I thought the Origins of Woke was a great book personally, although I shared a few of Scott's criticisms. Namely I thought it was a little weird how focused Hanania was on making sure workplaces be more conducive to finding sexual partners, and how much he cared about funding women's sports received. But overall I thought the book was great and captured a major causative factor of how Woke is so incredibly strong.
When people aren't allowed to acknowledge the flaws of Wokeness in the workplace or their employees will get sued, it creates an immense chilling effect. That's probably not the sole cause of wokeness, there are other factors like supporting impoverished minorities being a very convenient luxury belief to signal how much of a good person you are, but Hanania convinced me it was a major factor.
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Notes -
I've been in a bit of back-and-forth on reddit about this article, and also commented on the Substack, which I don't usually do. I disagree with Hanania that the civil rights movement is the origin of wokism. Certainly the civil rights movement has been a vehicle for wokism, at times, but there are many ways to do civil rights, and just as there are radical feminists and liberal feminists, there are radical race theorists and liberal race theorists. But (as Scott seems to imply) Hanania doesn't seem to actually care about which way the causal arrows point in reality, he just wants to dismantle the stuff to which he objects, and sees this as a possible way to do it.
I think wokism as culture and wokism as law and wokism as anything else are all a positive feedback loop. There isn't a single definitive cause that, if you cut that out, all wokism is gone forever. But the book convinced me pretty well that certain executive orders and judicial decisions and bureaucratic policies played a major role in expanding wokeness.
I haven't read this book. And I don't have certainty on the origins of woke or even what its definition is. I would classify myself as coming from a old "left wing" background, but I detest "I know it when I see it" woke and have somehow missed the call that affects so many other "left wingers."
With that said, what I vaguely think I've seen and know.
In orthodox Marxism everything is the economy stupid and changing the economic superstructure of capitalism is the only sure way to change negative social mores. Even Engels himself was writing how discrimination of women has its origins in capitalism and industrialism. The project of personal liberation, for a woman, and being a socialist is one and the same. In a post Identity Politics split, such a person would just be a feminist and maybe also a socialist.
The importance of socialism here is that the previous project of universal rights, enshrined in the founding ethos of the USA itself, was old school Liberalism. But the liberals won completely and already wrote all the laws. The old left-right divide in the French revolutions was between republican liberals and monarchists. But you don't see any monarchists around and the Church as a power estate is near nonexistent. There's a point after the fall of monarchies and therefore true ancien regime Rightwing-ism (I'm going to say around 1848) where those that still had the mentality of "let's keep challenging the system but now with say... women" started calling themselves Socialist instead of Republican or pro-democracy. Like you can clearly see the Jacobins are partly proto-socialist, but they're just too early. This is why you don't see, unlike a Paradox game, revolutionaries in South East Asia quoting Thomas Paine and waving yellow don't tread on me flags. Either they're with the status quo or they are Red. Anyone that didn't like this was an anti socialist (liberal) "Conservative."
And so it mostly was until 1960s when Identity Politics happened. And it's easy to see why. Gulag Archipelago happened. The Revolution was not happening. In general "left wing people," synonymous with the global project of socialism, were starting to suffer under constant judgment on the value of the USSR. And here comes MLK to offer actual immediate "we're doing something" change with positive results not bolted to the fucking USSR and making you a domestic terrorist in the Cold War. The "progressives" that went with Identity Politics curb stomped old left universal project socialist in popularity and mainstream political power. None of this is woke.
Africa I think is especially illustrative of this. If you were a radical in the 60s you were no doubt psyched that colonialism was finally ending in Africa. And then, constant disappointment and at times utter hell. When you look at the capstone failure of South Africa post apartheid some people no doubt have the thought worm into their head "do black people just suck? Were they really the white man's burden?" And I suspect thoughts such of these has engendered a more anti-rational, authoritarian, purity obsessed, and debilitated but highly performative defensive ethos. To shake off such intrusive thoughts.
It's not all that. I'm sure. But this turned out way too long.
P.S. I guess I kind of wanted to comment in general but used one post. Apologies if this wall of text in an inbox shocks you and seems inappropriate.
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