About Christian Hanley

Hi there! My name’s Christian Hanley. I’m a lifelong writer both personally and professionally, and now I’m a first-time author.

In my day job, I’m a communications and public relations professional, mostly for advocacy organizations. When you see an ad about a candidate or an issue, catch a news segment about a rally, or see an elected leader giving a speech about something going on in our society, that’s the sort of stuff I work on. It’s not all campaigns and elections and it’s not all partisan attack ads. I also do a lot of work that crosses old party lines for unions and other organizations who are standing up for everyday people regardless of party affiliation.

That’s what has made my work so interesting. Every day, I get to help leaders find common ground in unexpected places. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, the answer is going on offense and getting bad people out of positions of power where they can hurt others. More frequently though, I see progress being made where some of the people you would least expect are invited to sit at the table and unlikely alliances are formed.

Over the past few years, I’ve been working on a book on how to talk to the people in our lives who have maybe lost interest in having productive conversations and have begun falling down the rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories. Now, plenty of us love a good conspiracy theory, and just about everyone has a favorite few they like to trot out with close friends. This time in our history is unique, however. Conspiracy theories, untruths, propaganda, and outright alternate realities have gone from the dregs of the internet to the mainstream and now to the White House and Congress. If we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s not just idiots who believe them, but often highly educated people who have been fed falsehoods that align with their worldviews.

There are plenty of books on conspiracy theories and where they come from. I’ve read them and even spoken to a widely acclaimed author of one of them while researching my own book. The infiltration of the American mind by foreign propaganda has likewise been thoroughly documented by people with national security experience that I lack, such as Barbara McQuade and Malcolm Nance. Their writing has informed my work, but I wouldn’t dream of trying to recreate it. Then there are books on cults and cult deprogramming, especially those by the nation’s foremost expert, Steven Hassan, and I’ve studied those as well.

It’s undeniable that a large portion of the United States is trapped in a cult of personality and its rise to prominence has been fueled by several sources, including disinformation campaigns and an ascendant reactionary pop culture typified by the terminally online manosphere. Still, plenty of people succumb to these influences without becoming devotees. Their being persuaded by falsehoods and conspiracies should give us hope, however, rather than despair. It means that they can be reached, we just need to learn how to do it. So, I spoke to experts on interpersonal relationships, workplace communication, political strategy, cognitive biases, class dynamics, and more to develop a guide on how to have the tough conversations and help to bring the people in our lives back from the brink.

None of that is to say I’ve got it all figured out. In fact, I researched and wrote this book because I didn’t have the answers. It’s one thing for me to develop a communications plan to reach an abstract audience from behind my computer screen. It’s quite another to learn a skills set that combines insights from fields as varied as couples therapy, campaigning, and scientific research.

My book contains some backstory that the most politically involved and well read readers may have already heard a hundred times, and I’m sure there are some tips in those pages that will be immediately familiar to those who have done their time in therapy. If, however, you’ve reached a dead end with someone in your own life who you know is not beyond saving or you are still ready to hit the roof when someone you know to be reasonable starts saying that Marianne Williamson or RFK, Jr. have some good points, I hope this will be a worthwhile read for you.

I undertook this work because I’ve seen the mesmerizing effect that disinformation and conspiracy theories can have on individuals and families, and because I believe it’s our shared responsibility to help our loved ones keep a foothold in reality. Our shared reality is breaking down, and we need to do all we can to restore it if we’re going to have a country and a planet worth passing along to our children and grandchildren. That doesn’t mean trying to force people to believe something they never will or going around saying we’re always right, and it certainly doesn’t mean getting people to change their worldview. I have friends and family from different backgrounds across the political spectrum and know that there is a difference between someone being more liberal or more conservative versus someone believing in an alternate reality. That is the issue we need to address – along with preserving relationships.

So that’s a little about me and a little bit more about my forthcoming book. Before getting into this line of work, I earned my J.D. from the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. and my B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Because of all this work and the fact that I like talking about it all in more than one language, I sometimes get invited to discuss it on American, Canadian, and European TV news outlets. You’d think with all that I would know how to break through to people and have these tricky conversations, but no! That’s why I spent so much time researching and talking to the real experts.

When I’m not working or writing or both, I enjoy barbecuing and working in the garden because I’m a dad and apparently that’s what we all do once we hit a certain age. We also have two crazy dogs, both Hound mixes, who drive me nuts but keep me moving, no matter the workload I’ve got or the weather outside. Throughout all the working, researching, and writing, my amazing and supportive group of friends have kept me grounded and reminded me to not take it all too seriously.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll take a moment now to sign up for my Substack so we can stay in touch. I’ll continue to post here as we move closer toward the book’s release.

-Christian