Jordan Peterson: how the left manufactured a folk devil
Over the past few days, Jordan Peterson’s critics have been doing their utmost to publicise his forthcoming book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. The famous clinical psychologist announced the publication on his YouTube channel on Monday, and within hours the book was being widely denounced on social media for its hateful content. This is quite a feat of the collective imagination, given that nobody has read it yet.
Much of the furore has come about because employees at the Canadian branch of the publisher, Penguin Random House, have called for the book to be cancelled. After multiple complaints were filed, they confronted their management at a meeting in which some burst into tears and shared their stories of how the evil Professor Peterson had caused such emotional havoc in their lives due to his ‘problematic’ opinions. According to a report in Vice, ‘one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalised their father and another talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend’.
This is just the latest example of a new trend of activist employees threatening to strike for ideological reasons. At the audio-streaming company Spotify, workers recently demanded editorial control of Joe Rogan’s newly acquired podcast series, after they had successfully removed a number of episodes deemed to be controversial. At publishing giant Hachette, employees threatened to walk out after JK Rowling’s children’s book, The Ickabog, was announced. All these internal revolts have failed, presumably because figures such as Rowling, Rogan and Peterson are too popular to cancel. One wonders how a less lucrative artist would fare under such circumstances.
When I reviewed 12 Rules for Life for spiked (published alongside a counterview by Luke Gittos), I noted that there were two Jordan Petersons. The first ‘a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto with a particular interest in religious and ideological belief systems’, and the second ‘a notorious firebrand of the alt-right… a transphobic provocateur whose lectures amount to little more than hate speech’. As I pointed out, only the first of these two actually exists.
The viperous attacks on Peterson we have seen on social media over the last few days can only be described as a kind of hysteria. He has been smeared as a ‘Nazi apologist’ and a ‘fascist’ by people whose familiarity with Peterson’s work amounts to a few bad-faith articles and a smattering of selective quotations taken out of context.
He has routinely been called ‘far right’, even though the core tenets of the actual far right – a sense of racial or national superiority, support for authoritarianism and the worship of the state – represent the polar opposite of Peterson’s worldview. Many critics have attempted to broaden the traditional definition of the ‘far right’ – incorporating cultural conservatism, a belief in the importance of personal responsibility and an awareness of biological sex differences – so that it can then be applied to Peterson. This is the equivalent of attaching plastic horns to a bulldog so that you can call it a monster.
True, there are subsidiary features common to the far right: homophobia, sexism and other reactionary viewpoints. But to brand anyone as ‘far right’ on the basis of these things alone – particularly when they are imagined rather than supported by the evidence – is a form of political illiteracy. Peterson’s opposition to feminism is well documented and there are legitimate arguments to be had over the merits of his views. But even if one were convinced that they are tantamount to chauvinism, this would not be sufficient to justify the epithet of ‘far right’. Were that the case, then there would no longer be any distinction to be made between Benny Hill and Hermann Göring.
The determination to misrepresent Peterson’s ideas is on a par with the frenzy surrounding JK Rowling, whose compassionate and nuanced views on the ways in which gender-critical feminism and trans activism are in conflict have been taken as proof that she is the devil incarnate. This monstering of public figures, based on the flimsiest of evidence, is indicative of a cultural and intellectual malaise that we would be foolish to ignore. There are all sorts of sensible reasons to take issue with Peterson’s opinions, but why has it become so difficult for so many to present a counter-argument without resorting to adolescent catastrophising?
Consider the words of a junior employee at Penguin Random House. Peterson is apparently ‘an icon of hate speech and transphobia’ and ‘an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book’. When pushed for further detail, such people invariably claim the power to intuit Peterson’s private feelings, but simply declaring that your ideological opponents are harbouring malevolent intentions is only evidence of your desire that they should. This is why the accusation of ‘dog whistling’ – sending out secret signals that only one’s followers can hear – is so common. As one of his critics put it on Twitter, ‘one thing Peterson does consistently is toss bones and winks to his far-right followers, couched in vague or ambiguous terms that allow him to say that of course he didn’t mean THAT’. It takes an acute kind of narcissism to assume that you are able to divine the secret workings of someone else’s mind simply because you have decided that it must be so.
It should go without saying that if you believe that books ought to be cancelled simply because you disagree with their contents, a career in publishing is probably not for you. We need to reckon with this new reality of our times: that there exists a substantial proportion of the adult population, educated to university level, who are nonetheless incapable of critical thinking and lack the basic skills of argumentation. Worse still, many of the most vicious comments about Peterson – including mocking him for a benzodiazepine addiction brought on by his wife’s cancer diagnosis – have come from those who believe themselves to be compassionate and virtuous campaigners for justice. If such people really are ‘on the right side of history’, then the future of humanity looks pretty bleak.
Peterson’s key thesis is that life is unbearable without a sense of purpose, and that this can largely be achieved through personal responsibility and taking charge of one’s life. He believes that civilisations collapse without structure, which is why children ought to be socialised in accordance with the ethical parameters we set for ourselves. He maintains that science and technology have improved our lives, but do not satisfy our need for meaning. This is why his work focuses on the stories that recur in ancient traditions and religious beliefs. There is wisdom in these narratives, he argues, even if their supernatural elements have no basis in reality.
If you find these views rebarbative, you can always offer a rebuttal or choose not to expose yourself to Peterson’s output. If you need to indulge in straw-man arguments, or convince yourself that he is ‘alt right’ or ‘fascist adjacent’ in order to justify your opposition, then you are in no position to complain if you are not taken seriously. Screaming abuse at those who enjoy Peterson’s writing, or calling for his book to be cancelled, is not the behaviour of a responsible member of a civilised society. If you don’t like his work – either because of its actual contents or what you have simply imagined them to be – then don’t buy his books. Problem solved.
We need to ask ourselves how we have reached the point where grown adults are willing to accept such wild mischaracterisations of public figures without even attempting to engage with the reality of what they say and think. We need to redress the widespread historical ignorance that dilutes the terms ‘Nazi’ and ‘fascist’ to meaningless slurs. We need to restore critical thinking in our education system to counteract the ongoing degradation of public and political discourse. We need to consider how anyone above the age of 16 believes that throwing insults is an effective form of rebuttal. This isn’t simply about Jordan Peterson; this is about the kind of hysteria he inspires in an infantile society. Something has to change.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/27/jordan-peterson-how-the-left-manufactured-a-folk-devil/
California: ISIS Jihadi Stabs Four in University Classroom, University Blames Toxic MasculinityThe FBI last Wednesday released new details about the case of Faisal Mohammad, who in November 2015, while he was a freshman at the University of California, Merced, entered a classroom and stabbed four people. It was already known back at the time of the attack that young Mohammad was a jihadi: The College Fix reported that he “was found to have an image of the ISIS flag, a handwritten manifesto with instructions on how to behead someone, and reminders to pray to Allah.” The new information that has just been released about the case only confirms this, and shows up the abject idiocy of the university’s utterly predictable reaction to the attack.
Mohammad, according to the Associated Press, “planned to praise Allah while slitting the throats of classmates and use a gun taken from an ambushed officer to kill more.” Then he planned to call 911 to report the killings, “read the Quran until he heard sirens, and then ‘take calm shot after shot’ with the gun” when the police arrived. He mapped out a detailed for his jihad; it “included putting on a balaclava at 7:45 a.m. and saying ‘in the name of Allah’ before stepping into his classroom and ordering students to use zip-ties he provided to bind their hands. Mohammad also planned to make a fake 911 distress call to report a suicidal guy [sic; this is how they write at AP these days] and wait for police outside the classroom before ambushing from behind ‘and slit calmly yet forcefully one of the officers with guns.’” Presumably in the officer’s throat, in accordance with the Qur’an’s directive, “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4).
All this stands in stark contrast to how the attack was initially reported, and even more to the reaction to it at the University of California, Merced. Mohammad’s attack, as The College Fix noted back in November 2015, was widely characterized as “revenge for being kicked out of a study group.” Even worse, instead of waking up to the reality of Islamic jihad, many at the University of California-Merced mourned for the attacker, with a Facebook “R.I.P” tribute to Faisal Mohammad “gaining massive support among the campus community.”
Not even that was enough for the relentlessly woke UC Merced faculty, who hosted a “teach-in” that about 200 students attended, entitled “Don’t Turn Our Tragedy Into Hate.” It didn’t mention Islam or jihad at all, except in the context of discussion about how Muslims are victims of “Islamophobia.” According to one student who attended the teach-in, “‘Islamophobia’ was cited as the reason people want to call it a terrorist attack….‘People were quick to sympathize with the attacker and assume anyone who thought this was related to radical Islam was a xenophobic racist.’”
Among the topics discussed were “What does mental health have to do with this?”; “How do we define our community – what lives are grievable?”; and “What do race and religion have to do with this?”
Standing out in this soup of fashionable Leftist shibboleths was this: “Why are men more likely to be perpetrators of violence?” One speaker suggested that the attack was all about men not being allowed to be weak, self-centered, weepy narcissists: “Anger, that is really what we think about when we think about emotional men. They are subject to social sanctions if they deviate from masculinity. If you are perceived as failing at it, you are subject to being called a fag, a pussy, a wimp, pretty much what women are, right? So when you have this limited ability to sort of express your emotions and possible feelings of emasculation, of low self-esteem, how do you really [deal with] that? A lot of times they … engage in violence. They need to compensate for their loss of masculinity in the most manly way they have access to, and unfortunately, a lot of times that’s violence.”
Of course! It was all about toxic masculinity, don’t you see? If poor Faisal hadn’t been so pressured to conform to “society’s notions of masculinity,” if he had just been able to put on a comfy shift and lounge around his dorm room in high heels, he never would have gone on his stabbing spree! Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people just because he was a sensitive soul in a world that was too harsh for him.
Why, what other explanation could there possibly be?
The University of California Merced is no different from any other campus all over the country today: full of self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual, indoctrinated bots who have been thoroughly imbued with the notion that when Islamic jihadists attack us, it is our fault.
All too many even among law enforcement and counterterrorism officials assume the same thing. No number of Faisal Mohammads, and there will be many more, will convince them otherwise. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate but true that eventually all this denial and willful ignorance is going to blow up in everyone’s face. We can only hope that the blow-up won’t be literal.
Liberals Want You Demoralized, So Don’t Be
The next guy who tells me his sad feelz are so intense over the election that he’s not going to vote in Georgia or anywhere else ever again cuz all is lost and blah blah blah is getting slapped.
Hard. I’m getting tired of loser talk, and I won’t have it.
This is for the benefit of the weak-hearts: Oh no, did you have a set-back? Did stuff not work out the way you wanted? Is it – gasp! – hard?
Too bad. Man up. Or woman up. Or genderfluid up. Just stop bawling like Brian Stelter over his cousins when he gets passed a bowl of mashed potatoes and get your head right. We’re in a fight. Fix your bayonets and follow me over the top.
Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?
Freedom, justice, and liberty aren’t easy to win. If they were, everyone would have them. When the going gets tough, the tough don’t act like a bunch of millennial college students sobbing over microaggressions – and when you find, to your horror as I just did, that Word recognizes and autocorrects “microaggressions,” you don’t take that as a sign of cultural defeat and just give up and put in your application for cultural serfdom.
Die on your feet before you live on your knees.
Here’s how it’s going to be. Whether Trump ends up winning or losing – the court battles continue – you’re going to support the Republicans in Georgia in January and everywhere else thereafter. You’re not going to pout in performative despair about how the mean old Democrats cheated and how there’s no point in voting and boo hoo hoo. You’re going to elect people to stop the libs, winning outside the margin of fraud, and you’re going to keep fighting against fixed elections in court and elsewhere.
Is it always going to be fair or right or honest? No. So what?
This all brings to mind the new book by my friend and fellow Townhall alum Michael Walsh, Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost, in which he chronicles a bunch of remarkable fights against all odds throughout history (including his Marine father’s story of the Chosin Reservoir, which alone is worth the price of the book). Sometimes you win these fights, like the Brits did at Rorke’s Drift (there’s a tribute to Zulu in the form of a battle in California in my new conservative action novel Crisis). And yeah, sometimes you lose. The Romans lost to my ancestors at the Teutoburg Forest and the cavalry lost to Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors at Little Big Horn. But here’s the thing – you don’t give up.
At Cannae, Hannibal slaughtered 80,000 Romans. And not just any Romans – lying dead in the dirt were the cream of Roman society. But did the Romans give up? Did they start talking about how Carthage cheated and now there was no hope and how they might as well ditch Jupiter and get on the Baal bus?
No.
They built another army. And then they fought. And eventually, they razed Carthage, sold everyone that they didn’t run through with a gladius to the highest bidder, and sowed the fields with salt.
See, that’s how hard people take care of business.
Now, compare and contrast that with the social media sissies who insist that because Biden cheated and because some GOP wimps are wimpy, they’re just going to take their votes and go home. Sure, some of these are liberal bots trying to incite people into sitting out Georgia. But some people pushing this suicide pact are misguided cons blinded by emotion.
If you are so mad and frustrated by this bogus election and the fact that the Republicans haven’t waived their magic wand and made it all better that you refuse to fight the libs anymore, then you’re no better than some simpering sophomore majoring in Trans Poetry of Upper Volta at Gumbo State who sees the American flag and starts “literally shaking.”
No, we won’t give up. Not until we exhaust our remedies to this fraudulent election and not until we use our considerable political power to ensure it never happens again in the future. And we don’t give up then either.
We never give up. Never.
Yeah, we are headed for tough times, with a garbage Establishment that will use garbage corporations and garbage media along with garbage bureaucrats to stomp their Gucci loafers in our faces, but it won’t be forever. They are weak, and they are stupid, and they are brittle. We will win. But we have to fight.
History is not over. The defeatists eschew hope, maybe out of misguided angst but maybe because giving up lets them off the hook. Freedom is hard, serfdom is easy. If you want to be like the Fredocon weenies, begging for scraps from their Establishment masters, your life will be easier. You’ll just not be a man. If you can live with that, as the Bulwark slugs can and do, then ahoy soft and safe submission.
But if you can’t live like a gimp, then pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and get back in the battle. History teaches that today’s last stand is tomorrow’s victory.
Australian Prime Minister and defence chief Angus Campbell at odds over war crimes report
General Campbell gets it wrong -- again. Past wisdom: "He decided that it was terribly wrong for our service personnel to be wearing “symbology” portraying death. Seemingly ignoring the fact that a soldier’s job is to engage and kill the enemy, Campbell says, “This is not where we need to be as a national institution. As soldiers our purpose is to serve the state, employing violence with humility always and compassion wherever possible. The symbology to which I refer erodes this ethos of service.”
The Sydney Daily Telegraph got it right when it said, “There’s your new army slogan: “Employing Violence with Humility”. It’ll probably sound less stupid in Latin.
It appears to have escaped General Campbell’s notice that he himself wears the Infantry Combat Badge that displays a bayonet. The bayonet has one purpose and that is to kill and maim. Is this befuddled General going to ban that badge too.
General Angus Campbell seems to favour focusing on gender issues instead of concentrating on our reduced military capabilities within our own region. Last year Campbell addressed a Defence Force conference on recruitment at which time he said,
“The number one priority I have with respect to recruitment is increasing our diversity, with a focus on women and indigenous Australians.” In summing this up Cori Bernardi also took into account the issuing of Halals ration to our troops when he said, “This demonstrates just how our military has been captured by minority interests and appears to have suspended the application of common sense.”
Campbell is a Duntroon graduate so has some claim to being a real soldier but as far as I can tell he has never been shot at so his judgement seems to be essentially civilian. Why can we not have a real soldier with substantial combat experience running our forces?
One consolation is that he has not emulated the extremely politically correct Lieutenant General David Morrison, best known for walking around in women's high heeled shoes! What has the army come to? It is a long way from the army I served in many years ago
It's not often we see the Prime Minister and the Chief of Defence at odds, but the Brereton Report detailing allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has exposed a public rift between the two and it's already pretty clear who will win the argument.
General Angus Campbell won mostly praise for his handling of this bombshell report released 10 days ago.
As Chief of Army, he was the one who commissioned the inquiry four years ago and now as Defence Chief, General Campbell accepted the findings and recommendations with the seriousness and gravity they deserved.
In one of the darkest moments for the Australian Defence Force, the General is seen by both sides of politics to have responded well.
Mostly, anyway. Then came the reaction
On one matter, there was immediate controversy: the decision to strip a group citation for the special forces in Afghanistan. It was hardly the most significant recommendation of the report; a unit citation is not a war medal and stripping it is hardly akin to what might be in store for those who committed war crimes.
But it was by far the most sensitive recommendation, given the number of troops affected and the signal sent to the broader veteran community.
When he released the report, General Campbell was clear.
"I have accepted the Inspector-General's recommendation," he said in his opening remarks to a nationally televised press conference, "and will again write to the Governor-General, requesting he revoke the Meritorious Unit Citation awarded to Special Operations Task Group rotations serving in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013."
It was presented as a final decision. The Chief of Defence had spoken. No ifs, no buts. A deployment marred by 39 alleged war crimes could hardly be considered "meritorious" any longer. The group citation was being revoked.
Then came the reaction, from the public, the veteran's community and inevitably, the politicians. Some of those who served honourably in Afghanistan and did nothing wrong wondered why they were being punished. The furious father of one commando killed in action said the citation would have to be collected "from his gravestone".
An online petition to "save" the unit citation received more than 40,000 signatures at last count.
Labor MP Luke Gosling, himself a former commando, suggested it would be "cruel" to strip the honour from 3,000 personnel, the overwhelming majority of whom served with distinction.
Within the Government, a similar view formed.
'Decisions haven't been made yet'
While the citation may not have been issued to the special forces if we knew then what we know now about events in Afghanistan, most agreed the idea of revoking it was crazy and at the end of the day, impossible to implement.
Veterans Affairs Minister Darren Chester, who initially supported the CDF's decision, noted calls to the Open Arms support line for veterans had doubled in the space of a week.
The Prime Minister was asked by Ben Fordham on 2GB why thousands were being punished for the "sins of a couple of dozen".
His response made it clear he was uncomfortable with General Campbell's position. "Decisions haven't been made yet on these things", he suggested, "so let's see how each step unfolds".
Morrison went on to say he was "very sensitive to the issues … as is the Defence Minister".
Morrison has a finely tuned political radar and could well be right in detecting where community sentiment lies on this issue.
Ultimately though, someone must decide. The worst outcome would be leaving it to the Governor-General (himself a former chief of defence) to choose between conflicting advice from General Campbell and the Prime Minister. To avoid that, it appears Defence has decided to blink.
Asked if General Campbell is still going to write to the Governor-General recommending the citation be revoked, a spokesperson for Defence told the ABC in a written statement, "Defence is preparing a comprehensive implementation plan to action the Inspector-General's recommendations", and "final decisions on this advice will be a matter for Government."
Decoding the language of Defence Media, it appears General Campbell's declaration 10 days ago that he would write to the Governor-General is now in doubt.
Pressure from veterans, the public and most importantly Defence's political masters has undoubtedly had an impact. It now seems most unlikely the citation will be revoked.
Instead, the special forces deployment to Afghanistan will continue to be regarded as "meritorious", despite the 39 alleged war crimes.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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