Peterson vs. the hashtag sadists
When I first heard Jordan Peterson speak, I couldn’t figure out his appeal. We were paired up at a recent Montreal Press Club event, and he was the headliner, with me as an opening act. Peterson was talking about free speech, and the biblical tradition in Western thought.
At first, I didn’t really understand his thesis. And he seemed all choked up, like it was all so tough for him to talk about. Unlike almost everyone else in the room, who seemed rapt from the moment Peterson began speaking, I’d never seen any of his videos. (I still haven’t.) I felt like the only guy at the Poison concert who wasn’t holding up his lighter for “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”
But then, after Peterson had been speaking for about 10 minutes, it clicked for me. His ideas came together in a powerful way, and I got a glimpse into why he’s become Canada’s most influential intellectual. It wasn’t just that his ideas struck me as original and well- informed. It was the atmosphere of suffering that accompanied his speaking style. In those moments, Peterson took on a tragic, almost gothic aspect. It was as if facing up to the truth of his ideas caused him spasms of intellectual agony, which he endured for the sake of educating his audience.
I certainly don’t think Peterson regards himself as any kind of prophet: a recently released documentary about him, The Rise of Jordan Peterson, reveals that he was fixated on the nature of evil from a young age ( especially in the form of war and genocide), but also shows him to be far more interested in analyzing these phenomena as an academic and author, rather than proselytizing any kind of totalizing creed to deliver humanity from suffering. But I do think that the powerful reaction he attracts — both from his most devoted followers and his most vicious detractors — owes something to the tragic atmospherics that sometimes characterize his speaking style.
And while these two groups are at each other’s proverbial throats on social media ( and sometime even at real- life protests outside his speaking events), they are flip sides of the same basic phenomenon. As Peterson himself has discussed, we are living in a post- Christian age, and many people now turn to politics, academia, activism and sometimes even their Youtube autoplay feed, seeking figures who can play the role of ersatz prophet or demon. For some, it’s Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or Greta Thunberg. For others, it’s Jordan Peterson.
There was a period in 2017 and 2018 when every progressive Canadian columnist took his or her turn writing what was more or less the same column bashing Peterson — usually on the basis of his pronoun wrong think, or because of some stray angry comment he’d made on Twitter, or because he’d met with the wrong person, or taken a picture with someone who turned out to be a nut. ( It’s difficult for prophets to maintain their aura of purity in the age of social media.) The overall theme was that Peterson is “the stupid man’s smart person.” These columns were strikingly peevish in tone, and seemed animated by an almost hysterical ( and oddly reactionary) fear that Peterson is a sort of Pied Piper who uses his Harvard education and extraordinary academic pedigree to convince the unread and unwashed to abandon social- justice puritanism. The phobic tone echoes the conservatives of yore who warned young people to avoid jazz clubs lest their music- addled brains succumb to communism.
Ironically, the anti- Petersonians now seem far more fanatical than Peterson’s most faithful fans. This became clear in recent days, when some of Peterson’s critics — including, amazingly, a professor at the University of Ottawa — went online to express satisfaction that Peterson is being treated for dependence on benzodiazepine, an anti- anxiety medication. It was a shockingly ghoulish response. It was also comically hypocritical, given that these are the same people who typically spend much of their waking lives boasting publicly of their commitment to social justice, and who insist on using the language of genocide to describe acts of misgendering or cultural appropriation. All cults dehumanize their critics and perceived enemies. And the self- described social- justice proponents who regard Peterson as a secular demon are no different.
For those who want to understand the true Jordan Peterson, flaws and all, I recommend the above- referenced documentary, The Rise of Jordan Peterson, which was produced by the Toronto- based husband- and- wife team of Patricia Marcoccia and Maziar Ghaderi (whom I recently interviewed for the Quillette podcast). Lest you think this is hagiography, it’s not. In fact, Marcoccia and Ghaderi began the project well before Peterson rose to fame in 2016. Their original focus was Peterson’s deep involvement with a B.c.-based Indigenous group, and they switched to a more general biographical focus only after he became a celebrated international figure.
One of the amazing things you will see in the film is that, wherever the filming takes place, ordinary passersby approach Peterson to tell him how his work has helped them overcome self- doubt and depression. This is the human reality behind the fact that Peterson’s self-help book has sold more than two million copies. Whatever you think about his academic ideas, he is clearly helping people make sense of the world.
When I look at the people who despise Peterson most, on the other hand, they are people who help no one — most of them being social-media addicts and literary mediocrities who could walk Toronto streets from dawn till dusk without a single person recognizing them, let alone thanking them for their work. So if you’re looking for demons, which fits the role more perfectly: the troubled academic who took medication to deal with his wife’s cancer and the strains of life in the public spotlight — or the social- justice hashtag sadists who revel in his misery?