Jordan Peterson, Wanker
Today’s Jordan Peterson is a shadow of the man who once took the internet by storm.
by Ben Cohen
Several years ago, I listened to an interview with Jordan Peterson and found myself agreeing with much of what he said. While further to the right than myself, Peterson made a lot of excellent points about political extremism and why it was so important to hold the center.
While famous for railing against gender pronouns in Canada, Peterson, I believed, was playing a rather sophisticated game in the ever splintering political and media landscape. By criticizing hypocrisy on the left Peterson’s ulterior motive was to gain the trust of far right extremists. Once these young, angry white men began to listen to him, Peterson’s deeper, more thoughtful message would begin to seep in. He would urge them to take responsibility for themselves, to stop blaming others for how their life was turning out, and to find purpose and meaning in those responsibilities. The far left was crazy he argued, but blaming them for everything wouldn’t make their feelings of despair go away.
I wasn’t sure whether Peterson really believed that women hadn’t suffered throughout history, or that climate change wasn’t a threat, or that “cultural Marxism” (Wokeness) would lead to the death of millions. It seemed to me that he understood his audience well and was crafting a message to let them know he was on their side. Once captivated, he could then de-radicalize them.
“I don’t like right wing identitarians,” Peterson said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2016. “I think they play the same game as the radical leftists, which is identity politics. They just play a different version of it.”
Peterson claimed he was trying to “inoculate” these young men against far right extremism.
“What I do is talk to them, and say ‘look, why don’t you make yourself into an individual and get the hell away from the ideology’, and so a lot of these kids are lost, in the underworld let’s say, in nihilism.” Peterson went on. “And they turn to these ideological solutions because they don’t know what else to do. And they are angry. I have something better for them to do: grow the hell up, and sort yourself out as an individual.”
In that 2016 interview, Peterson appeared to be acutely aware of just how precarious his position was, and likened his mission to “surfing a hundred foot wave”.
“What generally happens when you do that is you drown,” he noted soberly.
I could get behind that version of Jordan Peterson, even if it meant ignoring some of his obnoxious beliefs. But unfortunately over the last six years, Peterson’s prediction about himself and his mission failing has come true. It wasn’t the hundred foot wave that took him down though. He crashed and burned all by himself.
A right wing blowhard
Today’s Jordan Peterson is a shadow of the man who once took the internet by storm. You only need to follow his Twitter account to see what a caricature he has become — a knee jerk, reactionary, right wing blowhard completely incapable of controlling his own impulses.
Instead of de-radicalizing racist white men, Peterson now spends much of his time riling them up. He engages in spiteful anti trans bigotry, insults overweight women, and goes on deranged rants about “Wokeness” (according to a recent interview, Peterson even suggested that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because of Wokeness in the West).
These unprovoked, self induced meltdowns led to Peterson quitting Twitter and asking his staff to block him from using the platform. “The endless flood of vicious insult is really not something that can be experienced anywhere else,” Peterson wrote after receiving backlash for insulting Yumi Nu, Sports Illustrated’s first plus-size, Asian-American model.
“I like to follow the people I know but I think the incentive structure of the platform makes it intrinsically and dangerously insane,” he continued. “So I told my staff to change my password, to keep me from temptation, and am departing once again. If I have something to say I'll write an article or make a video. If the issue is not important enough to justify that then perhaps it would be best to just let it go.”
Peterson could not “just let it go”. Instead he logged back on and just weeks later got himself officially banned for insulting trans actor Elliot Page.
"Remember when pride was a sin?" Peterson tweeted out in the middle of Pride Month. "And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician."
After getting kicked off for breaking Twitter’s terms of service, Peterson then released a video saying he would “rather die” than delete his tweet.
What is the point of Peterson now?
At first Jordan Peterson appeared to have a mission to help frustrated young men find answers to life’s hardest questions. He presented himself as someone these young men could look up to — a well dressed, articulate and confident male who took control of his life, and thus his own destiny.
It turns out though, that the author of “12 Rules For Life” was incapable of adhering to any of them himself. The man who preached self discipline, disavowing extremism, and taking responsibility for one’s actions, became addicted to benzodiazepines and social media, engaged in increasingly paranoid right wing hysteria, and refused to take responsibility for any of it.
Peterson, like many right wing firebrands in the social media age, discovered that manipulative algorithms would reward his bigotry and unpleasantness with great power and notoriety. So he did what they all do and amplified it to the point of no return.
Peterson is now a cultural meme and a powerful brand — both of which make him enormous amounts of money. Peterson rakes in a fortune from his various ventures; “12 Rules For Life” followed by “12 More Rules For Life”, an insanely expensive MBA program in collaboration with an oil tycoon, self help tests, speaking events, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a Tik Tok account, an exclusive content deal with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, and on and on and on.
A man who won’t shut up
Peterson is now so firmly ensconced in the right wing echo chamber that he no longer converses with his opponents. He can dismiss all criticism as “cancel culture” and “Wokeism” gone awry, then get back to monetizing his quasi religious, patriarchal, self-help blather to his vast army of fans.
One of the saddest things about Peterson’s spectacular implosion is that he leaves a hole in the much needed space for genuine intellectual debate. I did not agree with Peterson on everything, but I appreciated his willingness to engage. He had an opportunity to help quell the vicious culture wars tearing us apart, but instead let his darker compulsions get the better of him. Even when Peterson senses he has pushed things too far, he cannot help himself and rushes back into the fray to pour gasoline on whatever controversy he has conjured up. His attacks on Yumi Nu and Elliot Page weren’t just unhelpful, they were cruel and unnecessary.
Peterson displays so much genuine anger and hatred for the perceived evil forces he is fighting that he may really believe his own bullshit. The trans activists and minority women destabilizing the patriarchy he values so dearly seems to be creating a genuine existential crisis within himself. It is clear Peterson is suffering, but he refuses to see the cause of it, which is not plus sized Asian swimsuit models or trans actors, but himself. Peterson is a deeply dysfunctional man who appears to live on the brink of insanity and know no other way. Unfortunately for the public, we have to live with the consequences of his never ending psychodrama, because the man will not shut up.
In the UK, we have a useful term to describe insufferable men like this: wanker. And Jordan Peterson is fast becoming the definition of one.
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I Miss Covid Drinking
While we lost many of our freedoms during the Covid, we gained others... including the ability to knock back a couple of beers at home.
by Justin Rosario
After the better part of two years, life is mostly back to normal in most of the United States. Restaurants are open. Hooray! Movie theaters are drawing (smaller) crowds again. Hooray! Traffic is back. Booooo!
Covid is far from over, of course. Never forget that. It is possible, although not likely, that a new super variant will pop up that is incredibly infectious, incredibly deadly, and completely laughs at our vaccines and previous immunity, thus putting us right back at, if not quite square one, close to it. Even without a killer variant, winter weather is predicted to bring another nasty surge and a lot of people will die. But for the majority of the United States, Covid is now just an ordinary part of life. Some of us take it more seriously and wear masks when around large groups of people indoors. Others take their chances with their vaccines, post-infection immunity, or Fox News-fueled wishful thinking.
By and large, though, even those of us who still take Covid seriously do not miss being cooped up inside for months on end. I’m a homebody and even I’m happy to be able to go out and do stuff whenever the mood grips me. But being unable to go out came with some perks as well and I miss a few of them. Mainly, the ability to get (mildly) drunk.
Hit the brakes
An odd juxtaposition of Covid isolation was that I took on a great deal more responsibility while also being free to be much more irresponsible. Looking back, it wasn’t the most even trade-off but, seriously, I miss the Covid drinking.
During the first 4 months of Covid, there was a lot of stress over schoolwork and babysitting the neighbor’s kid, Dominic. Dominic was…not well-behaved. The details are not important but suffice to say that everyone was done with him by the middle of April. Even Jordan, who is as easygoing as it gets, wanted him to not be there anymore. It’s really really hard to get on Jordan’s bad side because Jordan’s bad side hardly exists. Dominic managed to find it.
On top of that nonsense, I had to keep my extended family from freaking out about the deadly virus running around that no one really knew anything about yet. It was not easy and inflicted no small amount of strain on me.
At some point between April and June, though, two things occurred to me in rapid succession….
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