Prof. Jordan Peterson’s ‘gotcha’ moment
Why it seems like ages ago, when the University of Toronto leaped into the now infamous Pronoun Wars with a couple of minatory letters to Prof. Jordan Peterson that were as ham-fisted and bullying as they were badly written. Peterson had made it very clear that he would not, under any asserted compulsion from legislation or human rights code, use any newly coined pronouns (they had reach a count of 31 at one point) when addressing transgender students. Succinctly stated, he would not be compelled to speak words others insisted he speak.
The University of Toronto, which many insist is a world-class institution, responded that as a result of this ( then) little- known clinical psychologist, that some of its students had been the subject of “specific and violent threats, including threats of assault, injury and death.” Then in sly malice it went on to hope that these death and other threats “were not his intention” in making the arguments he was making.
The university held back on the bowl of hemlock traditionally offered to enlightened dissidents. However it grimly “urged him,” because of the “threats” and under the requirements of the Ontario Human Rights Code, to “stop making” (these) remarks.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, as Shakespeare has reminded us. The university’s ludicrous claims and attempts at censorship kindled a fire of publicity. The case of the professor who refused to speak made- up pronouns, and who made YouTube videos calmly explaining why, entered the news stream. However, the greatest gift to Prof. Peterson and his cause was not these two craven letters.
The gods, in their always inscrutable way, really smiled on him during a free- speech rally, when a mob of social justice hooligans hectored him, set up a whitenoise machine to drown him out, and insulted him with the usual volleys of bigotry and transphobia.
There was the gift. There was the germinal moment. The melee of intolerance was filmed, as everything is these days. It entered the broad and infinite reaches of the internet. Prof. Peterson, calm as always in the centre of the manufactured mayhem and malice, was now fully launched, as he never could have been, purely on the strength of reasonable arguments, reasonably advanced.
That’s the historical context — history comes in short spans these days — of the pronoun wars and the saga of Jordan Peterson. Unfair, overwrought and downright malicious opposition to him has been the primary engine of his rise to international prominence. Hysterical reaction to his principled arguments has been the engine that now supplies him with an audience of millions and book sales of Salinger proportions.
To be very particular, I like to believe that of all the torments and obstacles placed in his way in the early days of his campaign, it was the hauling of that whitenoise machine — the attempt, literally, to drown out a professor, at a free-speech rally, on a university campus, by people preaching tolerance — that gave him and his cause its wings. That was the moment: Christmas morning for free speech and Jordan Peterson.
There has been much since of course. The core of the Lindsay Shepherd scandal — it was a scandal how Miss Shepherd was treated — was her daring to show a brief clip of Jordan Peterson. The key moment in her interrogation was when the Inquisitor in Chief asked her if “she (horror and shame) had been one of Jordan Peterson’s students.” (She wasn’t.) Wilfrid Laurier’s pathological allergy to Peterson or his thoughts propelled his story further.
A great climax came within the past week. Prof. Peterson, now the most prominent Canadian academic possibly in all the world, on a tour for his new book, entered another lioness’s den. This was a 30- minute interview by a leftwing feminist on Britain’s Channel Four. The interviewer was, by definition and mindset, hostile. But over its 30 achingly painful minutes, the calm professor whittled away at her every presupposition and false ascription, till by interview’s end, the host was a lost voice in a forest of tiny splinters on the studio floor.
At one point in this epic demolition, Peterson allowed himself an unwonted indulgence. He quietly uttered “Ha. Gotcha.”
It was the “Gotcha” heard round the world. That interview on YouTube has claimed millions of views worldwide, and such is its pure entertainment value, it will claim millions more.
Sweet are the uses of adversity. Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is now at the Alpine peak of Amazon sales the world over. He is appearing everywhere from New Zealand to California. Howard Anglin, the perceptive and trenchant lawyer, puzzles on Twitter whether Peterson is more a “Northrop Frye” intellectual than a “Marshall McLuhan.” Canada has a new intellectual star.
It’s all thanks to his opponents. Ha. Gotcha!