outside the Washington D.C. area, "the tough little tabloid enjoys an impact out of all proportion to its circulation".[13]
Human Events backed US military intervention in theVietnam War; after the war ended, the publicationblamed American liberals for the collapse ofSouth Vietnam.[14]
In July 1985,Human Events gave qualified support toApartheid South Africa, describing the country as "a pro-Western bulwark that provides more in the way of freedom and wealth to its blacks than the vast majority of black African states".[15][16]Human Events also describedNelson Mandela as the main obstacle to peace in South Africa: "WhilePresident Botha is moving at a fast and furious pace to end the apartheid system, Mandela remains as adamant a revolutionary as ever. He's still a Marxist, still a man of violence, still a supporter of the Communist-runANC". It was not without sympathy for the plight of blacks under the system however, giving black power activistSteve Biko a thoughtful obituary. The perspective offered throughout was that Marxist rule in South Africa was the worst option, however bad others might be.[17]
Eagle Publishing placed the magazine up for sale in February 2013, when it announced that it would close the publication if no buyer could be found.[18] On February 27, 2013,Human Events announced that, after 69 years, it would halt publication of the print edition but would continue to maintain the websites HumanEvents.com andRedState with original reporting. Eagle Publishing, which acquired the magazine in 1993, said that it had been subsidizing the publication for several years but could no longer afford to do so: "the realities of the24-hour news cycle and the brutal economics of a weekly print publication have become insurmountable."[1]
Human Events printed 40,000 copies per week and had a staff of 15 full-time employees. A "restructuring" plan that involved layoffs had already been attempted but was insufficient to allow continuation of the print edition.[1]
In January 2014, Eagle Publishing was acquired bySalem Media Group.[19]
In March 2019, political writerRaheem Kassam and lawyer Will Chamberlain purchasedHuman Events from Salem Media Group for $300,000 with a view of returningHuman Events to regular online publication.[20][21] On May 1, 2019,Human Events was re-launched under the management of Kassam as Global editor-in-chief and Chamberlain as publisher.[22] On August 8, 2019,Human Events announced that Kassam was leaving the outlet, and the Editor-in-Chief responsibilities would be taken over by Chamberlain.[23]
In December 2020,Human Events announced thatJeff Webb, founder ofVarsity Spirit, had been appointed as co-publisher and senior news editor, and that Webb and his team would build a daily news platform.[20][24]
In May 2021,Human Events announced thatconspiracy theorist[30]Jack Posobiec had been hired as senior editor.[31] In May 2022,Human Events announced that it had acquiredThe Post Millennial, a Canadian conservative online news magazine.[20]
BiographerRichard Reeves wrote in 2005 thatHuman Events was formerU.S. PresidentRonald Reagan's "favorite reading for years".[32] A loyal subscriber since 1961,[11] Reagan said it “helped me stop being a liberal Democrat,”[33] calling it "must reading for conservatives who want to know what is really going on in Washington, D.C."[34] Reagan contributed some articles toHuman Events in the 1970s.[12] During the1980 presidential campaign, Democrats released a document entitled "Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator — An Exposé," in which, according to biographerLee Edwards, "among the proofs of Reagan's extremism was that he read the conservative weeklyHuman Events."[35] After Reagan's landslide win in the election, Reagan would occasionally write or call Winter or Ryskind.[11]
"Human Events, however, was no favorite of the new men around Reagan," writes Reeves. "Baker and Darman, and Deaver too, did their best each week to keep it out of the reading material they gave the President."[36] "When he discovered White House aides were blocking its delivery, President Reagan arranged for multiple copies to be sent to the White House residence every weekend," writes Edwards, who adds that Reagan took care "marking and clipping articles and passing them along to his assistants."[37]
Just before his 1982 tax hike, Reagan met with what he called "some of my old friends fromHuman Events" (he mentioned Ryskind andM. Stanton Evans),[38] who warned him about "disloyal"White House staff (in particularJames Baker) who favored making a deal on taxes with the Democratic Congress. (Reagan subsequently made such a deal, in which for each $1 in higher taxes Congress promised $3 in spending cuts. Ultimately, both taxes and spending increased.)[39]
At the 1986Reykjavík Summit, Reagan toldGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionMikhail Gorbachev that he could not give up theStrategic Defense Initiative because of "'the people who were the most outspoken critics of theSoviet Union over the years’—he mentioned his favorite paper,Human Events," according to Reeves, "‘They’re kicking my brains out’."[40]
{{cite magazine}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)There are also book-length treatments authored by far-right agitator Andy Ngo, and alt-right conspiracy-theorist Jack Posobiec, which both rely on the sensationalism of violence as their focus.
Aside from McInnes,The Rebel has employed several other figures whose views may be described as Alt-Right or Alt-Lite, including Lauren Southern, conspiracy theorist and pro-Trump political activist Jack Posobiec, and far-right Canadian political commentator Faith Goldy.
We classified the user as a conspiracy theorist, as they used words like 'Deep State' or retweeted content from well-known conspiracy theorists like Jack Posobiec.