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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.
Build a parallel status economy.
Every social system should either work for us or not work at all. Actively attack enemy-held institutions by any means necessary.
reject and subvert systems that work against our interests. Deny their power, hamper their operations, refuse their legitimacy, appropriate or destroy their resources.
Focus on outcomes, not process. Process is for coordinating cooperation, and that is not a thing our present society is capable of maintaining.
The goal should be a breakdown of federal authority, and acceleration in the decay of existing systems of social control such as the media ecosystem, educational system, academia generally, the courts, and the federal bureaucracy. Delegitimizing these institutions in the eyes of as much of the public as possible is a good first step.
Ive seen several of these types of posts from you but this time I feel compelled to say something. The motte seems to be one very rare place where people on the left and right can engage in intellectual cooperation with some semblance of a shared set of principles. These polemics against perceived enemies on the left, in a tone so radical and final, is just shitting on the public good here. Given what you've written here it's obviously pointless for anyone who might disagree to engage with you.
I cannot fathom why the community tolerates this kind of thing; certainly it would never tolerate any naked calls for the explicit demolition of conservative power structures from anyone left of center.
A shared set of rules has, unfortunately, never implied a shared set of principles.
I think @FCfromSSC is being obtuse, and that accelerationism is one of the least useful philosophies known to man. Choosing defection over cooperation is the strategic equivalent of a public suicide. I concur with you that what he claims to want would result in the end of places like this.
But.
It remains within his rights to advocate for such, because the rules are not the principles. So long as he maintains the written and unwritten decorum, he could advocate for the worst and most debased philosophies, and you or I could step in to argue that he's wrong.
Do you think this is just a fine example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here? If these kinds of posts were 100x more frequent, at the same level of decorum, would that make the motte a better or worse place? Personally I think the motte would quickly become unusable.
This is a standard which would be failed by pretty much every post here, including the Actually A Quality Contribution posts. A 100-fold increase in frequency of any one particular type of post, no matter how good that type is, is such a drastic change that it's likely to throw the social dynamics off balance in a way that is hard to predict and thus make the forum harder to use for the people who are already accustomed to the preexisting ones.
For instance, your posts here complaining about someone else's level of decorum; if people posted these types of posts 100x as often (presuming the posts were approved), then the Motte would quickly become unusable. That's not to say that you should stop posting these; just like other people shouldn't stop posting comments that would, if scaled up 100-fold, make the Motte unusable, because that's a ridiculously high standard.
And I'll say that the post in question isn't exactly the flagship example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here, but it's definitely well within the bounds of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here. And furthermore, personally, it's the kind of decorum that I enjoy seeing here and wouldn't mind seeing more of, though a 100-fold - or even 5-fold, TBH - increase in its frequency would definitely render the Motte unusable for my uses.
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I think, if that is how people are thinking and feeling they should be able to talk about it here. I think my almost namesake is wrong on a lot of things. But I think he truthfully believes what he says, and as such it is pretty important to know that. Particularly if there are other people who feel the same way (and there are I believe). Now of course if everyone said the same thing this place would be the worse for it, because it would be more boring and echo-chambery.
Generally I think he is civil to people here and I have no problem with him saying what he says, even if I disagree with him, and think he is way too pessimistic and thus can only see (what I would perceive) as negative ways out.
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