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[cassatine]

Why don't you like Jordan Peterson? What did he ever do to you?

Oooh boy. I’d redirect you to the Ressource Page on him I already posted a link to, where you can find much better analyses than I can provide, as well as much documentation on the things he has to say – but I suppose that’s not what you’re asking for.

(I wish you hadn’t asked. I’ve seen the kind of harassment sent to people who criticize Peterson. But you did, so here comes A Rant.)

To start with: what he did or didn’t do to me, specifically, is irrelevant. To illustrate that point – let’s say your school has two bullies. One of them bullies you, the other doesn’t and instead targets other people. Is this second bully more likeable because he leaves you alone? Or is this second bully as dislikeable as the one who does bully you? Are they any less of a bully because you escape their attention?

It’s not about what Peterson did to me, it’s about the ideas he advocates for, the way he profits from his followers, the harm he does other people, his bad scholarship – and more importantly, the fact that he is a gateway to the alt-right for many. He’s replied to this specific concern, for example here, by saying he does not support the alt-right, that he’s in fact stopped many on their path to it. “Read the comments on my videos,” he says, before deflecting by launching in a tirade against comments criticizing him.

I did read the comments and certainly there is some, ahem, strongly-worded criticism from people of all political stripes, but there’s also a bunch of people advocating for a white ethnostate, among other niceties. Peterson’s followers do not all belong to the alt-right, just as not everyone in the alt-right likes him.

But if we step outside his YT channel, there’s an incredible number of reposted videos, on all kinds of channels. Some are mocking: “here’s Peterson speaking nonsense as usual.” Some are very much alt-right channels, and thanks to the magic of YT algorithms, the more those are watched, the more you’re proposed videos by more extreme people. Stepping away from YT altogether, and delving into alt-right and manosphere forums and sites, links to Peterson’s videos are not a rare occurrence.

And yet, he does not believe he has been co-opted by the alt-right to any significant degree.

I find the claim dubious (and the formulation interesting – “any significant degree”). I find the fact that he pretty much always deflects to his bête noire, the left “far more gripped by totalitarian spirit” than the rest of the political spectrum (and yes, that includes the alt-right) even more dubious. Not only the claim itself, but the way Peterson uses it to turn the tables. ‘I don’t think I was co-opted by the alt-right,’ he says, ‘and anyway the real problem is the totalitarian left.’

Polarization is also a problem, he says, and that I can easily agree with. I can also agree with the idea that having conversations with people who hold very different views is a good thing, and that for this to happen one must be prepared to listen.

I do, however, doubt that Peterson is himself prepared to listen. He has shown many times that he rejects any and all criticism, instead explaining it away as coming from the ‘totalitarian left’ and rooted in Cultural Marxism© – basically framing it as invalid. To have the kind of conversation he speaks of, both sides must be prepared to make concessions, to agree to disagree, to accept one might not see the full picture, and yes, to accept that one might be wrong on some points. You can’t have this kind of conversation with someone who wants to win, with someone who deeply, absolutely believes they know better, and that anyway the other side is a problem, and not a small one, nope, more the kind that will lead civilization to its doom and also the gulag.

I did listen. I read much criticism of Peterson, but I also listened to his videos, I read some of his stuff, and I do not believe he is the listening type. I’m pretty sure I could never have an actual conversation with him, for a very simple reason: he would consider me a Cultural Marxist©, a member of the oh-so-dangerous totalitarian left – and reject everything I might say on these grounds.  

The notion of Cultural Marxism© in fact allows him to brush away much of the criticism directed at his ideas: if someone were, say, to criticize his unfalsifiable claim that “Faith in God is a prerequisite for all proof” by arguing that’s it’s built on a deep misunderstanding of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, then he’d just have to argue it’s the critic that misunderstand Gödel because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say Jordan Peterson Doesn’t Understand Nazism, and actually has his facts wrong on the matter then that critic would be the one not understanding because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say Peterson didn’t even understand what Canada’s Bill C-16 entailed, it wouldn’t be because they actually understood the bill, but because Cultural Marxism©. If someone were to say he’s wrong about the pay gap – well, you can guess.

(There is another reason why Peterson Is Never Wrong, and that’s because his usual argumentative strategy is never actually saying what it is he means, which means he can always fall back on being misunderstood and misinterpreted. If someone were to say his comments on “enforced monogamy” amount to a careful defence of natalist policies, and go so far as to reference those totalitarian regimes he says he is fascinated and revulsed by with, say, the Lebensborn program and the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or Decree 770 – well, he’d just have to say that’s not what he advocates for. Of course it’s not. He just circles around the notion, and if our someone were to mention things that happened, things that were documented, things Peterson will never talk about because women have never been oppressed, not ever – well, that’s an undue, unfair parallel; from him to the Lebensborn, there is after all quite a stretch. Although I don’t see how it’s a more unlikely one than, say, “using gender-neutral pronouns will lead to the gulag.”

Probably because Cultural Marxism©.)

And let’s be real, it’d be hard for me to have a productive conversation with someone who buys into Cultural Marxism© in any case – especially when they describe themselves as fascinated and revulsed by totalitarianism. For someone who has so much to say (and much that is factually wrong) about Nazism, Peterson seems strangely unaware that Cultural Marxism© is nothing but the contemporary version of Cultural Bolshevism©, and that it’s most dear to… the alt-right.

Peterson appeals to some portions of the alt-right because much of what he has to say is eerily similar to their own arguments: the destructive, doom-leading influence of Cultural Marxism©, obviously; intelligence differences having a biological (ie racial) basis; the naturalness of hierarchies dominated by white men; most if not any of his statements on The Woman Problem, etc.

The alt-right, however, has solutions for all these problems, and that’s where the love story stops. Peterson does not give solutions. He will tell you that society’s refusal to acknowledge biology-rooted differences in intelligence is a problem, a big one, an enormous one, and he will stop there. He will tell you that what women really want is to be dominated, that they are socialized to believe otherwise, that it’s wrong, and he might go so far as to propose that the solution to the Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian of the world might just be enforced monogamy, but he will not advocate for it directly. And because he doesn’t take that last, seemingly logical step, some on the alt-right hate him. He is a traitor to the cause, a sell-out.

Does it matter whether Peterson is affiliated to or worried by the alt-right? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we should in fact focus on other things. Like the fact that he is not afraid of a little lie, like that time he pretended to have been inducted in a First Nation tribe – a relatively common tactic: “i’ve been inducted in (x)”, “some of my ancestors were (x)”, “some of my followers are (x)” is frequently used as a way to shield oneself from criticism coming either from members of (x) or criticism addressing one’s stance towards (x). One of the problems with this is it rests on the (usually unsaid) assumption that all members of (x) share the very same views and values. See outgroup homogeneity effect.

It doesn’t reflect well on him that he lied about it, but even if it had been true, it wouldn’t have made his ideas any less racist, no more than it would have given him the right to speak for First Nation Canadians.

Oh wait, I probably need to back up the racism claim.

Here are Peterson and Stefan Molyneux, another altogether awful dude. Peterson is dead wrong from the start – intelligence isn’t the best predictor of “life success, economically,” neither is conscientiousness (which needed to be mentioned otherwise his point about meritocracy would make no sense at all), the two don’t automatically come together, though of course any argument I could make would have to be rejected on the grounds of Cultural Marxism©. Anyway, what follows is typical: Peterson takes care to mention that “this is where some the uglier elements of science become germane,” which allows him to distance himself from what he’s about to say, establishing he’s only relating what science indisputably shows and that he acknowledges The Ugly. He adds it’s “that which no one would want to be the case,” reinforcing this distance. That thing no one wants to be true but is science, he continues, is that there are “profound and virtually irremediable differences in people’s cognitive performances, and that those differences have a very solid biological and heritable basis. No one wants to hear that. They don’t want to hear that it’s biological, they don’t want to hear it’s heritable, they don’t want to hear it’s permanent, they don’t want to hear that it’s irremediable and that it actually has a practical consequence.”

(“Intelligence” is a much more complex thing than Peterson seems to believe. It’s determined by complex genetics and environmental factors; the question of heritability is also way more complex than that; the permanence thing refers, I believe, to IQ and that too is more complex than “it’s permanent and irremediable” – “irremediable,” btw, is pejorative in this context.)

You can guess why no one wants to hear it – not because Peterson is oversimplifying and misrepresenting the results of contemporary research on cognition, not because he’s hedging close to Social Darwinism. Nah, it’s because of Cultural Marxism©’s doom-leading influence, obviously.

Molyneux is quick to expand, distancing himself in similar ways to Peterson’s from what he’s saying-but-not-saying, which is that ethnicity and gender are basically the main factors in intelligence difference. Peterson downplays but doesn’t disavow the gender factor, explaining it as “relatively trivial.” Ethnicity, however, is a whole other matter, and he mentions Ashkenazi Jews having an advantage over other Caucasians – a reference to Sam Harris’ The Bell Curve, one of the go-to works for people trying to bring back scientific racism.

Peterson brings back his earlier idea that intelligence is the best predictor of “life success, economically,” and explains that Ashkenazi Jews’ intelligence advantage is “sufficient to account for their radical overrepresentation in positions of authority and influence and productivity,” no actual statistics given. The very terminology is dubious – “radical overrepresentation,” not “greater representation,” or anything more neutral-sounding, and it’s easy to go from here to there, even easier when you remember the historical roots of the notion of Cultural Marxism©, but of course Peterson is quick to distance himself again: “just so it’s absolutely clear, I am not saying [this overrepresentation is] a bad thing.” He’s not being antisemitic is what he means. He’s only saying there’s a real reason for it – ie the biological basis of intelligence difference, which since we live in meritocracies (we don’t, and considering the accent he puts on the intelligence factor and its inheritability, it’s not quite the good term anyway) accounts for “life success, economically.”  

There’s more of the same, but basically we go back to the idea that no one wants to admit it’s True, All Of It, and of course, that it’s a problem. It’s a problem because in our more and more “cognitively complex societies” there’s less and less room for the “gainful employment” of the bottom ten percent. The human capital of these ten percent is too low, if you will (of course how much that should even matter depends on whether or not you believe productivity is an important factor to determine individual ‘worth’), making them at best worthless and at worst a burden. Peterson unsurprisingly insists he doesn’t have a solution to this unsolvable problem, which might be sincere, or might be because he’s aware that historically, the solution is eugenics, and of course that’s not something he’d ever advocate for.

Just to make it clear, under all the rhetorical flourishes, this is two white men saying white men are more intelligent than everyone else because Science, but the “science” they refer to is either held as pretty much pseudoscience (the Bell Curve) by the scientific community, or criticized to a degree (IQ, which is insufficient a tool to approach all areas of cognitive abilities, among other critiques) and misrepresented anyway, because neither Peterson nor Molyneux give a whit about what The Science really shows, they just want to make it like their prejudices are rooted in fact: they’re not racists (remember the ever-important ethnicity factor in intelligence difference), they’re just pointing out undeniable facts. They even say it’s ugly, what else could we ask for?

Some awareness of this, maybe:

[Moreover], the question of the relation, if any, between race and intelligence has very little scientific importance (as it has no social importance, except under the assumptions of a racist society) … As to social importance, a correlation between race and mean I.Q. (were this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this category … In a non-racist society, the category of race would be of no greater significance [than height]. The mean I.Q. of individuals of a certain racial background is irrelevant to the situation of a particular individual, who is what he is. Recognizing this perfectly obvious fact, we are left with little, if any, plausible justification for an interest in the relation between mean I.Q. and race, apart from the ‘justification’ provided by the existence of racial discrimination.

(Another thing Peterson was dead wrong about, but I think he knows it, is when he says no one wants to hear that. There are plenty of people who want to hear exactly that, and they love people like Peterson, who can give a veneer of scientific credibility to their prejudices. He should know, since they make up a vocal portion of his fandom.)

Maybe I should get into The Woman Problem as well. I did mention it. Peterson has a lot to say about women. Sometimes he frames it as questions, which allows him to say “I didn’t really say it, I’m just asking questions, you numbskull.” (paraphrased). There’s that time he asked why do so few women watch my videos? Which I’m only mentioning because considering what follows, it’s hilarious, and I kinda need a laugh at this point. There’s that time he asked could it be that women are outraged because they crave infant contact and society refuse them that? There’s the worse do feminists avoid criticizing Islam because they crave masculine dominance? There’s the blame-shifting can men and women work together in the workplace? He actually answers this one, and the answer is women and men can’t work together because we (men) “don’t know what the rules are”. Which rules is unclear (maybe “don’t harass women?”) but no matter, Peterson has some to propose: “no makeup in the workplace” should definitely be one, since it’s “sexually provocative”. Women paint their lips red because “lips turn red during sexual arousal”. High heels are also reprehensible since they “exaggerate sexual attractiveness.” Of course, he’s not saying women shouldn’t do it, just that it’s, you know, what they do. Kind of like they’re asking to be harassed, honestly. Might that be because of that craving for masculine dominance?  

More pearls that should make it clear why he’s overall more popular among men: Women are characterized by “higher levels of trait negative emotion (neuroticism)” in contrast to, of course, men. (A comment on a study of online harassment posted by James Demore, who managed to get fired from Google for a sexist memo; you can contrast his description of working at Google to the testimonies coming to light with the Google Walkout.) Women that don’t want a child by their 30s? There’s something that “isn’t quite right with the way they’re constituted or looking at the world”. More cringy comments ensue. Looping back to women’s craving for masculine dominance: Testosterone, nothing’s more appealing to women. Some appalling comments on men too. Rhetoric eerily similar as that of MRAs/Incels’.

It’s all Very Serious, so I’ll focus on something that’s kind of funny in this neverending deluge of awful: Peterson’s deep, deep dislike of Frozen. Yes, Disney’s Frozen. He didn’t like the propaganda:

Frozen apparently “served a political purpose: to demonstrate that a woman did not need a man to be successful. Anything written to serve a political purpose (rather than to explore and create) is propaganda, not art. Frozen was propaganda, pure and simple. Beauty and the Beast (the animated version) was not.” He’s expounded on that, explaining it was “produced for ideological reasons” as an anti-Beauty and the Beast, which is “inappropriate”. He did like Moana, but only because Moana allied herself with this “uncivilized, rather masculine force” 

I’m sorry but that’s hilarious. I mean, there’s two main male characters in Frozen (not counting Olaf, who is a snowman), and one of them reveals himself to be Bad News, but the other is… kind of instrumental to the “success” of the female characters? His name is Kristoff, but he doesn’t count because… Well, Peterson doesn’t mention him, so I’m not sure why he gets erased from the narrative, but if I was to hazard a guess it’s because he is Not A Good Example Of Masculinity. Too nice, too bumbling, too… beta-y. Definitely not enough of an “uncivilized, rather masculine force.” (Though even that seems debatable, considering his way of life, but whatever.)

I wonder what he thought of Brave. Haven’t found anything on that one. Anyway, assuming Frozen is an anti-BatB, why is it inappropriate? Why, because BatB is the “fundamental hero myth for women”, which he defines as “find a monster that wants to be a good man and help him be a good man”. Don’t go for the “underdeveloped, harmless thing”, ladies, go for the monster. He admits “that’s a scary thing to do,” but since the choice is between a monster and a “castrated man…” 

(On Peterson and myth – I will never stop if I go there, so please read Homer and Hatred: On Jordan Peterson’s Mythology; Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism – to be followed by Umberto Eco’s essay on fascism; Jordan Peterson’s Tired Old Myths; Jordan Peterson’s Murky Maps of Meaning; Elwood’s The Politics of Myth: A Study of CG Jung, Mircea Eliade, which is not about Peterson, but considering the influence of Jung/Campbell/Eliade on his own approach of myth I still recommend it.)

Please note the dehumanizing language (thing), and of course the eerily similarity with MRAs/Incels’ rhetoric.

On the manosphere forums, you can find praise for Peterson and just under it, someone who thinks throwing acid into women’s faces is the best idea since the wheel. Or something much, much worse. I wonder if Peterson is wilfully blind to it, or if he’s exploiting it. I wonder why he’s so afraid of Cultural Marxism©, when so many of his fans fantasizes about killing women, killing Jews, killing Muslims, killing everyone that’s not them and unapologetically admire those who act on that hate. I wonder if it matters. I wonder if someday soon someone will follow in the footpaths of Elliot Rodgers and Alek Minassian, and leave a manifesto quoting Jordan Peterson. I wonder how we’ll explain it away. How we will explain it away. There will be a girl, or maybe a woman. She will have rejected this newest killer, she will have worn makeup and heels. It will be a sad story, because if she’d accepted the monster, if she’d been the Beauty to his Beast, we’d have avoided a tragedy. We won’t say, it was her fault, we’ll just insinuate it. Somewhere, someone will say; Jordan Peterson is so right. Click for my essay on Why Women Are Evil And Also Stink (Because Vaginas Are Dirty) And Not Fully Human!

In Peterson’s deluge of words, there’s some decent, common-sense advice. Stand up straight, it’ll do wonders for your self-confidence (and accessorily your spine). This you know already, as you already know everything I’m about to tell you, like the fact that, dear men, the world is doing you many a wrong by trying to convince you that we should all be equal. We are not. Fight for the reestablishment of your nature-given right to dominance.

But don’t forget to clean your goddamn room first.

In another timeline, he’d just be one of a bunch of people on my list of utter quacks, along with so-called Ancient Aliens theorists, Campbell, and a looot of anthropologists and prehistorians from the nineteenth century (an era Peterson could have easily belonged to, and probably been happier in, what with all the scientific racism), among others.

Peterson earns his place on the list because he has some very dodgy ideas about The Past (let’s not forget(1) He can’t tell you how he knows that, but The Ancients depicted the DNA molecule. (2) More examples, and again he “really believes” that they are ancient representations of DNA, it’s just “very complicated to explain why” (3) Oh but wait, he doesn’t “believe” that, he just has his “suspicions.”) and Human Nature (not even that accepted a concept, btw). Look, anyone telling you “that’s how it was Before hence it’s what’s Natural and how it should be again” is lying to you. The Before is a deeply political territory, and the things we chose to tell, the very way we tell them, the parts we cherish above all others – that says as much about us as it does about the Before (and often enough, more). People who say “that’s how it was; that’s what’s natural; that’s how it should be” are misrepresenting the past, cherry-picking the bits that support their arguments. What guides their choices is nothing but Ideology – which is what they’re really trying to sell you.

Be wary of people who instrumentalize the past to sell you something, be it the Lebensraum or communism as the true State of Nature. Or a specific, “natural,” model of social hierarchy.

Which brings me to the lobster. Why, of all things, does Peterson pick the lobster? I don’t know that, and neither does anyone, because he never explained it. A shared common ancestor in no way justifies it: if we look far back enough, we share common ancestors with pretty much anything living. And the lobster is such an incongruous choice. Not a primate, not even a mammal.

I have no doubt Peterson could have spun something out of the Bonobos, and point to actual Science. That’d make a modicum of sense at least. But no. Fucking lobsters. Even my nineteenth century dudes would have brought Statistics before going there. They’d have tried to argue that studies showed the majority of all things that breathe favour a specific social organisation over all others, and they’d have given a variety of examples. Among which the lobster, maybe. They’d have explained Mantis religiosa and other inconvenient counterexamples away. Peterson’s book, it’s true, is theoretically a self-help book, but still, he’s an academic, and yet he goes straight for the lobster. 

Part of me is disappointed. He could do so much better than lobsters. But why would he, since so much of the reading material is produced by those oh-so-evil, doom-leading Cultural Marxists©? Why even bother with standard academic practices when those were set by the same Cultural Marxists©? It’s all worthless.

(That might be why he didn’t even try to use the Bonobos or another species of primates, to go back to my previous example. After all the argument that they’d be a better choice is in part based on research produced by disciplines infested by this so-called Cultural Marxism©. The lobster, on the other hand, is a massive fuck you to those evildoers.)

But. Peterson isn’t the Flat Earth society. He didn’t write the 21st century version of the Telliamed. He didn’t write a parody like Blueprints for a Sparkling Tomorrow: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, which I’m mentioning because one of its authors wrote some really good stuff on Peterson.

He’s not funny. He is A Very Serious Man, peddling Very Serious Notions.