{"id":12897,"date":"2021-05-24T16:22:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T16:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/?p=12897"},"modified":"2021-05-24T16:22:46","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T16:22:46","slug":"barton-swaim-the-man-they-couldnt-cancel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/?p=12897","title":{"rendered":"Barton Swaim-The Man They Couldn\u2019t Cancel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mobs have targeted Jordan Peterson, but he hasn\u2019t lost his university job and his publishers have stuck by him. What\u2019s his secret?<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The term \u201ccancel culture,\u201d like \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d before it, is a comical expression for an ugly cultural pathology. To be canceled\u2014an older, closely related term is \u201cblacklisted\u201d\u2014is to have your public persona or influence assailed, typically by a sizable mob, for some real or perceived offense against progressive orthodoxy, whatever that orthodoxy may hold at the moment. For that to happen, you must possess some form of authority in the first place: an academic post, a political office, a role in the entertainment industry, employment with a \u201cmainstream\u201d media organization, a voice as an intellectual or imaginative writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the targets of cancellation, having derived their legitimacy from consensus left-liberal culture, are typically not very good at defending themselves, or even understanding what happened to them. Often they apologize, despite having said or done nothing wrong, which only emboldens the cancelers. Or they fall back on pieties about free speech and the marketplace of ideas, as if their tormentors still believed in those principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One target of cancellation who is <\/em>able to speak intelligently about it is Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto clinical psychologist, YouTube lecturer, and author of \u201c12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos\u201d (2018) and \u201cBeyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life,\u201d published in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re an ordinary curious person, Mr. Peterson won\u2019t strike you as a likely target for moral outrage. He brings together a dizzying array of texts and traditions\u2014Jungian psychoanalysis, the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, Frederick Nietzsche, S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard and much else\u2014to formulate basic lessons, or \u201crules,\u201d about how humans might overcome their natural tendency to lassitude and savagery. His books, podcasts and lectures are impressively argued, frequently insightful and occasionally abrasive presentations of various principles of wise living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t share some of Mr. Peterson\u2019s philosophical premises and find in his work points of disagreement, but there is much to appreciate and nothing sinister in them. Twenty years ago very few people would have considered him the intellectual subversive and moral monster many now claim him to be. A few rules from his latest book: \u201cDo not do what you hate,\u201d \u201cWork as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens,\u201d \u201cTry to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why has the political left taken a severe dislike to him? \u201cA lot of my popularity derives from YouTube,\u201d he says in a phone interview, \u201cand YouTube skewed hard male for a long time, and is still mostly male. My typical audience would probably be between 60\/40 and 70\/30 men to women. There\u2019s nothing conspiratorial about that, and it wasn\u2019t because I was talking specifically to young men. It might be that they\u2019re more desperate for what I\u2019m saying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stereotypical Peterson fan, it\u2019s probably fair to say, is a young white male whose life lacked structure and discipline but heard Mr. Peterson\u2019s lectures and began to reorder his life. Mr. Peterson insists, though, that his critics caricature his audience for their own ends. \u201cThere\u2019s this hypothetical group that I\u2019m helping,\u201d he says: \u201cangry, alienated, disenfranchised white-supremacist young males. First of all, that\u2019s a lie. Second, even if it is disenfranchised young males who are primarily responding to what I\u2019m saying, is there really something wrong with me talking to them? Are they so beneath contempt that they don\u2019t deserve anyone\u2019s attention?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who despise Mr. Peterson think of him as a member of \u201cthe right\u201d or even \u201cthe far right.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t describe him as a conservative\u2014his interest lies in individual rather than societal order, and he says little about public policy. But it\u2019s true that he not infrequently winds up holding conservative viewpoints on cultural matters. In \u201cBeyond Order,\u201d for example, he makes the case for marriage over cohabitation and readily acknowledges that children do better in two-parent families than in single-parent ones. He also writes and speaks frequently on the differences between masculinity and femininity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what put Mr. Peterson in the crosshairs of North America\u2019s cultural arbiters was his vocal opposition to identity politics, and specifically the totalitarian methods of militant transgenderism. In 2016 he ran afoul of Bill C-16, legislation in the Canadian Parliament (later enacted) that added \u201cgender identity or expression\u201d to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. In the course of that controversy Mr. Peterson remarked that he would refuse to use contrived pronouns in his classes. \u201cI regard these made-up pronouns, all of them, as neologisms of a radical PC authoritarianism,\u201d he said in 2016. \u201cI\u2019m not going to be a mouthpiece for language I detest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then he has been denounced as racist, misogynist, fascist and transphobic. Occasionally violent protests against him have taken place on the University of Toronto campus, and he is regularly shouted down at speaking events. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it would publish \u201cBeyond Order,\u201d its staff \u201cconfronted management,\u201d according to media reports, in a tearful town-hall meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contempt for the \u201cworking class\u201d by North America\u2019s \u201cliberal educated elite,\u201d is a major reason for his popularity, he says. \u201cThere aren\u2019t very many people with an encouraging voice,\u201d Mr. Peterson says. \u201cMost of the things you read by intellectuals\u2014not all, but it\u2019s a failing of intellectuals\u2014most of it is criticism. Look what you\u2019re doing to the planet. What a detestable bunch of wretches you are, with your rapacious structures and your endless appetite and your desire for power. . . . Look at what your ambition has done to the planet. How dare you!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Peterson doesn\u2019t directly challenge the substance of these dreary criticisms. Rather he protests that they\u2019re unnatural and unhealthy. \u201cThe proper attitude toward young people is encouragement,\u201d he says\u2014\u201ctheir ambitions, their strivings, their desire to be competent, their deep wish for a trustworthy guiding hand. I think our culture is so cynical that it\u2019s impossible, especially for the established intellectual chattering critics, to even imagine that encouragement is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I ask what he thinks is driving the effort to destroy him and others who hold heterodox views, he diagnoses his persecutors as though they\u2019re exactly the sort of young people who wander into his lectures or buy his books looking for structure and purpose. His admirers and his fiercest detractors are, in his mind, not so different from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of what drives these young moralistic firebrands, he thinks, is the despairing outlook of the contemporary left. \u201cWhenever you see that level of contempt manifest itself, that desire to flog and destroy, you have to ask yourself: How deep is that? The idea that we\u2019re a cancer on the planet\u2014well, what do you do with cancer? You eradicate it. I\u2019ve heard environmentally sensitive types say that, and it\u2019s horrifying. They\u2019re completely blind to what they\u2019re saying. If they weren\u2019t blind to it, they\u2019d be traumatized by it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mention of environmentalism brings to mind the cultish side of modern progressivism. Is this desire to flog and destroy, as he puts it, a sign of some twisted spiritual longing? \u201cI think so,\u201d Mr. Peterson says. \u201cThe people who caricature Western society as a patriarchy, and then describe it as evil, they\u2019re possessed by a religious idea.\u201d He thinks the problem with modern enlightenment intellectuals\u2014he names the American philosopher Sam Harris, the British conservative writer Matt Ridley and the British broadcaster and writer Stephen Fry, all atheists\u2014is that they offer no mythology, no \u201cadventure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey leave this nihilistic nothingness in their wake, and what happens?\u201d he says. \u201cThese kids turn to radical political correctness.\u201d Messrs. Harris, Ridley, Fry, et al. aren\u2019t happy about political correctness, Mr. Peterson notes, but \u201cwhat did they expect to happen? Did they expect these kids would settle for their insipid rationalism?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This search for a metaphysical teleology denied young people by \u201cinsipid rationalism,\u201d in his view, is also \u201cwhat motivates antifa and Black Lives Matter and white nationalism and all these other romantic revolutionary rebellions. It\u2019s the romance and the heroism these movements offer.\u201d Mr. Peterson recalls the famous line of George Orwell in his review of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d in 1940: \u201cWhereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people \u2018I offer you a good time,\u2019 Hitler has said to them \u2018I offer you struggle, danger and death,\u2019 and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking Orwell\u2019s terms \u201csocialism\u201d and \u201ccapitalism\u201d both to mean, roughly, life without transcendence or any hint of the supernatural, the point seems defensible. Mr. Peterson thinks atheistic materialism has nothing to compare to religious worldviews. Rather than telling people simply not to do bad things, he says, \u201cthe right approach is to say to them: Here\u2019s a better adventure. Now go conquer your own demons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Mr. Peterson hasn\u2019t been successfully canceled. He retains his academic post; his YouTube lectures and podcasts have not been scrubbed from the internet; and his publishers stuck with his books, which are available for purchase. This is true for basically two reasons. The first is that he has tried to understand his would-be cancelers and thinks of them almost as outpatients. He speaks in gentle, clinical terms about a reporter for the New York Times who in 2018 wrote a scathing piece about him headlined \u201cJordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy\u201d and later posted online what sounded like a confession (\u201cThe roar of Twitter<\/a> on my side meant the kill was justified and good\u201d). He has, as best I can tell, genuine pity for this writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second reason follows from the first. The cancelers\u2019 strange fixations mean that apologizing to them is folly. Mr. Peterson hasn\u2019t apologized or disavowed any previous statement. Now there\u2019s a rule for his next book: Don\u2019t apologize when you haven\u2019t done anything wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Swaim is a Journal editorial page writer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-man-they-couldnt-cancel-11619806528?st=96fmzn3y6jbdj9t&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobs have targeted Jordan Peterson, but he hasn\u2019t lost his university job and his publishers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-letters-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lediemchihue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/10-18.jpg?fit=1274%2C1003&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7bhGG-3m1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12900,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12897\/revisions\/12900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lediemchihue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}