By David Futrelle
Jordan Peterson is mightily miffed. In an angry statement first published on his blog yesterday (and then in Canada’s National Post), the Intellectual Dark Webster accused Cambridge University of “kowtowing to an ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob” after Cambridge’s Divinity School rescinded its offer of a two-month fellowship.
According to Divinity school officials, the short-tempered Canadian Lobsterprof had “requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review.” A University spokesperson added that “we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our [inclusive] principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot.”
Peterson is so intolerant of so many groups it’s hard to know which particular brand of bigotry bothered the folks at Cambridge most. Was it his transphobic tantrum about using the proper pronouns for trans people? Was it his weird uneasiness about the very presence of women in the workplace, or his advocacy for some form of “enforced monogamy” to ensure that potentially murderous incels can get dates? (Why he’s convinced it would be a good thing for women to date men capable of going on shooting sprees I couldn’t tell you.)
Was it his tendency to threaten critics with lawsuits or literal slap-fights? Was it his contention that entire academic disciplines that he doesn’t like, including “women’s studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies … have to go and the faster they go the better.”
Or perhaps, in the wake of the New Zealand massacre, they were troubled by his many weird statements about Islam, including his repeated insistence that Islamophobia isn’t really a thing and is just a term made up by evil leftists and/or “fascists” trying to shut down “debate” on Islam?
Or perhaps they were concerned with Peterson’s marked lack of intolerance towards outright anti-Islam bigots, perhaps best symbolized by the picture (above) of him posing proudly with a fan in New Zealand whose t-shirt announces his hatred bluntly, accusing Muslims of an assortment of crimes including “Pedophilia, Rape, Wife-Beating” and “Praying for Violence.”
Would Peterson have happily stood next to someone wearing a shirt declaring “I’m a Proud Anti-Semite,” blaming Jews for alleged crimes like “hoarding money,” “killing Christ,” or “cucking white men with interracial porn?” Would he have posed with someone wearing a “Proud Racist” shirt attacking blacks for “being lazy” or “raping white women?” No, of course not. But he’s happy to put his arm around someone attacking Muslims in similarly bigoted ways.
I’m guessing the Cambridge Divinity School had issues with all of these things, as they well should have.
Many of Peterson’s fans, naturally, are crying “censorship,” as if Cambridge’s ultimate refusal to give a bigot a paid position were some kind of attack on free speech.
In case you’re worried, that last tweet is not from the official account of the band The Who, but from a fellow who describes himself in his Twitter bio as a
#MRA #mgtow #redpilled activist. rightwing. contrarian. not pc ideas. oppose SJWs. friendly. debater, im a believer in Jesus
Peterson, for his part, didn’t actually claim that he was being censored, which would have been a little weird, given that he devoted much of his angry rant on Cambridge’s disinvitation to bragging about how many books he had sold and how many hits his YouTube videos get.
According to Peterson, videos of some of his recent lectures on Genesis (the book in the Bible, not the prog-rock-turned-terrible-pop band)
have received about 10 million hits (as well as an equal or greater number of downloads). The first lecture alone — on the first sentence of Genesis — has garnered 3.7 million views just on YouTube …
It’s also the case that my books, 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning both rely heavily on Judeo-Christian thinking … The former has now sold 3 million copies (one million in tongues other than English), and will be translated into 50 languages; the latter, a much older book, was recently a New York Times bestseller in audio format.
It’s also rather telling that this man whose speech has been so tyrannically silenced is saying all this in a newspaper with a daily circulation of roughly 140,000.
But if Peterson, unlike many of his fans, doesn’t think Cambridge’s disinvitation is censorship, exactly, he does seem to regard it as a symptom of “the collapse of rationality and reason,” to borrow a phrase from Ian Miles Cheong’s tweet above.
“I think that it is deeply unfortunate that the authorities at the Divinity school in Cambridge decided [to kowtow] to an ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob,” Peterson declared.
Given the continued decline of church attendance, the rise in atheistic or agnostic sentiment, the increasing irrelevance of theological education and the collapse in interest in such matters among young people, wiser and more profound decisions might have been made.
Apparently his planned lectures on Exodus were the only thing that might have been able to hold off the atheist hordes that will destroy civilization any day now.
You see, it matters whether people around the world understand these ancient stories. It deeply matters. We are becoming unmoored, because we no longer share the structure these stories undergird. This is psychologically destabilizing. It’s producing a pathological and desperate nihilism that is increasingly common and, at the same time, a pronounced proclivity for the ideological certainty that mimics but cannot replace true religious belief.
No, he’s not talking about the “ideological certainty” of the Lobsterboys who think he’s pretty much the next best thing to Jesus; he’s talking about the people who aren’t part of his cult.
I believe that those at the Faculty of Divinity who rescinded their offer to me — and handled the rescindment in a manner that could hardly have been more narcissistic or self-congratulatory — don’t give a damn about the perilous decline of Christianity. I think that it is no bloody wonder that the faith is declining (and with it, the values of the West, as it fragments) with cowards and mountebanks of the sort who manifested themselves in this action.
Kind of a bold move to suggest that someone taking away a temporary academic gig you were kind of looking forward to is a sign of the impending collapse of Western Civilization, but hey. the dude does get a lot of hits on YouTube!
I wish them the continued decline in relevance over the next few decades that they deeply and profoundly and diligently work toward and deserve.
I believe this is just Petersonspeak for “fuck y’all motherfuckers.”
Alas, for poor Jordan Peterson — and possibly for Reason and Truth and Civilization itself — the good professor is also facing an attack from a New Zealand bookstore chain that has decided, in the wake of the Christchurch killings, to remove his books from their shelves.
As far as I know, Peterson hasn’t yet responded to this egregious assault on … the convenience of New Zealanders who will have to get the book from other bookstores or maybe online. But some of his fans are already crying foul for him.
Huh. Is that Lady Liberty wearing a ball gag, and pasties on her possibly augmented breasts? This Free Speech Fundamentalist dude doesn’t seem to be so much interested in free speech as he is in freejacking, at is were, and I don’t mean the 1992 sci-fi-racecar thriller starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger.
And what flag is that on the pasties, anyway?
The culture war is weird.
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@Katamount
This. Shit.
The level of ideological contortions needed to sustain their narratives, with a straight face, would be enough to win them the gold metal or a recurrent spot at a circus in Las Vegas. As in, the following statements somehow co-habitate in the same ideological mindset:
– The West is not misogynist. Misogyny only exists in Muslim cultures. Women who defend Muslims are setting themselves up for disenfranchisement and possibly slavery.
– Women are inherently different than men, and like to be dominated. Men have to be the decision makers, because women will inherently vote against their own interests.
– We have to disenfranchise women in order to prevent them from voting to bring in other cultural groups, which will disenfranchise them.
– We therefore have to adopt “White Sharia” to protect women from their own disenfranchisement.
According to the Guardian, Cambridge didn’t so much “invite” Peterson — he *applied* for the post, got through the first round of the selection process, but not the second:
“The University of Cambridge said Peterson requested to be a visiting fellow and was initially granted the opportunity, but after further review it decided to take back the offer.”
JP really sums up for me the idea that the problem with these guys isn’t stupidity per se. I don’t know a lot about him besides what I read on this blog, but if he holds a professorship he’s clearly educated and intelligent about some things (though not as smart as he thinks he is, or about the subjects he talks about). I worry that a lot of leftists (though not mammotheers imo!) think of right-wingers as ignorant backwards idiots, when in reality many of them have a shiny veneer of reasonableness and phrase their hateful ideologies in some very slick and — if most folks are not aware, or not paying attention — convincing words.
All this to say, insofar as I’m afraid of the thuggish obvious maga-hat-wearing types, it’s that I fear physical violence from them. From the JP types, and especially the ones with any kind of political power, I fear the creation of laws and policies that would deny us* jobs, free movement, etc, and that give cover and legitimacy to the physically violent ones.
* Muslims, but also LGBTQ folks, or any minorities really…
@Scildfreja,
. In a weird way, I rather enjoy batting them around, as long as it’s in a public setting where I’m not worried they’ll punch me. They learn nothing because they don’t want to learn, but I always hope anyone listening in learns plenty.
@ Rabid Rabbit, I know it would make my day! It’s not ever the questions, it’s the air of pushy entitlement and the refusal to do anything other than soapbox that bugs me. You’re awesome. ?
@ Moon Custer,
Well, that’s…less dramatic that JP made it out to be…
It really annoys me how Jordan Peterson is taken seriously by young men. Or really any of these Redpill, MRA, or MGTOW celebs. But it’s really no surprise, men clearly want to talk about issues that uniquely affect them and without hating women in a lot of cases but these men’s groups so clearly dominate online discussion. Not saying there aren’t any positive men’s communities that are inclusive because they totally exist, I love the MensLib subreddit myself and that’s a place that does not accept any hateful comments or people who try to paint groups with a broad brush maliciously. That place has helped me mature as a man, and I’m super grateful for that. But the fact that it took me until my mid-20s after I had adsorbed so many toxic ideas to find it bothers me. I guess in a more ideal world, boys and men curious about their own issues would Google it and find some Mister Rogers esque figure who explains that their gender roles might be hurting them in various ways and helps them introspect a bit with zero bigotry rather than Peterson who seems to only offer external blame for their issues.
I’m glad that Peterson was barred but with his presence online, does it really matter? It does for the school, yes, but for the people seeking help and finding him? Not so much. It’s not all negative, there seems to be more men in the public eye trying to improve more than ever. I guess that’s a win.
I think Peterson would be surprised at how many people in the street here in the UK he’d have to ask before finding anyone who knew anything about the Bible that didn’t just feature highlights of Christmas and possibly Easter. We’re very secular and, present political madness excepted, we seem to do fine without these supposedly vital ancient stories.
I mean, he has a tiny smidgen of a point, in that the university probably shouldn’t have granted him the opportunity before doing the further review, but really now, Jordan, it’s not that huge a thing. Aren’t your twelve rules supposed to be about manfully facing up to real life, including disappointments?
@Bookworm:
Now I’m imagining your avatar batting tiny entitled white men around. It’s great.
As for JP, you may not actually want to know more, but if you do, these are probably the best articles:
https://longreads.com/2018/07/12/petersons-complaint/
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html
http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/guest-post-jordan-peterson-bumbling-cult-leader-or-delightful-satire/
Between them, they provide probably all the cover Cambridge could need.
To me, that’s the value in engaging trumplings in a dialog. Not that I’m going to convince someone who thinks that “… all the evidence is faked and all the experts have been bribed” is a logical argument, but rather that I might cause someone listening in to rethink their stand.
… a piece on tucker carlson
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/tucker-carlson-comments-debate-outrage-fox-news.html
Sidenote
Has anyone been reading about the Indiana teachers that got shot, execution style, during an active shooter drill?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teachers-shot-active-shooter-drill_n_5c93fc99e4b0a6329e142b5a?fbclid=IwAR2RuOdU4O-1gEw5TXs-ELVFb4eCrPEu-hZ8j6DQEracfjucYwwzdN3m9mU
Is it just me, or does this kind of “over-the-top” behavior reek of condescension towards the teachers and even a little bit of sadism and fantasy power play? These guys were playing the part of an active shooter, mowing down what conservatives have long accused to be “liberal indoctrinators”, and I don’t think that was coincidental.
The officers in charge even went so far as to tell them “this is what happens when you’re not prepared”, as in “armed” I imagine.
I had to share this with you all. It is a letter to the editor in my local paper:
There is so much to unpack there. I don’t even know where to start. I live in a very liberal university town. Apparently, outside my academic circles, there are some very interesting perspectives. Just, wow!
Simon
We’re similar here in Australia. Come to think of it, there’d probably be a reasonable number of people who learned more in school about indigenous Dreaming stories … you want ancient, we’ll give you ancient … than any Christian stuff beyond Xmas carols and Easter bunny (or bilby).
@Diego Duarte
RE: The teachers
I had that exact thought. It really did sound like a sick fantasy that some macho jerks were exacting against educators that they’ve been convinced are America’s fifth column by hate radio or Fox.
I hope somebody gets canned for it.
Katamount:
In my experience in academia, having the offer of a visiting professorship or fellowship rescinded is almost always a sign that the college or school believes that the offer should never have been extended in the first place and someone was just trying to slip one of their friends past the dean or provost. Else they tend just to ride it out. That’s partly why Peterson seems to be on the warpath: losing out on this opportunity is a humiliating indication that one of the most prestigious institutions in the world thinks that he is unworthy. Which he is! Why should a professor of psychology who’s written some pop scholarship on Judeo-Christian traditions get a cushy gig telling actual theologians a bunch of pseudo-intellectual stuff that they’ve probably heard already?
It confirms to me everything that I’ve known about Peterson from that article that Rabid Rabbit linked by the chair who hired him: he became a self-help guru because he is incredibly entitled and conceited (and bad at academic politics because of it).
@ Diego:
This is the pro-gun attitude. It’s the “wild west”, and if you’re stupid enough to not be packin’, it’s your own fault. Shooting the teachers in the back of the head is their way of telling them they don’t belong in the pro-gun fantasy.
@Bookworm, I totally understand that impulse! It’s fun to crack their shells a little bit. And yeah, hopefully it gives a good signal to others around. Go get’em!
@Diego, here’s my take on it:
It’s authoritarians exerting control. The sheriff’s department was “teaching” them through corporal punishment. Plain standard right-wing “education techniques.” Spankings for children that don’t behave, rulers over knuckles for students that get the answer wrong, etc. It’s not about teaching at all, it’s about enforcing compliance from “subordinates”.
I guarantee you, the cops that were doing the “teaching” thought that shooting those teachers with BB guns and causing injuries was the most effective way to “teach them” to not cower. They don’t consider violence morally wrong if they’re the ones using it, because they consider it “educational”.
Makes me blindingly angry.
RE: Teachers
WTF?
Those trainers are supposed to be law enforcement, right? Maybe it’s different where I live, but the procedure during an active shooting is to treat the shooter as a natural hazard, evacuate everyone from the perimeter and keep the shooter isolated and out of sight of targets until law enforcement shows up. The idea is that shooters often commit suicide when they run out of targets. How does it help ANYONE if you throw more targets at them?
And taking hostages and executing them isn’t how shooters behave either! Seriously, that was just power-play and it’s sickening.
@Ben
Thanks for the inside scoop! I know very little about the machinations of academia.
Diego,
I saw a tweet the other day that said something along the lines of active shooter drills are not about safety, they’re a ritual in our (as in USian society) death cult.
It rang really true to me. The right, and the corresponding gun culture absolutely function as a death cult. Unfortunately they don’t hide out in a remote commune like most cults, they control the government.
Yeah, I thought as much.
There’s so many levels to this shit I can’t even begin to grasp how angry I should be about it.
There’s the death cult angle. The exertion of authority through corporal punishment. The enactment of violent fantasies at whom they view as enemies. Plenty of shit to unpack here.
But if anything, the most troublesome of all is the normalization of ALL of this. Somehow we’ve gone from debating whether assault weapons should be banned to conducting active shooter drills.
Conservatives and fascists are entirely too gleeful of the fact that not only have they not lost any ground, they’ve managed to gain some.
This last display and use of cruelty aimed at the
people demanding change is nothing short of the exercise of power dynamics by an abuser.
They know they are in the wrong, and they know they can get away with it if they just adjust the narrative a little. Gas lighting is just becoming so normalized in the current political climate.
Worst thing is they’re not even done. They want more and they will continue to push the enveloppe. I’m glad these fucks are getting deplatformed. I’m also glad the liberals are starting to pull their head out of their ass and realize our warnings were not paranoia.
OT: I often laugh at Jonathan Pie’s routines, even though I don’t always agree with the points he makes in character. But there’s nothing to laugh at any more.
There is zero purpose to shooting teachers with pellet guns, unless you’re trying to train them how to be executed correctly. I’ll bet they didn’t provide safety goggles, either.
There was no point to telling them “this is what happens when you cower”, either. If the teachers had fought back like they were “supposed to”, within the context of the exercise, they wouldn’t have been praised. There would have been very real consequences, ranging from firing to arrest.
I suspect the drill, besides being a sadistic power play, was also meant to scare teachers into believing that yes, they do need to be armed, and to go vote for more guns at the ballot box. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out the NRA was behind it.
I suppose I could be persuaded that airsoft guns could add value to active shooter training, but I don’t think they even need to be loaded, much less used to shoot teachers. Perhaps those cops had unresolved issues from their own school days? Or perhaps it’s just another example of ACAB.
I’m sure the 50s and 60s classroom drills on how to hide from Soviet nukes were mostly meant to whip up fear and boy did it work. Look at how the right channeled the fear of communists and convinced baby boomers that any tax on the rich, any regulation, any social safety net would turn us into (insert current hated communist or socialist here).
So far our youths seem to be a bit more savvy. I hope they stay that way.
Between the Indiana incident, and some of the illegal searches that have made the news, I fear schools may need to start having active sheriff’s deputy drills, as well as active shooter drills.
OT – Breaking news
Mueller has sent his report to AG Barr.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/mar/22/donald-trump-latest-news-live-us-politics-mueller-report-russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-report-sent-to-attorney-general-signaling-his-russia-investigation-has-ended/2019/03/22/b061d8fa-323e-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html?utm_term=.8dc530ad20e6