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Tales from the right aka The Appeal of Jordon Peterson. Soon to be labeled a "hit" piece.
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2019 Apr 8, 5:17pm 1,994 views 32 comments
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1
anonymous
2019 Apr 8, 5:18pm
Postmodernism Did Not Take Place: On Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life
Though he calls himself a “British classical liberal,” Peterson’s appeal feeds into the most reactionary tendencies in contemporary politics. He rose to fame when he was captured on video at a protest on the University of Toronto campus, telling transgender students he refused to use gender-neutral pronouns. He has since joined the ranks of Logan Paul and PewDiePie as a YouTube star. He mostly eschews writing, instead posting videos of lectures online for his primarily young, white, and male audience.
But Peterson has just released a new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. It is his first since 1999’s Maps of Meaning, a study of myth in modern thought. In that book, Peterson based his thinking on the mysticism of Carl Jung, following a pattern initiated by Joseph Campbell, whose influence is now primarily seen in Star Wars rather than scholarship on myth. Peterson neglected to engage with unanimously recognized predecessors in the field of study, like anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who had postulated as early as the 1950’s that myths are based on a recurring structure across cultures and eras.
The new book, as its listicle-esque title indicates, is a self-help manual. But amid the bootstrapping pablum and folksy anecdotes that are standard for the genre, Peterson includes a pointed political argument. If his readers are struggling, he says, it is because contemporary society has fallen into disorder. In spite of the abundance and comfort offered by capitalist innovation, we have abandoned the stability of traditional society, one in which the fittest among us held power and resources, in which consensus was self-evident, and in which, to paraphrase a slogan beloved among the alt-right, there were only two genders. But things have fallen apart. To invoke a cliché, which Peterson does not hesitate to do, the center cannot hold. This, he says, is the result of an idea. That idea is postmodernism.
Peterson traces the dangers of postmodernism to a place of ill repute: Paris. In particular, the École Normale Supérieure, a centuries-old university founded to realize the ideals of the Enlightenment. That sinister institution was where Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault got their start as students of philosophy, initiating a school of thought that has now taken over the world. Not only were Derrida and Foucault “the two architects of the postmodernist movement,” Peterson has said in a lecture, “they were avowed Marxists.”
The conflation of postmodernism and Marxism may come as some surprise to those who identify as belonging to either side of the equation. Perhaps the best-known theorization of postmodernity, Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, conceives of the period as an object of inquiry to which Marxist analysis may be applied, not a theoretical perspective. Today, it is not uncommon to see condemnations of postmodernism and pleas for a return to Enlightenment rationality in the pages of Jacobin. But Peterson is not the only ideologue to elide the distinction between these usually opposed frameworks. This strange conspiracy theory has increasingly gained traction among the far right, famously appearing in 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manifesto Anders Brevik distributed before he murdered 77 people in Norway.
Its origins were surprisingly deliberate, emerging from a paleoconservative Washington think tank called the Free Congress Foundation. The FCF was founded by Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and namer of the so-called Moral Majority movement. Weyrich also created a TV network called National Empowerment Television, a short-lived predecessor to Fox News, which aired a documentary in 1999 called “Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School.” Hosted by a pipe-wielding human bleach stain named William Lind, it presents an account of the origin of what we now call “identity politics.” These came, Lind tells us, from the Institute for Social Research, or the Frankfurt School. There, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and their cronies created a school of thought called “critical theory,” which the FCF gave the name “cultural Marxism.” This frightening idea fused the impertinence of Marx with the indecency of Freud, producing a new threat to Western values far beyond those posed by Copernicus or Darwin. This argument was elevated to the surface of political discourse by Patrick Buchanan, in his 2001 Oswald Spengler rewrite, The Death of the West. As recently as 2017, Buchanan condemned “Postmodern America” in a column defending Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.
Like all the classic conspiracy theories, the antisemitism here is barely concealed. One proponent of the theory, psychologist Kevin MacDonald, has argued that cultural Marxism is an expression of what he calls a “group evolutionary strategy” characteristic of Jewish people. MacDonald acknowledges that not all Jews are radical leftists, but argues that regardless, these movements are “Jewishly motivated.”
This repellent association hasn’t stopped the theory from being taken up by mainstream political pundits even today. The Daily Caller has reported that the Frankfurt School “colonized higher education in the West.” Jonathan Chait based a commentary on political correctness in New York magazine on the theory, claiming that “the modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones.” While Chait carefully avoids the term “cultural Marxism,” he still describes the version of Marxism he sees in so-called “political correctness” as “more philosophically threatening” than conservatism
More: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/01/23/postmodernism-not-take-place-jordan-petersons-12-rules-life/
Though he calls himself a “British classical liberal,” Peterson’s appeal feeds into the most reactionary tendencies in contemporary politics. He rose to fame when he was captured on video at a protest on the University of Toronto campus, telling transgender students he refused to use gender-neutral pronouns. He has since joined the ranks of Logan Paul and PewDiePie as a YouTube star. He mostly eschews writing, instead posting videos of lectures online for his primarily young, white, and male audience.
But Peterson has just released a new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. It is his first since 1999’s Maps of Meaning, a study of myth in modern thought. In that book, Peterson based his thinking on the mysticism of Carl Jung, following a pattern initiated by Joseph Campbell, whose influence is now primarily seen in Star Wars rather than scholarship on myth. Peterson neglected to engage with unanimously recognized predecessors in the field of study, like anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who had postulated as early as the 1950’s that myths are based on a recurring structure across cultures and eras.
The new book, as its listicle-esque title indicates, is a self-help manual. But amid the bootstrapping pablum and folksy anecdotes that are standard for the genre, Peterson includes a pointed political argument. If his readers are struggling, he says, it is because contemporary society has fallen into disorder. In spite of the abundance and comfort offered by capitalist innovation, we have abandoned the stability of traditional society, one in which the fittest among us held power and resources, in which consensus was self-evident, and in which, to paraphrase a slogan beloved among the alt-right, there were only two genders. But things have fallen apart. To invoke a cliché, which Peterson does not hesitate to do, the center cannot hold. This, he says, is the result of an idea. That idea is postmodernism.
Peterson traces the dangers of postmodernism to a place of ill repute: Paris. In particular, the École Normale Supérieure, a centuries-old university founded to realize the ideals of the Enlightenment. That sinister institution was where Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault got their start as students of philosophy, initiating a school of thought that has now taken over the world. Not only were Derrida and Foucault “the two architects of the postmodernist movement,” Peterson has said in a lecture, “they were avowed Marxists.”
The conflation of postmodernism and Marxism may come as some surprise to those who identify as belonging to either side of the equation. Perhaps the best-known theorization of postmodernity, Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, conceives of the period as an object of inquiry to which Marxist analysis may be applied, not a theoretical perspective. Today, it is not uncommon to see condemnations of postmodernism and pleas for a return to Enlightenment rationality in the pages of Jacobin. But Peterson is not the only ideologue to elide the distinction between these usually opposed frameworks. This strange conspiracy theory has increasingly gained traction among the far right, famously appearing in 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manifesto Anders Brevik distributed before he murdered 77 people in Norway.
Its origins were surprisingly deliberate, emerging from a paleoconservative Washington think tank called the Free Congress Foundation. The FCF was founded by Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and namer of the so-called Moral Majority movement. Weyrich also created a TV network called National Empowerment Television, a short-lived predecessor to Fox News, which aired a documentary in 1999 called “Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School.” Hosted by a pipe-wielding human bleach stain named William Lind, it presents an account of the origin of what we now call “identity politics.” These came, Lind tells us, from the Institute for Social Research, or the Frankfurt School. There, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and their cronies created a school of thought called “critical theory,” which the FCF gave the name “cultural Marxism.” This frightening idea fused the impertinence of Marx with the indecency of Freud, producing a new threat to Western values far beyond those posed by Copernicus or Darwin. This argument was elevated to the surface of political discourse by Patrick Buchanan, in his 2001 Oswald Spengler rewrite, The Death of the West. As recently as 2017, Buchanan condemned “Postmodern America” in a column defending Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.
Like all the classic conspiracy theories, the antisemitism here is barely concealed. One proponent of the theory, psychologist Kevin MacDonald, has argued that cultural Marxism is an expression of what he calls a “group evolutionary strategy” characteristic of Jewish people. MacDonald acknowledges that not all Jews are radical leftists, but argues that regardless, these movements are “Jewishly motivated.”
This repellent association hasn’t stopped the theory from being taken up by mainstream political pundits even today. The Daily Caller has reported that the Frankfurt School “colonized higher education in the West.” Jonathan Chait based a commentary on political correctness in New York magazine on the theory, claiming that “the modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones.” While Chait carefully avoids the term “cultural Marxism,” he still describes the version of Marxism he sees in so-called “political correctness” as “more philosophically threatening” than conservatism
More: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/01/23/postmodernism-not-take-place-jordan-petersons-12-rules-life/
2
anonymous
2019 Apr 8, 5:22pm
Jordan Peterson's Idea of Cultural Marxism Is Totally Intellectually Empty
I finally figured out what all of this cultural Marxism noise is about. The insufferable exemplar of self-sourced self-certainty, Jordan Peterson, sees it as a cultural project instigated by Western Marxism (he may not know that term, by the way) after the economic doctrines that were established by classical Marxism (he may not know that one either) in the 19th century collapsed in the face of the catastrophe of Soviet totalitarianism (he definitely knows this one).
Peterson argues, with little or no real intellectual force (but with the passion of a bulldog focused on the hopping and acrobatic happenings of a squirrel beyond its reach), that in a cultural mode, classical Marxism (poor man versus rich man) became the postmodernism (effete intellectual versus Joe Sixpack) disseminated by an exchange between elite US universities and French intellectuals in the 1970s. And so Marxism, which saw the subjects of history as labor and capitalists, morphed into a program that pushed Peterson's bête noire: identity politics. I have more to say about this, but, I, unlike Peterson, will make real demands on my readers.
This is so much nonsense. And dear followers of this character know that he likely does not read books or, certainly, cannot be connected with anything that can be defined as serious scholarship. Yes, Marxism did suffer a blow in the 1950s and 1960s, but not because of the failure of command economies defined by socialist states in the East. No. It was because of the success of state interventionist capitalism in the West. Peterson sees the two state forms as different, but state socialism and state interventionist capitalism have the exact same root, which is, precisely, the Marxist class critique of deep and brutal class conflicts in the 19th century. Despite its success, state interventionist capitalism (robust social welfare, unions, wages), or, put another way, the West's response to the Soviet project, was abandoned in the 1970s.
Sorry, Peterson fans, but you need a much better historian, and one who is an actual intellectual. I know hearing this hurts. My last post about Peterson exposed me to your powerful feelings about this Canadian character. You really love and believe in him. But I'm the black cloud carrying away the ersatz sun. I come as the facts that are facts. And here are a few you need to grasp.
More including:
The project of capitalism
Secondly, postmodernism is a post-structuralist project and not a Marxist one.
So what exactly is Peterson feeding his many readers? Not an informed critique of Marxism or Cold War politics. His is not even a critique of neoliberalism, which is actually pro-identity politics or the respect of cultural difference (this is made clear by an important book that tracked these developments, The University in Ruins, and also the crisis of Brexit).
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/25/39717444/jordan-petersons-idea-of-cultural-marxism-is-totally-intellectually-empty
I finally figured out what all of this cultural Marxism noise is about. The insufferable exemplar of self-sourced self-certainty, Jordan Peterson, sees it as a cultural project instigated by Western Marxism (he may not know that term, by the way) after the economic doctrines that were established by classical Marxism (he may not know that one either) in the 19th century collapsed in the face of the catastrophe of Soviet totalitarianism (he definitely knows this one).
Peterson argues, with little or no real intellectual force (but with the passion of a bulldog focused on the hopping and acrobatic happenings of a squirrel beyond its reach), that in a cultural mode, classical Marxism (poor man versus rich man) became the postmodernism (effete intellectual versus Joe Sixpack) disseminated by an exchange between elite US universities and French intellectuals in the 1970s. And so Marxism, which saw the subjects of history as labor and capitalists, morphed into a program that pushed Peterson's bête noire: identity politics. I have more to say about this, but, I, unlike Peterson, will make real demands on my readers.
This is so much nonsense. And dear followers of this character know that he likely does not read books or, certainly, cannot be connected with anything that can be defined as serious scholarship. Yes, Marxism did suffer a blow in the 1950s and 1960s, but not because of the failure of command economies defined by socialist states in the East. No. It was because of the success of state interventionist capitalism in the West. Peterson sees the two state forms as different, but state socialism and state interventionist capitalism have the exact same root, which is, precisely, the Marxist class critique of deep and brutal class conflicts in the 19th century. Despite its success, state interventionist capitalism (robust social welfare, unions, wages), or, put another way, the West's response to the Soviet project, was abandoned in the 1970s.
Sorry, Peterson fans, but you need a much better historian, and one who is an actual intellectual. I know hearing this hurts. My last post about Peterson exposed me to your powerful feelings about this Canadian character. You really love and believe in him. But I'm the black cloud carrying away the ersatz sun. I come as the facts that are facts. And here are a few you need to grasp.
More including:
The project of capitalism
Secondly, postmodernism is a post-structuralist project and not a Marxist one.
So what exactly is Peterson feeding his many readers? Not an informed critique of Marxism or Cold War politics. His is not even a critique of neoliberalism, which is actually pro-identity politics or the respect of cultural difference (this is made clear by an important book that tracked these developments, The University in Ruins, and also the crisis of Brexit).
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/25/39717444/jordan-petersons-idea-of-cultural-marxism-is-totally-intellectually-empty
3
anonymous
2019 Apr 8, 5:31pm
Jordan Peterson insists his work is focused on the personal, but it comes with a very sharp critique of the contemporary left.
Jordan Peterson insists he is less a political thought leader than a personal and philosophical guide, one whose best-selling book offers tough-love advice to a population of restless young men who feel boxed out by modern gender politics.
Peterson’s work has found fertile ground in the seemingly endless debate over “political correctness” and cultural reform writ large—and the professor hasn’t shied away from the wider political arguments, either. He has dipped his toe into the argument over climate change, rhetorically mused over the fate of South African farmers in a seeming endorsement of Tucker Carlson’s controversial segment on land expropriation, and appeared on “Fox & Friends” to warn parents against the dangers of liberal indoctrination on campus.
Robertson: When you see restrictions on free speech that are advocated by conservatives in the public sphere—to use an extreme example, something like Donald Trump’s criticizing football players for kneeling during the national anthem—do you think that either form of speech restriction [from the right or the left] is more pernicious, and why?
Peterson: Well, the radical leftist restrictions are obviously more pernicious in the university environment. There are no conservatives in the university environment. So there’s no contest. … It’s absolutely dominated by radical leftists. Now, in the broader public, well, that’s a whole different issue. I mean, the thing is that when maneuvers to suppress free speech are used by those who occupy one pole of the political spectrum, they will instantaneously be used by those who are equally extreme on the other pole. So, it’s an absolutely counterproductive game. … Now, in the U.S., you see a vicious counter-response to that as the political system becomes increasingly Republican, say, increasingly right-wing, but that’s not happening in most of the rest of the West.
Robertson: So how would you characterize him (Trump)?
Peterson: He’s a bombastic salesman. He’s an entrepreneurial type. And that’s kind of strange, because the entrepreneurial types are generally not conservative. He’s an anomaly, and he’s not easy to categorize. But to categorize him as some sort of right-wing authoritarian—it’s like, he doesn’t even have the temperament for it. And I’m not making excuses for him or justifying him. I’m saying that if you’re going to criticize him, you should at least get the damn criticism right. It’s not obvious at all that Trump is an orderly authoritarian. He’s not a managerial type. He’s not an administrative type. He’s an entrepreneurial type. So, I would say to the degree that he manifests any faults, they seem to be in the domain of a tilt toward narcissism and self-promotion.
Robertson: When you see restrictions on free speech that are advocated by conservatives in the public sphere—to use an extreme example, something like Donald Trump’s criticizing football players for kneeling during the national anthem—do you think that either form of speech restriction [from the right or the left] is more pernicious, and why?
Peterson: Well, the radical leftist restrictions are obviously more pernicious in the university environment. There are no conservatives in the university environment. So there’s no contest. … It’s absolutely dominated by radical leftists. Now, in the broader public, well, that’s a whole different issue. I mean, the thing is that when maneuvers to suppress free speech are used by those who occupy one pole of the political spectrum, they will instantaneously be used by those who are equally extreme on the other pole. So, it’s an absolutely counterproductive game. … Now, in the U.S., you see a vicious counter-response to that as the political system becomes increasingly Republican, say, increasingly right-wing, but that’s not happening in most of the rest of the West.
More: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/04/jordan-peterson-interview-politico-50-219620
Jordan Peterson insists he is less a political thought leader than a personal and philosophical guide, one whose best-selling book offers tough-love advice to a population of restless young men who feel boxed out by modern gender politics.
Peterson’s work has found fertile ground in the seemingly endless debate over “political correctness” and cultural reform writ large—and the professor hasn’t shied away from the wider political arguments, either. He has dipped his toe into the argument over climate change, rhetorically mused over the fate of South African farmers in a seeming endorsement of Tucker Carlson’s controversial segment on land expropriation, and appeared on “Fox & Friends” to warn parents against the dangers of liberal indoctrination on campus.
Robertson: When you see restrictions on free speech that are advocated by conservatives in the public sphere—to use an extreme example, something like Donald Trump’s criticizing football players for kneeling during the national anthem—do you think that either form of speech restriction [from the right or the left] is more pernicious, and why?
Peterson: Well, the radical leftist restrictions are obviously more pernicious in the university environment. There are no conservatives in the university environment. So there’s no contest. … It’s absolutely dominated by radical leftists. Now, in the broader public, well, that’s a whole different issue. I mean, the thing is that when maneuvers to suppress free speech are used by those who occupy one pole of the political spectrum, they will instantaneously be used by those who are equally extreme on the other pole. So, it’s an absolutely counterproductive game. … Now, in the U.S., you see a vicious counter-response to that as the political system becomes increasingly Republican, say, increasingly right-wing, but that’s not happening in most of the rest of the West.
Robertson: So how would you characterize him (Trump)?
Peterson: He’s a bombastic salesman. He’s an entrepreneurial type. And that’s kind of strange, because the entrepreneurial types are generally not conservative. He’s an anomaly, and he’s not easy to categorize. But to categorize him as some sort of right-wing authoritarian—it’s like, he doesn’t even have the temperament for it. And I’m not making excuses for him or justifying him. I’m saying that if you’re going to criticize him, you should at least get the damn criticism right. It’s not obvious at all that Trump is an orderly authoritarian. He’s not a managerial type. He’s not an administrative type. He’s an entrepreneurial type. So, I would say to the degree that he manifests any faults, they seem to be in the domain of a tilt toward narcissism and self-promotion.
Robertson: When you see restrictions on free speech that are advocated by conservatives in the public sphere—to use an extreme example, something like Donald Trump’s criticizing football players for kneeling during the national anthem—do you think that either form of speech restriction [from the right or the left] is more pernicious, and why?
Peterson: Well, the radical leftist restrictions are obviously more pernicious in the university environment. There are no conservatives in the university environment. So there’s no contest. … It’s absolutely dominated by radical leftists. Now, in the broader public, well, that’s a whole different issue. I mean, the thing is that when maneuvers to suppress free speech are used by those who occupy one pole of the political spectrum, they will instantaneously be used by those who are equally extreme on the other pole. So, it’s an absolutely counterproductive game. … Now, in the U.S., you see a vicious counter-response to that as the political system becomes increasingly Republican, say, increasingly right-wing, but that’s not happening in most of the rest of the West.
More: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/04/jordan-peterson-interview-politico-50-219620
5
Patrick
2019 Apr 8, 6:58pm
Patrick
2019 Apr 8, 6:58pm
Peterson is an excellent role model for how to stand up against leftist tyranny.
It's just wrong for anyone to be forced by law to use incorrect pronouns, and I am sincerely grateful for his courage to publicly oppose that.
It's just wrong for anyone to be forced by law to use incorrect pronouns, and I am sincerely grateful for his courage to publicly oppose that.
6
anonymous
2019 Apr 9, 2:04am
Patrick says
By polishing up rightist theory ? As I keep reminding Milo was the darling de jour and this guy will be replaced or forgotten about in due measure.
His stances and views on SJWs, women etc. are near and dear to many commenters who blame all of the worlds evils on the left.
EBGuy says
No need - he will become irrelevant in due time, sooner than his ardent followers suspect.
Why not start resurrecting the old Milo is being crucified threads - the arguments are almost identical in nature and from the same people as well.
Peterson is an excellent role model for how to stand up against leftist tyranny.
By polishing up rightist theory ? As I keep reminding Milo was the darling de jour and this guy will be replaced or forgotten about in due measure.
His stances and views on SJWs, women etc. are near and dear to many commenters who blame all of the worlds evils on the left.
EBGuy says
Can this man be stopped?
No need - he will become irrelevant in due time, sooner than his ardent followers suspect.
Why not start resurrecting the old Milo is being crucified threads - the arguments are almost identical in nature and from the same people as well.
8
anonymous
2019 Apr 9, 2:49am
Patrick says
Just like diversity huh ? Evil shit...
It's just wrong for anyone to be forced by law to use incorrect pronouns
Just like diversity huh ? Evil shit...
9
anonymous
2019 Apr 9, 3:10am
Who is Jordan Peterson, the ‘alt-right’ darling of YouTube?
If you hang around intellectuals or academics long enough, one of them will make the joke that they wish they were conservative because there is a lot more money in it. Jordan Peterson is living proof of that.
The Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation are eager to fund and promote the brightest minds conservatism has to offer. They intend to use the free market language of the right, there is a high demand for “intellectuals” who will defend conservative ideas, but there is a very low supply.
So if you’re wondering how 55-year-old Canadian psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson became an overnight sensation, going from obscure academic to international bestseller lauded in the New York Times as “most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now,” you don’t have to look much further than that old academic joke.
Jordan Peterson is famous because in the era of the resurgent alt-right, the loose collection of conservatives that align with white supremacists, there are few intellectuals willing to align themselves with the movement. The alt-right is in need of intellectuals to justify their fascist worldview, and Peterson has been ready.
Until 2016, Peterson languished in relative obscurity. He taught at Harvard and then at the University of Toronto after earning a Ph.D. from McGill. In the fall of 2016, he became embroiled in a controversy that would cost him his teaching position, but would ultimately launch him to stardom
In Canada, as in America, the rights of transgender people have been a hotly debated issue.
Peterson found himself a viral star after opposing a bill known as C-16, which sought to add “gender identity and expression” to laws regarding discrimination. Peterson began his now thriving YouTube career with a series of lectures arguing that asking people to refer to others by their preferred gender pronouns infringes on free speech. His stance on this issue led to an interview with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman which also went viral (the video currently has nine million views).
Suddenly, Peterson was a star with a platform and an eager audience. His views include an Ayn Randian focus on the individual and masculinity, as well as darker viewpoints including “anti-Social Justice Warrior” screeds, critiques of feminism, the suggestion that “political correctness” is the undoing of Western culture, and even the implication that violence against women is okay if the woman deserves it.
More including embedded videos of the new "savior": https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/jordan-peterson/
If you hang around intellectuals or academics long enough, one of them will make the joke that they wish they were conservative because there is a lot more money in it. Jordan Peterson is living proof of that.
The Koch Brothers and the Heritage Foundation are eager to fund and promote the brightest minds conservatism has to offer. They intend to use the free market language of the right, there is a high demand for “intellectuals” who will defend conservative ideas, but there is a very low supply.
So if you’re wondering how 55-year-old Canadian psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson became an overnight sensation, going from obscure academic to international bestseller lauded in the New York Times as “most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now,” you don’t have to look much further than that old academic joke.
Jordan Peterson is famous because in the era of the resurgent alt-right, the loose collection of conservatives that align with white supremacists, there are few intellectuals willing to align themselves with the movement. The alt-right is in need of intellectuals to justify their fascist worldview, and Peterson has been ready.
Until 2016, Peterson languished in relative obscurity. He taught at Harvard and then at the University of Toronto after earning a Ph.D. from McGill. In the fall of 2016, he became embroiled in a controversy that would cost him his teaching position, but would ultimately launch him to stardom
In Canada, as in America, the rights of transgender people have been a hotly debated issue.
Peterson found himself a viral star after opposing a bill known as C-16, which sought to add “gender identity and expression” to laws regarding discrimination. Peterson began his now thriving YouTube career with a series of lectures arguing that asking people to refer to others by their preferred gender pronouns infringes on free speech. His stance on this issue led to an interview with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman which also went viral (the video currently has nine million views).
Suddenly, Peterson was a star with a platform and an eager audience. His views include an Ayn Randian focus on the individual and masculinity, as well as darker viewpoints including “anti-Social Justice Warrior” screeds, critiques of feminism, the suggestion that “political correctness” is the undoing of Western culture, and even the implication that violence against women is okay if the woman deserves it.
More including embedded videos of the new "savior": https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/jordan-peterson/
10
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 6:20am
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 6:20am
Two choices for learning about Jordan Peterson.
1) Actually listen to him enough to form your own opinion
2) Find leftist "intellectuals" that have done their best to criticize him becasue his message destroys their ideology.
I find the number 2 choice to be filled with tooo many lies. Besides, I already went with option 1.
I guess I could have said:
1) Do some truly honest open minded research
2) Find a way to believe what you want to believe.
1) Actually listen to him enough to form your own opinion
2) Find leftist "intellectuals" that have done their best to criticize him becasue his message destroys their ideology.
I find the number 2 choice to be filled with tooo many lies. Besides, I already went with option 1.
I guess I could have said:
1) Do some truly honest open minded research
2) Find a way to believe what you want to believe.
11
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 6:31am
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 6:31am
SO you think it's really nifty when kids go to college and learn from leftist morons a quick 5 minute lesson about how everything is the fault of the patriarchy?
Or you like men that give up all semblance of manhood in support of third wave feminism ? Or you too think that whats wrong with the world today is that we aren't supporting those young children who think maybe they aren't the right gender ?
Sure, maybe Jordan Peterson has found an easy target in his criticism today's identity politics driven left.
That doesn't mean he's wrong. Neither is Camille Pagliia, who happens to be gay. Find her discussions with Peterson if you have an open minded cell in your body.
Or you like men that give up all semblance of manhood in support of third wave feminism ? Or you too think that whats wrong with the world today is that we aren't supporting those young children who think maybe they aren't the right gender ?
Sure, maybe Jordan Peterson has found an easy target in his criticism today's identity politics driven left.
That doesn't mean he's wrong. Neither is Camille Pagliia, who happens to be gay. Find her discussions with Peterson if you have an open minded cell in your body.
13
Onvacation
2019 Apr 9, 7:05am
Onvacation
2019 Apr 9, 7:05am
marcus says
Yep.
Jordan Peterson is anything but right wing. He's just a professor that would not cater to the SJW's that are trying to take over our education system.
Sure, maybe Jordan Peterson has found an easy target in his criticism today's identity politics driven left.
That doesn't mean he's wrong.
Yep.
Jordan Peterson is anything but right wing. He's just a professor that would not cater to the SJW's that are trying to take over our education system.
14
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 7:06am
marcus
2019 Apr 9, 7:06am
Kakistocracy says
Very dishonest - not someone that has listened to JP, and not all that shocking that someone that is sympathetic to Marxism would be critical of Jordan Peterson.
You must know how to use youtube. What's wrong ? You don't want to mess up your youtube feed with Jordan Peterson videos ?
Yes, Marxism did suffer a blow in the 1950s and 1960s, but not because of the failure of command economies defined by socialist states in the East. No. It was because of the success of state interventionist capitalism in the West. Peterson sees the two state forms as different, but state socialism and state interventionist capitalism have the exact same root, which is, precisely, the Marxist class critique of deep and brutal class conflicts in the 19th century. Despite its success, state interventionist capitalism (robust social welfare, unions, wages), or, put another way, the West's response to the Soviet project, was abandoned in the 1970s.
Very dishonest - not someone that has listened to JP, and not all that shocking that someone that is sympathetic to Marxism would be critical of Jordan Peterson.
You must know how to use youtube. What's wrong ? You don't want to mess up your youtube feed with Jordan Peterson videos ?
15
Goran_K
2019 Apr 9, 8:34am
Goran_K
2019 Apr 9, 8:34am
I stopped reading when it was claimed that Jordan Peterson is somehow "right wing or alt right".
18
Patrick
2019 Apr 9, 10:11pm
Patrick
2019 Apr 9, 10:11pm
Goran_K says
Good move.
There's no point in reading more if they're just going to lie.
I stopped reading when it was claimed that Jordan Peterson is somehow "right wing or alt right".
Good move.
There's no point in reading more if they're just going to lie.
19
MisdemeanorRebel
2019 Apr 9, 10:38pm
MisdemeanorRebel
2019 Apr 9, 10:38pm
I didn't bother to read when they showed a picture of a slightly cluttered desk area apparently around 1PM, after a "Clean your room" quote.
That's petty, and I have seen Peterson making quick takes from his office, looks pretty clean most of the time.
But then again, the Altleft Media "fact checks" obvious jokes and parodies so what do you expect.
That's petty, and I have seen Peterson making quick takes from his office, looks pretty clean most of the time.
But then again, the Altleft Media "fact checks" obvious jokes and parodies so what do you expect.
20
Ceffer
2019 Apr 9, 10:44pm
Ceffer
2019 Apr 9, 10:44pm
Sounds like somebody with saffron, green and purple hair is jealous that JP got some traction and would like to intellectual snob-appeal him back into obscurity.
21
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 1:03am
marcus says
Jordan Peterson has not brought anything new to the table that has not been said or suggested in some fashion before in term of advice for living.
Other than his support for issues near and dear to people right of center he is a poor remake of Tony Robbins.
Very dishonest - not someone that has listened to JP, and not all that shocking that someone that is sympathetic to Marxism would be critical of Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson has not brought anything new to the table that has not been said or suggested in some fashion before in term of advice for living.
Other than his support for issues near and dear to people right of center he is a poor remake of Tony Robbins.
22
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 1:08am
marcus says
I listened to one video - one and done. Nothing new. Then again I am not an adherent to the Red Pill philosophy either.
The guy is smart enough to cash in on his 5 minutes of fame however before he becomes passé which will happen sooner rather than later.
1) Actually listen to him enough to form your own opinion
I listened to one video - one and done. Nothing new. Then again I am not an adherent to the Red Pill philosophy either.
The guy is smart enough to cash in on his 5 minutes of fame however before he becomes passé which will happen sooner rather than later.
23
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 1:10am
Patrick says
Pretty funny coming from the person who preaches try to see if from the other side etc. but even more ridiculous since it is the exact same shit
that was used as a defense when poor little Milo was being persecuted by U.C. Berkeley.
Reading is so over rated - tough too - that is why there is not one single intelligent comment from anyone on this forum including from yourself on the Michael Hudson posts.
Does it help Patrick that I am not on board with the Red Pill bullshit theory ?
Then again I am not in agreement with you on Diversity (really not on board with this one more than most things) and most everything else yourself and most of the forum gets hysterical about.
There is not one damn thing new or novel about this guy's sage wisdom. Nada -zippo - zilch.
Now since you are all no longer reading - how about not commenting as well.
Good move.
There's no point in reading more if they're just going to lie.
Pretty funny coming from the person who preaches try to see if from the other side etc. but even more ridiculous since it is the exact same shit
that was used as a defense when poor little Milo was being persecuted by U.C. Berkeley.
Reading is so over rated - tough too - that is why there is not one single intelligent comment from anyone on this forum including from yourself on the Michael Hudson posts.
Does it help Patrick that I am not on board with the Red Pill bullshit theory ?
Then again I am not in agreement with you on Diversity (really not on board with this one more than most things) and most everything else yourself and most of the forum gets hysterical about.
There is not one damn thing new or novel about this guy's sage wisdom. Nada -zippo - zilch.
Now since you are all no longer reading - how about not commenting as well.
24
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 1:12am
Goran_K says
The horrors - and Obama was not born here - yes ? On board with the Red Pill theory ? Hate feminists ? The left is composed totally of SJWs ?
I stopped reading when it was claimed that Jordan Peterson is somehow "right wing or alt right".
The horrors - and Obama was not born here - yes ? On board with the Red Pill theory ? Hate feminists ? The left is composed totally of SJWs ?
25
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:18am
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:18am
Kakistocracy says
Yeah, I didn't buy that book, and it's really almost nothing to do with my interest in him.
Jordan Peterson has not brought anything new to the table that has not been said or suggested in some fashion before in term of advice for living.
Yeah, I didn't buy that book, and it's really almost nothing to do with my interest in him.
26
Goran_K
2019 Apr 10, 6:19am
Goran_K
2019 Apr 10, 6:19am
Kakistocracy says
Is that what you think Jordan Peterson believes?
Man. lol
Goran_K saysI stopped reading when it was claimed that Jordan Peterson is somehow "right wing or alt right".
The horrors - and Obama was not born here - yes ? On board with the Red Pill theory ? Hate feminists ? The left is composed totally of SJWs ?
Is that what you think Jordan Peterson believes?
Man. lol
27
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 6:22am
@Marcus - the 12 rules stuff - nice to read, common sense that even people like Tony Robbins who was the guru of the 90s has used in one form or another.
Tony Robbins slowly but surely faded from the limelight - this guy will as well, unless he leverages his temporary fame into the political arena and get elected to something and even that will fade with time.
Tony Robbins slowly but surely faded from the limelight - this guy will as well, unless he leverages his temporary fame into the political arena and get elected to something and even that will fade with time.
28
anonymous
2019 Apr 10, 6:24am
Perhaps if Peterson has something else to offer but more Red Pill bullshit repackaged - I might spend more time but for now I would rather use my time with the likes of Michael Hudson and others who have some profound insights on things rather than this dribble.
The best comment I have ever read on Hudson remains - one does not read a Hudson article or interview - one studies it - over and over to get all the nuances out of it and hope at the end of the day you gleaned some knowledge from him at the same time.
If you want to talk about someone who is brilliant while being overlooked - that is Hudson and he is not politically correct - quite the opposite.
The best comment I have ever read on Hudson remains - one does not read a Hudson article or interview - one studies it - over and over to get all the nuances out of it and hope at the end of the day you gleaned some knowledge from him at the same time.
If you want to talk about someone who is brilliant while being overlooked - that is Hudson and he is not politically correct - quite the opposite.
29
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:34am
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:34am
Kakistocracy says
As I said. The 12 rules book has almost nothing to do with why I like peterson. I had probably watched 10 hours of his videos, long before that book came out.
@Marcus - the 12 rules stuff - nice to read, common sense that even people like Tony Robbins who was the guru of the 90s has used in one form or another.
As I said. The 12 rules book has almost nothing to do with why I like peterson. I had probably watched 10 hours of his videos, long before that book came out.
30
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:34am
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 6:34am
Kakistocracy says
And I'm in total agreement with you there.
Kakistocracy says
Yes, well the thing is they aren't completely wrong about the most gullible and simple minded of college students. I see the nuance though. There are too many intellectually lazy college students buying in to leftist nonsense. But there are also still many serious students who don't even have time for all the nonsense about intersectioality or the importance of trans pronouns. But Peterson is 100% right about the grievance studies majors and the degree to which the humanities have been screwed over by leftists.
THe fact that the same idiots on this site that are wrong about me also see things in a far more simplistic and generalized black and white way doesn't mean there isn't a problem on the left. I'm someone that wants to see the left go back to what it was. It doesn't mean I buy any of the dishonest bullshit on the right. Or their agenda. I'm a liberal.
I'm not a red piller, but there too, there is something there. That is the feminism has gone too far. The pay gap isn't what it's made out to be. And the toxic masculinity nonsense is bullshit. IT's not that it doesn't exist, but it's way over done.
I couldn't get the jordan peterson camille Pagia video to post correctly, but it's good stuff, and if you give it a chance, you might at a minimum understand why I like him.
The video is called modern times.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jordan+peterson+camille+paglia+
Here is something else I am critical of - the entire current Administration from the top to the bottom and everyone in between.
And I'm in total agreement with you there.
Kakistocracy says
marcus saysSO you think it's really nifty when kids go to college and learn from leftist morons a quick 5 minute lesson about how everything is the fault of the patriarchy?
This is particularly hysterical coming from Marcus since this is the very thing numerous commenters on here have accused you of for years
Yes, well the thing is they aren't completely wrong about the most gullible and simple minded of college students. I see the nuance though. There are too many intellectually lazy college students buying in to leftist nonsense. But there are also still many serious students who don't even have time for all the nonsense about intersectioality or the importance of trans pronouns. But Peterson is 100% right about the grievance studies majors and the degree to which the humanities have been screwed over by leftists.
THe fact that the same idiots on this site that are wrong about me also see things in a far more simplistic and generalized black and white way doesn't mean there isn't a problem on the left. I'm someone that wants to see the left go back to what it was. It doesn't mean I buy any of the dishonest bullshit on the right. Or their agenda. I'm a liberal.
I'm not a red piller, but there too, there is something there. That is the feminism has gone too far. The pay gap isn't what it's made out to be. And the toxic masculinity nonsense is bullshit. IT's not that it doesn't exist, but it's way over done.
I couldn't get the jordan peterson camille Pagia video to post correctly, but it's good stuff, and if you give it a chance, you might at a minimum understand why I like him.
The video is called modern times.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jordan+peterson+camille+paglia+
31
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 7:11am
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 7:11am
Another interesting video, if you want to understand, is petersons interview with jonathon chait about the lack of diversity of thought at colleges. Chait started the heterodox academy to fight this.
The Perilous State of the University: Jonathan Haidt & Jordan B Peterson
Same issue posting video.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jordan+peterson+jonathon+chait
The Perilous State of the University: Jonathan Haidt & Jordan B Peterson
Same issue posting video.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jordan+peterson+jonathon+chait
32
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 7:15am
marcus
2019 Apr 10, 7:15am
Still, check out the discussion if you get a chance. That's what's different today than in 1970
What sets him apart is his ability to marry easy-to-digest platitudes with a passionately articulated and deeply conservative worldview, one that goes down just as smoothly for his overwhelmingly white, male fan base. Peterson speaks to the “lost boys” who populate the internet forums and finished basements of America with authority and candor, a comforting-yet-challenging paternal voice to a demographic that’s been the subject of as much scrutiny in recent months as Peterson himself.
And by combining his sensible empowerment program with reactionary treatises against “social justice warriors” and “cultural Marxism,” he’s succeeded where similar ideologues and pundits have failed—for better or worse, winning otherwise disengaged hearts and minds to his intellectual program. Canadian writer Tabatha Southey earned an online harassment campaign at the hands of some of Peterson’s more aggressive fans with a scathing essay in which she warned against his “dreadfully serious message,” asking of his lectures “when you insist the stakes are that high, the opposition that pernicious, who’s to say where the chips will fall?” The answer may be unclear, but in an era when the politics of male backlash helped put Donald Trump in the White House and have reignited a violent, long-dormant culture war, that makes Jordan Peterson perhaps the most important pundit in North America, if not the world.
Peterson’s even-handed, “just trying to have a conversation” style of political discourse allows him to position himself as the last sane man in a world threatened by leftist hysteria, the students in his original star-making videos serving as perfect foils. This dynamic was exemplified in one of the most popular videos featuring Peterson, a January appearance on Channel 4 where he calmly dismantles an overreaching critic in the British journalist Cathy Newman
If, as FDR is supposed to have once said, one should ask to be judged by the enemies they’ve made, it’s illuminating to look at Peterson’s bête noire—the specter of “cultural Marxism.” In Peterson’s conception, it’s a decadeslong conspiracy handed down from French postmodernists to today’s “social justice warriors” who intend to destroy rational meaning, starting with enforced gender pronoun use and ending with the gulag. In reality, the concept of “cultural Marxism” as deployed by Peterson can be traced back to the 1990s, promoted in a primordial form by Lyndon LaRouche’s think tank the Schiller Institute in its Fidelio magazine.
The Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank founded by far-right social conservative Paul Weyrich, then picked up the ball and ran with it in a 1999 video titled “The Origins of Political Correctness.” In the video, the paleoconservative writer William Lind draws a corkboard twine web connecting the work of Frankfurt School philosophers like Adorno and Marcuse to everything from the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1990s-era campus activism. The assumed endpoint is, for them, the same as for Peterson—brutal repression at the hand of the totalitarian left.
In Peterson’s world, men are besieged by both sinister, pronoun-enforcing Marxists and Jungian “devouring mothers,” a cabal that’s created a culture of paralyzed man-children. His prescription for those man-children is to … throw their shoulders back, clean their rooms and take advantage of the institutional and intellectual infrastructure through which men have had an undefeated historical advantage in improving their station. To him, the hierarchical structures that underlie Western society are preordained, and questioning them is like questioning the weather, or the train schedule, or the Marvel Studios balance sheet. “You don’t change the world by going and waving signs at people you’ve defined as more evil than you,” he insists in a tirade against the efficacy of protest. If life has dealt you a bad hand, summon your inner übermensch and get thee to the laundromat.
It’s a deeply conservative worldview, but a deeply traditional one in contrast with the radicalism that has defined the online right in recent years. And that’s why Peterson has become such a phenomenon—acidic enough for a generation of angry, insecure young men raised on the illiberal, anarchic modern internet, but enough of an institutionalist that he can help them build bridges to the outside world. He tells a vivid story as a pundit, one where meaningful and time-tested hierarchies are under siege by amoral and malicious subversives. It’s a predictably familiar narrative coming from someone who made his academic mark with an ode to recursive storytelling. And for better or worse, that narrative has been deeply resonant with a generation of young men looking to define their own—so if his critics hope to loosen its thrall, they’re going to have to come up with a good alternative.
More: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/08/jordan-peterson-beating-pundits-own-game-217773
#JordonPeterson #RightPolitics