Andrew Potter

“A totally real, genuine, authentic book about why you shouldn’t believe any of those words. And it’s genuinely good.” — Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom Exploring a number of trends in our popular culture—from Sarah Palin to Antiques Roadshow, organic food to the indignation over James Frey’s memoir—Andrew Potter follows his successful Nation of Rebels with a new book that argues that our pursuit of the authentic is fraught with irony and self-defeat. Readers of The Paradox of Choice or Bowling Alone will find many enlightening insights in The Authenticity Hoax, which is, in the words of Tom de Zengotita (Mediated), “the kind of criticism that changes minds.”

How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves

The Authenticity Hoax

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

I’m a lefty but I’m not at all averse to having my beliefs shaken. I loved Nation of Rebels (aka Rebel Sell), Potter’s collaboration with Joseph Heath, which successfully made me question a good number of my assumptions. But unfortunately, Potter fails to question his own biases enough to make a convincing case in this follow-up effort.

First of all, Potter never succeeds in establishing a clear definition of authenticity, and then claims the concept is the main focus of movements such as environmentalism, organic farming, and the opposition to free markets. I could tell early on we were on shaky ground when he ties all these movements to survivalists--if it’s crazies who believe this, then surely we can’t take it seriously, can we? 

As an example of how he ignores other possible reasons for people’s behaviors aside for a desire for authenticity, he shrugs off the idea that people consume organic food for health reasons, claiming that there’s no conclusive proof that organic food is safer or healthier. Whether that is true or not, it still doesn’t mean that that is not why people buy it. But Potter insists that consumers’ interest in organic food is only about status-seeking, and uses a moronic op-ed from The New York Times to close his case.

He also straight-out says that it’s mainly liberals who harbor this foolish desire for authenticity and wish to move back to a simpler time. I wonder how he felt about a presidential campaign centered around the slogan “Make America Great Again”? And about people rallying for a candidate they found more authentic, despite his many intellectual and moral deficiencies? 

The book has a number of other whoppers that have been proven wrong with time, such as this excellent one: “...we have every reason to believe that as people migrate online, it will be to seek out sources of information that they perceive to be unbiased, and which give them news they can’t get anywhere else. The mainstream media may be dying, but in the end our democracy will probably be healthier for it.” There are others about how we shouldn’t be afraid of Putin (!) and about how the marketing of politics “does not undermine democracy, it enhances it.” 

Of course, Trump’s election took many of us by surprise, but putting that aside, it’s still hard to understand Potter’s willful obtuseness. As global warming decimates our planet, and as the current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates, he concludes: “Coming to terms with modernity involves embracing liberal democracy and the market economy as positive goods. That means not just conceding that they are necessary evils, but that they are institutions of political and economic organization that have their own value structure, their own moral foundations, which represents a positive step away from what they have replaced. So even if it were possible, it would be wrong to turn our backs on the market.”

I.m. ruzz

Andrew Potter is always thoughtful, interesting and seems so well grounded in both this and rebel sell. Rebel ell was more animated, more passionate, and ultimately more vital. 

a difficult topic handled well but in the end the book failed to deeply engage me.

The Authenticity Hoax How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves

Reviews