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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29332 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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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.

  1. Why do you think the book isn't doing gangbusters?
  2. Why do you think Hanania's book is being ignored by the big players in conservative media?
  3. Is there a chance that even if the book remains obscure, its ideas will make their way to the people who matter?

Hanania

Not sure how it generalizes but I read single thing written by Hanania. It was on topic that I know relatively well and what Hanania wrote was atrociously offensively bad take and extreme misinterpretation of reality.

What article was that?

People like to say things like this about Hanania on Twitter, probably because he's kind of obnoxious, and never seem to back it up, which you can see even in this thread. It's suspiciously like people who claim "The Bell Curve" has been debunked, but then never provide specific arguments beyond nitpicking.

While he wants to avoid the specific example he had in mind, do_something did give an example that's pretty humiliating for Hanania.

He found a single tweet and nitpicked it to death. Russia has not conquered Ukraine in a year and a half. I'm not sure why we're supposed to believe they are a serious threat to Poland and Germany. Because Hanania is bad and dumb? Because they're going to start a nuclear war for no reason?

He found a single tweet and nitpicked it to death.

Note that I was not looking for dumb comment, I commented on the first one I found.

I'm not sure why we're supposed to believe they are a serious threat to Poland and Germany.

"military threat" is not the same as "will definitely invade"

Also https://www.themotte.org/post/695/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/144937?context=8#context - someone not aware that nuclear-armed ICBM have military use, that cannot be fully neutered by currently existing weapons and defence systems, should not comment on modern warfare.

He avoided giving the one he had in mind for purposes of anonymity.

I'm not sure why we're supposed to believe they are a serious threat to Poland and Germany. Because Hanania is bad and dumb? Because they're going to start a nuclear war for no reason?

We're supposed to believe that military strength is not a 1:1 reflection of a country's GDP, and that ICBMs are a military threat. That they have no reason to use them was not a part of Hanania's argument.

Not the one you asked, and I don't recall the specific articles as all three were over a year ago, but I recall experiencing a similar reaction to mutiple other things he's written. One was something regarding the history of censorship, another was about foreign policy/defense procurement with regards to NATO, and another involved machine learning. In all three cases he managed to demonstrate both an ignorance of history, and a general lack of understanding of the things he was attempting describe.

This is setting aside the fact that his online persona tends to read as some sort of caricature. It's like someone is trying to resurrect Stephen Colbert's old Daily Show act, but without Colbert's insight or familiarity with the source material.

One was something regarding the history of censorship, another was about foreign policy/defense procurement with regards to NATO, and another involved machine learning. In all three cases he managed to demonstrate both an ignorance of history, and a general lack of understanding of the things he was attempting describe.

Can you find these?

Can you?

replied in https://www.themotte.org/post/695/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/144860?context=8#context (it grown overly large to repeat it)

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