#2743: Hannah Pearl Davis

Though we don’t have the attention span to sit through confused TikTok and YouTube videos, it’s hard to avoid to, at some point, notice the existence of Hannah Pearl Davis, or, as she is known online, JustPearlyThings. Davis is a genuinely stupid wingnut activist who rose to prominence (in part because a lot of TikTok users are suckers idolizing mediocre extremist conspiracy theorists who, like themselves, are genuinely stupid and angry) in the manosphere due to her criticism of the perceived censorship of Andrew Tate and due to her general rantings about “feminism”. Davis was banned from TikTok in 2022, but is, as far as we can tell, still present on YouTube. She also runs the Pre-Game Show podcast.

As a self-declared “anti-feminist” activist, Davis has indeed frequently been described as 'the female Andrew Tate'. She claims that “women should not vote” and that “the courts, the legal system, all of society is basically pandering and simping for women.” In an attempt to clarify her views, she also tried to argue that “only five per cent of women wanted the right to vote” and that “if feminists want the right to vote, right, then it should come with the draft”, and seems as unaware about the status of the draft as she is about most other things going on around her. She also thinks that divorce should be illegal (“tHAt’s JuST mY OpIniOn”).

 

And as with a lot people with the inclinations and mental abilities of Pearl Davis, things quickly ended up in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Indeed, her video (since deleted) in which she performed her song “Why Can’t We Talk About the Jews?" (including phrases like “Now I'm not saying Hitler was a good guy, but I just wanna know why” and “now there’s all these conspiracy theories, and the more they talk, I think maybe they're right”) seems to have made even erstwhile fans somewhat uneasy. In an interview with Piers Morgan (an erstwhile fan who was not impressed with said video), Davis tried to claim that the song was about cancel culture and free speech rather than anti-Semitism – though she also asserted that “I don't really have a strong opinion either way” about the Holocaust. Then she claimed that Piers Morgan was censoring her by criticizing her. Ironically, Davis often claims that she just wants to have all claims on the table for debate; as she amply demonstrates everywhere else, however, she doesn’t really mean debate; Davis has no aptitutde for or wish to engage in debate.

 

She also, probably unaware that it is relevant to judgments about the state of her anti-semitism, praised Nick Fuentes: according to Davis, Fuentes is a “good person” and based on looking at his Wikipedia page before having him on her show, she didn’t believe he was antisemitic or racist, despite Fuentes explicitly denying the Holocaust and promoting white supremacism. (Her reasoning seems to be based on the currently popular reasoning pattern “I agree with X; I am a good person (presupposition); racism is somehow associated with being a bad person; hence, X is not racist”)

 

Diagnosis: Ultimately, Davis is possibly best categorized as an extension of the boogaloo movement and the post-truth movement popularized the last decade or so: She’s just saying stuff, without the slightest care about facts or reason, and without recognizing why facts and reason matter to the topics she discusses – partially because she seems unable to grasp facts or employ reason. And her popularity is unsurprising, insofar as a lot of people share those traits and are desperate to sympathize with and pander to someone who shares their ineptitude for and dislike of details, fact-checking, consistency or serious analysis, and someone who can help channel their rage at “elites”, i.e. those who do care about and are able to engage with such things.