Jordan Peterson Constructed
This is kinda-sorta part three of Ethno Nationalists are Leftists, in that it shows ethnonationalists using the same tactics that we know Lefists use. You don’t really have to read those parts for this one, but I do recommend it. Maybe go back and read them if you like this one.
Part 1: https://www.minds.com/RhetoricalHypothetical/blog/ethno-nationalists-are-leftists-part-1-1019467216283492352
Part 2: https://www.minds.com/RhetoricalHypothetical/blog/ethno-nationalists-are-leftists-part-2-1019807667926589440
Anyways, let's jump right into it.
So… I saw a post linking this Jordan Peterson video. For better or worse, it grabbed my attention, given the ludicrous claims that accompanied it. So, I gave it a watch, and started debunking it point by point.
I stopped doing that around the halfway mark, give or take. It just became too stupid and tedious.
So, in lieu of a full point by point debunking, I’ll just go with some of the general problems with it.
The Rumor Come Out: Does Jordan Peterson Is Marxist?
(The grammar is just a reference to a joke, back off grammar nazis!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uy4jBAc6NQ )
First, they assert Jordan Peterson is a closet marxist, looking to defeat the far right in a roundabout manner. This was the proof they led with:
1. He worked with the UN. Except not really, because he actually worked as an advisor for a CEO who worked for the UN, and in reality he seemed to be in opposition to the climate meddling bill. Why didn’t he stop it? Probably because he had no power to do so as a third party advisor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvvdkTzhW9E
https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/9vms69/jordan_petersons_work_on_a_un_panel_for_climate/
2. He only called out marxism when the white nationalist right began to grow. Also incorrect, pretty sure he has tons of videos criticizing marxism and its principles going back quite a long time. By going public with his opposition to cultural marxism, they are actually referring to when he said he didn’t support compelled speech. The anti SJW movement at the time made this go viral, similar to Hugh Mungus, but unlike the man who had made a mediocre joke, Peterson was already someone with extensive public speaking experience. I don’t see why it is unreasonable to call all of this organic considering all the accompanying social movements. We don’t have any evidence this was astroturfed, like we do with some other forced movements. I could go into more detail about the calculations between going public with things like this, but it’s kinda unnecessary. Let’s move on.
3. He embraced Pepe as a meme, and made some jokes using the frog. Yep, they are touting this as evidence he is trying to subvert a nationalist movement. Because he made some Pepe jokes. Way to buy into the lamestream media’s narrative that Pepe was indeed far right, and not just a general symbol for free speech, white nationalists. I had thought you had always known that Pepe wasn’t actually white nationalist, and was actually a campaign to expose the media’s incompetence and partisanship, but it seems some white nationalists didn’t quite get the memo. Really showing your big brains off, right there.
Additionally, here is one of my favorite quotes from the video:
He proceeded to deploy a sophisticated attack disguised cunningly as a centrist rebuke of political extremes that in reality was a message of reformation to the left and what he intended to be a killing blow to the right.
Lol… Really? It couldn’t be that he wanted to kill both extremes, which is why he criticized… BOTH EXTREMES? Couldn’t be that? No, he secretly wants the extreme of cultural marxism, which is why he criticized it to help save it and destroy the political right in doing so. By that twisted logic, all white nationalists are also supporting cultural marxism by attacking it. That’s how backwards and absurd this reasoning is. It’s a four dimensional chess theory having only the flimsiest of evidence to back it up. Holy crap…
I think now is a good time to inform the white nationalists of something. Jordan Peterson was never in support of you, even on a surface level. I always knew this, because it was patently obvious. You only thought he was because he opposed compelled speech. In reality, he’s just a left leaning moderate, which is an incredibly common occurrence in academia. He’s also a psychologist, which means he’s naturally more focused on an individual’s mindset than he is on politics. Frankly, his self help advice is decent, and you can more or less safely discard his political takes while keeping his core message intact. I mean, he’s shown that he is not only poorly equipped for debates against anyone beyond radical partisans, but that he also holds contradictory views on free speech. He’s openly and continuously stood behind the deplatforming of less savory individuals. Basically…
He’s a Leftist. Sure, a more nuanced, consistent Leftist who leans more towards freedom than totalitarianism, but he’s still a Leftist. Heck, most of the more popular online voices supporting free speech are more left leaning than right. I realize that it can be hard for those with black-and-white, us-versus-them dichotomies in mind to understand this, but Jordan Peterson actually is a left leaning moderate, and not a marxist. There are millions of people like him, which is probably why he is so successful. People just agree with most of what he has to say.
Also, though I will expand upon this idea, I will summarize it here; opposition to something is not support of its opposite. Jordan Peterson opposed enforced speech by one ideology, but he is not in support of the exact opposite ideologies because of that. Besides, to be united in opposition is no real union at all, and it is doomed to fall apart once that uniting force has been defeated.
Let’s continue.
The Tolerance Paradox
There is a known paradox with tolerance. If you tolerate everything, then you enable the worst behavior, including rampant intolerance of otherwise benign or benevolent behavior, thus defeating your own intentions behind tolerance. We have a similar thing with how this video presents individualism, showing how it misinterprets individualism and undermines their own argument.
Basically, they suggest that we need white ethnic groups to survive in order to preserve individualistic thought. However, to do this, we must establish racial solidarity, ensuring the survival of the group from which individualism springs forth. Not only does that presume the core tenets of individualism are false, in that an individual is responsible for their own actions and is not controlled, only influenced, by group membership… it’s an outright paradox. We must suspend or limit individualistic thought to protect individualistic thought. That’s the mindset of a collectivist, not an individualist.
Clean Your Room
The video explicitly admits Jordan Peterson’s advice is sound. It’s basic self help stuff that no one really objects to. The claim that it houses an ideology within that fails to understand a couple things.
1. A person’s belief system permeates EVERYTHING they do or say. You can reduce this through great effort, but it never completely goes away. Including such beliefs unconsciously or consciously in anything is not necessarily nefarious.
2. Peterson absolutely has a cult of followers. This cult is largely stupid, just like any cult of personality. As I’ve said at length, Jordan Peterson has some fair points, but to treat a flawed human as some kind of cultural messiah will always lead to disappointment, because unless they have the loosest of ideology, no one can fully live up to their own standards, much less the standards of people who worship that flawed person.
3. The “Clean your room” advice is packaged in a self help book, not a political think piece. There is no false advertising in that regard. If politics sneak into the book, you are meant to ignore it. You are focusing on the wrong aspects of it that are not designed to be the focus.
True Success
But, to partially continue on the previous point, there is a larger idea behind the “Clean your room” message. The white nationalists seem to interpret it as focus on your own self improvement, and forget about any kind of political organization. It does not mean that at all.
The underlying notion is start small, at the very lowest and most personal level that you have yet to conquer. If you cleaned your room, move onto your house. If you cleaned your house, move onto your neighborhood. If you have a thriving neighborhood, move onto the larger area. It does not, nor has it ever meant, that you should be satisfied with only cleaning your room.
You see, a lot of political movements are built on a collective grievance, or set of grievances. They want lower taxes, better social programs, or in the case of white nationalists, different demographic trends. The problem is that you can only form temporary coalitions around opposition to a specific issue. I believe one term for this is wedge issue politics… but I digress. Once that issue goes away, the movement immediately fractures, and that’s if you are even successful in resolving the issue before the fracture begins. There is no better example than the SJW movement, which is still in the process of consuming itself, but it is also worth noting the ANTI-SJW movement. This movement cannibalized itself, everyone turning on each other once the SJWs began to fall apart. This is also a perfect example of two extremes rising to oppose each other, and each mirroring the power of the other. Powerful SJWs meant the increasing power of anti-SJWs. Once one receded, so did the other.
Contrary to what most people still believe, success is not usually found by one massive effort or stroke of luck. It is achieved by incremental, consistent, habitual progress towards your goals. If you build a political movement solely on alarmism about ethnic replacement, but you can’t properly argue your points, your members are largely unemployable singles spending the majority of their time online, your public image is an absolute dumpster fire… what chance do you have, realistically? You can’t win the argument in a respectable manner, which is why you only defeat other online provocateurs. You can hardly fund your own irl events because you don’t have enough successful people within your movement. You can’t even get anyone respectable to publicly endorse your movement because public opinion against you is so overwhelmingly negative. Those are some very deep issues that are ignored in pursuit of internet slap fights.
You’ve failed to even organize your own groups in a sustainable fashion, so how are you going to organize a country? How can you be expected to lead a nation when you can’t even clean your room, and have very open disdain for people who try to start with the small problems in their life? It’s a core moral principle in Christianity; those who are faithful with the small things are given ever greater responsibilities, while those who are not faithful with the small things have even those things taken away.
And yet, despite all this, you try to blame clinical psychologists from Canada for the decline of your own political movement in Europe?
And somehow, you consider this NOT creating an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy, a.k.a. identity politics, a.k.a. cultural marxist at its very core? That’s just sad.