Book Review: 'The Origins of Woke' by Richard Hanania
It's time for the right to stop complaining and start organizing.
I posted this essay on my old Substack. It is mostly unchanged except for some typo-fixing and updating in line with current events.
Richard Hanania’s doxing in August 2023, where it was revealed he had written under the pseudonym ‘Richard Hoste’ and made some very crude racist comments a decade ago, almost certainly meant that this book did not make as big of a splash as it could have done. Unfortunately, the Woke establishment and Conservative Inc. does not accept any repentance or changed views when it comes to the sin of racism; once a racist, always a racist.
In fact, it’s a miracle that Harper Collins continued to publish the book at all after what happened. The fact that they did, in spite of the circumstances, is testament to the great quality of this work.
I don’t agree with Hanania on a lot of things; namely economics, where I find his views to be textbook zombie-Reaganism with a clear contempt for the working-class. However, in some ways, his subscription to GOP economic orthodoxy has helped him. All successful movements need elite patronage, and as much as I hate to say it, Fusionism was probably the only realistic way for social conservatism to have an influence on public policy, back in the 1980s and to an extent also today.
The proof of Hanania’s orientation paying off is that he is very influential in American conservative think-tanks; his name appears in the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’, which is a plan to dismantle the deep state and Woke establishment if Trump or another Republican becomes President in 2024. It is generally an impressive roadmap, and an indication that the Third New Right has had a great influence on mainstream conservative circles, even though it involves concessions to GOP donors that I don’t like, such as anti-environmentalism.
Strengths of ‘The Origins of Woke’
1. Focus on Legislation and Praxis
On the Dissident Right there is a tendency to be overly utopian and idealistic, exploring abstract questions like the ideal political order we would like to live in. It is important that we talk about philosophical concepts, and people like Auron MacIntyre have done a great job at dismantling some of the ideological flaws of the mainstream right; explaining how they often unintentionally play into the left’s hands.
But Richard Hanania asks us to get our head out of the clouds for a moment and channel our anger into some concrete policy changes that a future GOP administration could implement.
The book is very technical and grounded in realism; it does not indulge in dreams of an American Caesar or the 1964 Civil Rights Act being repealed in its entirety. However, if the book’s proposals were implemented, it could do a great deal of damage to Woke, maybe not eliminating it entirely, but certainly weakening its reach and allowing for the proliferation of counter-institutions, protecting the likes of PublicSq from hostile lawsuits.
The book makes the argument that the focus on intellectuals, universities, and the ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ that many anti-Woke activists like Chris Rufo focus on, is misplaced. Instead, the spread of Woke ideology has a much simpler explanation: civil rights law and fear of lawsuits.
Businesses, educational institutions, and state institutions have incentive to be extra cautious, and seen to be enthusiastic supporters of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), because the law makes it extremely easy for women and minorities to successfully sue for discrimination, requiring large spending on legal defence and being landed crippling financial penalties if they are found guilty. This has led to the rapid growth in HR departments, and their pushing of DEI, to protect themselves from legal action and monetary losses.
Hanania goes through the various legislation and legal rulings which have allowed Woke to proliferate, such as:
Executive Order 11246 (1964) - Mandated racial quotas on businesses that were contracted by the federal government.
Executive Order 11478 (1969) - Created racial quotas in federal government jobs.
Griggs vs Duke Power Company (1971) - Established the concept of ‘Disparate Impact’. No discriminatory intent was required for lawsuit, the only thing that was required was for it to show unequal group outcomes.
Rogers vs Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1971) - Ruled that any workplace action that could be seen as making minorities feel discriminated against was illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 - Expanded the enforcement powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and reduced the number of employees a business needs to be liable to discrimination lawsuits from 25 to 15.
Educational Amendments of 1972 (Particularly Title IX) - Prohibited sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal aid. Massively expanded by the courts over time, Title IX has been extremely and draconically applied to heterosexual relations between the sexes. A ‘full-time Title IX coordinator’ for universities was ‘recommended’ by the Obama administration.
Christiansburg Garments Co. vs EEOCP (1977) - Successful plaintiffs in Civil Rights cases get attorneys fees, but successful defendants do not. It facilitates Woke extremism because defendants do not get their attorneys fees paid even if they win.
Regents of the University of California vs Bakke (1978) - Ruled that universities could ‘consider race as a factor’ when determining university admissions, because it was in in the interest of academic institutions to promote ‘diversity’. Legalized affirmative action in all but name, and Hanania argues it may have been better if they’d just legalized it outright.
Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 - Forced federal contractors to conform to racial quotas in everything they did, not just the functions that were contracted by the government. After this, civil rights law would become ever more intrusive.
Civil Rights Act of 1991 - Allows for punitive damages for violations for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as formalizing emotional distress’ as a reason to sue, including sexual harassment claims. This allows the plaintiffs to receive compensation beyond damages at a maximum of $300,000. Courts go out of their way to punish companies that fall foul of civil rights, and this fuels the civil rights industry, as it is more valuable to sue than to settle outside of court.
Americans with Disabilities Amendment Act of 2008 - Created an extremely broad definition of ‘disabled’, which included alcoholism.
This is not the full list, but some of the most prominent examples he cites of legislation and court rulings that created Wokeness as Law.
2. Concrete Roadmap
Hanania’s attention to detail is extremely impressive, with him being able to trace back the Woke presence in HR departments to specific legislation with meticulous accuracy. The book outlines a roadmap of how a future GOP administration could effectively fight Woke, taking into consideration political realities and the unlikeliness of getting legislation through Congress without a filibuster-proof majority. Here is a table from the book that I think every American conservative should read and remember:
It is clear that Richard Hanania is somebody close to policymaking, and many of his proposals have made it into the Project 2025 programme. If the GOP gets the White House in 2024, so long as it is not some Neocon globalist like Nikki Haley or Tim Scott (unlikely), the following proposals have a real chance of being implemented.
But Hanania was also correct in his earlier article ‘Why is Everything Liberal’ that the reason for Woke domination over society is in large part because conservatives do not care as much as liberals, for which he gives substantial data to support his case.
Generally, if you are passionate about a cause, you need to be prepared to sacrifice time, money, the salience of other issues, and social capital for it, which leads into the next point.
3. Positive Vision and Optimism
One of the best aspects of this book is its proactive optimism towards change, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the (not without merit) depressive nihilism of N.S Lyons and Auron MacIntyre. This book builds on an earlier article Hanania wrote titled Conservatives Win All the Time, which gives historical examples showing that when conservatives do fight and refuse to compromise on what they believe in, they can achieve results, not only resisting the left’s advances but also rolling them back.
The pro-life and pro-gun movements are a great case in point for how a movement with committed activists can achieve its objectives: by making their support for a party and its candidates dependent on adherence to their cause, even when they are of a minority opinion.
He makes a very interesting proposal about people concerned about Woke ideology forming their own equivalent organization to the pro-life movement or the NRA, with politicians given formal scores based on their ideological alignment to their principles. American politics has been shaped by pressure groups who decide their vote based on one particular issue, and there is no reason why people opposed to Woke could not do the same.
People have been cowardly at standing up to Woke for so long that it has been allowed to proliferate and dominate at every level of society, so much so that it will take at least a generation to undo, a point ‘The Origins of Woke’ makes repeatedly. But it is possible, and he encourages us to work towards a better future.
Showing the strength of the Woke Leviathan and the Cathedral definitely has its place; it is without question the currently hegemonic force in Western culture, and the pendulum will not just naturally swing in our favour. But the triumph of Woke is not an inevitability, no matter what their ‘Right Side of History’ taunts may proclaim.
What we are seeing today is decades of hard work from culturally left-wing activists, who cannot be faulted for lack of commitment to their convictions even though I abhor what those convictions are. We too could shape the future, and perhaps we will see the defeat of Woke in our lifetimes; but we will need to fight like hell to create the future we want, and we need to start now.
Sometimes commentators in the NRx sphere promote a picture of right-wing powerlessness in the face of the Woke Leviathan, which does stop anti-woke liberal complacency (the backlash is coming any year now… right guys?….) but can also demobilize people due to the crushing sense of despair and hopelessness it promotes.
‘The Origins of Woke’ instils a sense of agency in those that oppose the catastrophic direction of modern culture. The book was part of what inspired me to start this Substack, in order to help in my own small way, and share my ideas for how something similar to what Hanania is proposing could be applied in my own country.
Weaknesses of the ‘The Origins of Woke’
Despite the book’s numerous strengths, it does have a few major blind-spots.
1. Poor Definition of Woke
In March this year, the Woke left thought they’d gotten a proper ‘gotcha’ from those opposing their agenda when Bethany Mandel, a conservative author, was unable to define the term in an interview on CNN, despite having written a whole book on it. This allowed the left to double down on defining Woke as: ‘anything conservatives don’t like.’
This caused a great deal of soul searching on the right as to the precise definition.
Wokal Distance, who is a bit of a lightweight IDW-adjacent figure, did do a great article on how the inability to define key terms is a weapon used by the left, allowing it to present its extremist cultural positions as ‘common sense.’ The article also provided a very simple definition of Woke which I have since memorized: an ideology that believes that traditional western culture is systematically oppressive to historically marginalized groups, that this oppression is all pervasive and intersectional in character, and that constant activism and deconstruction is needed to dismantle these hierarchies.
It is very important for all opposing Woke ideology to know exactly what we are fighting against, and resist the left’s attempts to make the DEI ideology undefinable.
Hanania’s definition of Woke is different from Wokal Distance’s and similar articles like this one from National Review, he defines it as the belief that:
That any unequal group outcomes are due to systematic discrimination and oppression.
That speech needs to be restricted to protect minority groups.
A full time bureaucracy is needed to overcome disparities to enforce correct speech and action.
This definition I believe is overly biased towards libertarianism and lets them off the hook. By this view, somebody who believed in radical transgender ideology would not be Woke so long as they supported ‘legal’ free speech and were anti-bureaucracy.
Not all those that are Woke support imprisoning their political opponents, most do not, but rather seek to banish and ostracize them from public life through cancel culture. True ‘free speech’ doesn’t and has never existed; if it is not the state punishing dissenters, it will be the society, and the Woke left is correct that the right also engages in cancel culture. If Hanania means ‘restrictions on speech’, it is unclear whether he’s talking about social ostracism or legal penalties.
Some kind of social sanction for views outside the moral norms are essential for a society’s moral standards and the ‘lack’ of cancelling Woke leftists in the late 20th century, by naïve liberals and moderates, is why they were able to infiltrate the establishment unchecked.
The inadequacy of this definition lens itself to what I believe to be the single biggest flaw of this book, which leads onto the next point.
2. Ignoring LGBT
At the beginning of the book, Hanania admits that he will largely ignore the LGBT movement. It is extremely puzzling why he does this, as the LGBT movement is one of the most destructive and depraved part of Wokeism, imposing a totalitarian denial of reality and indoctrinating, grooming, and abducting children from their parents to be mutilated and sterilized.
The history of this movement and its total dominance in institutions today, with court rulings in its favour coming before formal legislation, undermines his whole argument that Woke can be traced back to civil rights law, at least on this particular issue.
There seems to be much more reluctance to take on LGBT Ideology than Critical Race Theory (CRT) among the American right. Vivek Ramaswamy was the candidate in the 2024 GOP race closest to Hanania’s worldview, with the two of them being in extensive correspondence, and indeed Ramaswamy has proposed similar policies to those proposed in this book like ending affirmative action through EO 11246.
However, he also said he would not reinstate Trump’s ban on transsexuals serving in the military, giving yet more proof to the LGBT activists that the ratchet only turns in their favour, and conservatives yet again showing weakness and lack of conviction.
LGBT was imposed on America by the courts before any Congressional legislation had been passed, and they did this because the LGBT movement had already infiltrated and subverted the legal profession. There was not even any federal protection for LGBT until it was imposed by the court in Bostock vs Clayton County (2020). The fact even Neil Gorsuch was willing to manipulate the text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to get a liberal result also calls into question Hanania’s confidence in the current Supreme Court, even though at this time Amy Coney Barrett had not yet been appointed.
Yes, Trump’s justices have overturned affirmative action in education with Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard (2023), as well as their overturning of Roe with Dobbs, but rulings like Bostock show that this court is not one governed by Originalism, but rather undo’s the worst excesses of the Berger Court whilst still maintaining many of the interpretivist methods set by the Warren Court.
The LGBT movement also throws into question Hanania’s view that the right can win when it puts in effort and resources. No less than 32 state referendums were held on same-sex marriage, with all of them voting to keep marriage between one man and one woman. The turnout was often very high, in California’s Proposition 8 the turnout was 79%, with 52% voting to maintain traditional marriage. Yet those 32 state referendums and the Defence of Marriage Act of 1996 were overturned by the court, with Obergefell vs Hodges (2015) the final nail in the coffin as the legal professionals utterly abused the power of judicial review in a disgusting and outrageous fashion. Consent for this agenda was manufactured, not authentic, driven by elites from the beginning.
The fact that the book hardly mentions LGBT, given its unique attack on American democracy and rule of law, and originating entirely from establishment opinion as opposed to Congressional legislation, feels like a major cop-out from the book, especially given that the Woke establishment arguably views this as its most non-negotiable issue. It feels as though Richard Hanania left LGBT out because he knew that it would undermine his core claim that it is written law that is the primary cause of Woke.
Unsurprisingly, he also doesn’t mention LGBT in his otherwise optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-Woke America. There is no plan to repeal any of the utterly wrong and anti-democratic legal rulings like Obergefell.
So, Hanania’s post-Woke America will actually still be pretty Woke. In a future article I will discuss why right-wingers must seek to repeal same-sex marriage, and that support for repeal is the ultimate distinction between political ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ in the Schmittian sense.
If you want a rich, detailed, and statistical analysis of how LGBT ideology was able to infiltrate and subvert the entire American elite, I would recommend Darel E. Paul’s ‘From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage (2018)’
3. Ignoring Structural and Material Causes
The final major flaw of ‘The Origins of Woke’ is its lack of explanation for why the Woke takeover of society only became so visible in the early 2010s. He points to the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 and Civil Rights Act of 1991, but can’t explain the relatively conservative atmosphere of American society in the 1990s and 2000s.
There are other factors at play, some of which Richard Hanania endorses. The embrace of free-trade reduced the size of the blue-collar workforce, increasing the importance of tertiary education and white-collar roles. Declining trade union power and the rise of the professional managerial class changed the emphasis of the left from economic issues to post-material identity-based issues.
Numerous commentators, most notably Peter Turchin, analysed the rising number of college graduates and how they were impacted by the Great Recession of 2008, calling it a classic case of ‘Elite Overproduction’ where there are too many people promised entry into elite positions but where the barriers for entry have become higher. This article by Noahpinion gives a good analysis of these trends.
But Hanania doesn’t talk about the causes behind the expansion of university education and its role as a bottomless money pit and credentialist cartel that Oren Cass from American Compass has so well analysed. The economic structure of society doesn’t concern Hanania; he has made it clear he rejects the populist-turn of the GOP, and supports free trade and open borders, showing more venom towards the working-class than towards the elite managerial class.
He is not a defender of the ordinary working man, he wishes to see their bargaining power destroyed and culture and traditions diluted. Whilst he is a fellow opponent of Woke, he is very much not on the populist Third New Right, instead representing a Zombie right-libertarianism with some eugenicist Darwinianism thrown into the mix.
Without a plan to destroy the power of the managerial class and the Cathedral, any anti-Woke project is doomed. Hanania has occasionally made some good points about the managerial class, and uses this as a justification for why the state needs to be rolled back, but the managerial class is not just confined to state bureaucracies but also dictates culture and the legal profession, for which the source of power comes from the university credentialist cartels.
The case of LGBT emerging independently of civil rights law from the halls of elite power show that simply repealing certain executive orders and court cases is not enough to stop this poisonous ideology, as even the Trump-court has been overly liberal on LGBT issues. The universities also must be defunded and purged of hostile elements, whilst banning workplaces requiring degrees unless they’re required for the job, and rapidly decreasing the number of people going to university. We must also use the power of the state to impose our moral vision, not just reduce the reach of the state and allow Woke to still have a stranglehold over the academy.
Conclusion
All in all, ‘The Origins of Woke’ is a very interesting work that shows a fantastic attention to detail and shows a positive vision towards a better future. It’s groundedness in the nuts and bolts of policy and law is sorely needed in a sphere that has a tendency towards nihilism and utopianism.
The book provides something of an optimistic vision for those on the right to fight for. By understanding the law behind our current cultural predicament, Hanania argues we can get organized and fight for the repeal of such laws with methods that have a proven track record of success.
However, the book’s slant towards libertarianism, and its omission of areas within the Woke coalition that undermine his argument, are the core weaknesses of the book. This does not make the book non-valuable or its roadmap for legal change wrong, but simply that it needs to be combined with other approaches.
Lessons for Britain
Shortly after its release, the British conservative commentator Ed West posted on ‘X’ that he had read Hanania’s book and wondered that a similar roadmap could be made for Britain.
Of course, our Conservative Party is ‘conservative in name only’, having been in power for 13 years whilst allowing the Woke takeover of our institutions to accelerate at a rapid pace, having no unified moral vision for change and keeping the Blairite social order intact. The promise of Boris was squandered, and the Tory establishment is now firmly back in control, Rishi Sunak at the mercy of the kind of Theresa May CINO’s who say: ‘I'm Woke.’
Labour will likely win by a landslide in 2024 and turbocharge Wokeness, despite its claims to the contrary. If Keir Starmer was prepared to lie to his own party members about what he stood for, he surely will be prepared to lie to the nation, and the pull towards Woke would be too strong to resist.
As Aris Roussinos points out, Britain has no conservative infrastructure like America does, because it doesn’t know what conservatism means besides neoliberal economics. The Conservative Party is simply a party of the establishment, with no principles besides serving their donors and staying in power.
But a long period out of power may force the Conservative Party to rediscover its reason for existing, and perhaps return to the Red Wall Populism that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings seemed to promise before it was thrown away by Liz Truss’s return to Zombie Thatcherism. If a seriously conservative government was to come to power, we would have far less difficulty repealing Woke laws than Americans do, with their Kritarchic system of government.
Laws which absolutely need to be repealed are:
Anyway, that’s for another article. I hope you enjoyed this review, and if you liked this content, consider subscribing.
Nathan Cofnas makes some further critiques of Hanania here: https://ncofnas.com/p/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights