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The Origins of Woke has not become a best seller. As of this writing, the top non-fiction book on both the Publishers Weekly and NYT best sellers lists is The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark R. Levin. While I haven't read Levin's book, I'm sure it's as disposable as any other political tract by a Fox News host, while The Origins of Woke is legitimately the most important conservative book of the last 20 years.
Argument: It's not selling well because of the Huffington Post article that exposed his old blog posts to the masses. Counterargument: Conservatives are the target market, and they tend not to "cancel" people over things like this.
Argument: It's not selling more copies because the name is cringe. Counterargument: Donald J. Trump Jr's book "Triggered" became a best seller.
Argument: It's not selling more copies because Hanania isn't a celebrity. Counterargument: Andy Ngo doesn't host anything or do many public appearances, but his book was still a best-seller.
I don't care whether Hanania is personally successful, but I really, really want the ideas in this book to gain widespread recognition. Hanania offers provide a plausible-enough plan to defeat not only wokeness, but also all of the ideologies that have gained popularity in the wake of Conservative Inc's failure to stop wokeness, including white nationalism and NRx. Speaking as a former white nationalist (or whatever you wanna call VDare readers), people with moderate temperaments adopt extreme beliefs because the mainstream hasn't offered any believable alternative.
Ben Shapiro says that we should just argue people into adopting our views because it'll suddenly work, even though we've been trying for years and it hasn't worked. Peter Brimelow says we should close the border and have white babies. Curtis Yarvin says that we should put a dictator in charge, or at least whatever FDR was. Caldwell says that we should repeal the Civil Rights Act, even though it's as much a part of our national identity at this point as the Constitution.
Hanania's proposal is essentially a modification of Caldwell's that takes political realities into account. Instead of repealing the Civil Rights Act, we should just re-interpret it in an originalist light and repeal the modifications made in the decades afterwards.
I can't say for certain why this book isn't making bank, but I theorize that it has to do with the fact that no mainstream conservative figure like a Ben Shapiro or a Steven Crowder has reviewed it or interviewed him. They're ignoring him, even though his politics are totally aligned with theirs, because they don't want to platform someone who was once a racist. National Review hasn't even reviewed The Origins of Woke.. and they reviewed Christopher Caldwell's Age of Entitlement!
So, here are three questions I have in no particular order.
It hasn't worked in the sense that views critical of wokeness have not come to dominate society. However, it has worked in the sense that it has successfully convinced probably millions of people to be critical of wokeness who otherwise would not have. In short, critics of wokeness would be doing worse if they were not trying to argue people into adopting their views. Arguing people into their views so effectively that their views would come to dominate society is probably just an unrealistic goal.
As for Hanania's book, I doubt that more than a small fraction of his target book-buying audience knows about his past alter ego. Probably people, even those who are curious about questions of wokeness, do not spend enough time in online political spaces to have heard of it. Likewise, I doubt that most of the target audience follows Hanania on Twitter and is aware of the many ways in which he makes fun of right-wingers.
I think that his book is probably just selling/not selling for the same reasons as why other similar books sell or do not sell.
I think that the title is alright but not great. It is kind of boring, but it is not a turn-off. I doubt it moves the needle much one way or the other.
It's also possible that the book's fortunes will improve over time. This has happened to, for example, many movies.
Note: I have not actually read the book, I just like reading Hanania's online stuff from time and enjoy how he makes both left-wingers and right-wingers seethe. I'm not on board with all of his ideas, either. For example, lately he has been going on a tear of supporting free-market solutions, but I have some doubts that this approach would have been the best way of resolving the Great Depression. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, however.
Has it though? Because I haven’t seen a widespread rejection of Woke beyond the already hostile conservative base. He’s basically a cheerleader as most public debaters and podcast personalities are— if you already agree, he is the guy who tells you you are right. But Shapiro and other debaters rarely get in front of normies let alone the woke left in order to be heard.
If we start the story with the beginning of the Great Awokening in c. 2012, then the orthodox left (actual Marxists like Freddie de Boer) starts pushing back against woke-stupid almost immediately - the first famous left-wing anti-woke essay is Exiting the Vampire Castle in November 2013 (which, incidentally, defends Russell Brand from charges of sexism - that didn't age well) - i.e. less than 2 years in. FdB was already blogging from a woke-sceptical left-wing perspective at that time, but he wasn't famous. Will Shetterly wrote Social Justice Warriors - do not engage - a book-length attack from the left on the woke-stupid take over of science fiction fandom - in 2014 in response to RaceFail. (I think the use of SJW as a perjorative probably traces back to Shetterly via Vox Day and Gamergate, but I am not sure). And 2016 vintage Bernie promotes a class-first leftism that is at least implicitly anti-woke, and is treated as such by wokists. Within the establishment left, Jonathan Haidt has been warning about this sort of thing since day one, and Matthew Yglesias has been openly heterodox on multiple occasions. The Harpers letter in 2020 may be the first time that left-wing opposition to woke-stupid makes the establishment listen.
If you go back to the 1990's era Political Correctness, then left-wing pushback against woke-stupid was very normal. You have Democratic presidential candidates and British Labour leaders publically calling out far-left PC idiocy in order to win elections.
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