That reads like the ****posting account of a John Oliver writer.

Heh, "we must use force to protect our freedoms!"

This is the reactionary myth par excellence, Jordan Peterson claims to be a defender of western culture, but in practice actually hates western culture and wants to change it.

Parents: never ever let teachers talk to your kids about Jung. It’ll make them retarded

Eh. Being skeptical of regimes that want to impose a radical vision of equality is hardly incompatible with "western culture." There are plenty of skeptics of equality in the western canon.

http://www.pluralist.com/posts/263-noam-chomsky-sam-harris-and-jordan-peterson-merit-little-attention

Heh, Peterson begging for Chomsky's attention on Twitter is kind of sad.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but if one thing comes about from this mainstream explosion of identity politics, I hope it’s that the media finally acknowledges the difference between progressives, liberals, and leftists. Because right now the US media treats them all as synonymous. For dark and evil reasons, I suppose.

Maybe some day people will even be taught the differences between communism and socialism. lol.

It would be a step up from when Bill O'Reilly told candidate Obama that he was some sort of leftist terrorist.

It drives me completely nuts that Americans use liberal as a synonym for left. But it makes my head explode when Americans use the word "liberal" to describe a left-of-center party in another country, when that party is actually a social democratic party, and its center-right alternative is in fact the liberal one. zeeeeooppp... boom!!

Is there actually a technical meaning for progressive? I've thought of progressives as people who have forward-looking views on social issues.

I’m not sure if there is a technical definition, but that one is about as good as any. Note that progressives tend to view economic policy through a social equity framework too. The political party of progressives is social democracy.

Not to be confused with democratic socialism

Ok I couldn't resist. It's that funny. lol

Also, I called it:



http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/

Holy **** it's true, he is the much more inadequate Julius Evola of our century. Jesus Christ that's ****ing amazing

**** that is ultimate horeshoetheory

contextualizing Peterson as a 21st century version of Max Nordau (or Oswald Spengler, who weirdly isn't mentioned here) makes him slightly more profound, imo



another way to put that it is that the late 19th century was a time of radical cultural change, and some critics believed that the old customs and mores that were being destroyed by the forces of change weren't irrational superstitions or arbitrary conventions, but valuable, stabilizing forces in society

which is to say that he's a right-of-center critic of a certain mold that is historically precedented and seems to arise under certain historical conditions circumstances

Almost a sort of expression of an archetype, would you say?

"Julius Evola believed that the alleged higher qualities expected of a man of a particular race were not those expected of a woman of the same race. He held that "just relations between the sexes" involved women acknowledging their "inequality" with men.[3] In 1925, he wrote an article titled "La donna come cosa" (Woman as Thing).[9] Evola later quoted Joseph de Maistre's statement that "Woman cannot be superior except as woman, but from the moment in which she desires to emulate man she is nothing but a monkey."[34] Evola believed that women's liberation was "the renunciation by woman of her right to be a woman".[35] He held that a woman "could traditionally participate in the sacred hierarchical order only in a mediated fashion through her relationship with a man."[5] He held, as a feature of his idealized gender relations, the Hindu sati, which for him was a form of sacrifice indicating women's respect for patriarchal traditions.[36] He held that for the "pure, feminine" woman, "man is not perceived by her as a mere husband or lover, but as her lord."[6] Evola believed that women would find "true greatness" in "total subjugation to men."[5]"

yea! i guess if it were an archetype, the idea would be that periods of upheaval and change that are characterized by an absence of strong social and cultural norms have a way of producing certain kinds of responses, and one is this "declinist" response



The Joseph de maitre quote seems apt... Evola's position looks like its drawing from the catholic counter-Enlightenment

there are probably some similarities between fin de sielce europe and our own period and time, in terms of sexual experimentation and the breakdown of traditional norms (edit: received norms is probably more apt than traditional norms)

It seems wrong to suggest that Joseph Campbell's influence is sinister

Whence Jordan Peterson explains the problem with women: you can't punch them when you're mad

something that he missed is that men can also tickle each other and it isn't weird

My wife totally agrees with me on this!

wat dis?

I have no idea who this is, but it's pretty funny how she complained about progressives trying to eliminate nuance, all while spending the whole video collapsing politics into two sides and claiming that because she disagrees with some progressives, it means she isn't on the political left anymore.

"Let me explain to you something about Nazism. It would have made way more sense if they just enslaved the Jews." - a person who has never studied the holocaust, apparently

I'm trying to imagine what it would mean to engage with this dispassionately, but it's hard to see how that'd really work, because i think if I did, the first thing I'd conclude was that it really is not worth spending any time and attention on, and the only thing that makes a person sit through a 20 minute video like is an entirely irrational feeling (probably anger or contempt)

owned

yeah, kinda

y i k e r s

The video is about the dangers of pathologizing evil acts. Specifically, the video contrasts the reality of the Nazi rhetoric and world view (which made the holocaust both necessary and, to them, reasonable) against Jordan Peterson’s Jungian pseudoscience-garbed insistence that the Nazis were pure agents of chaos who subconsciously wanted to lose. (An assertion he now claims to have never made, by the way, despite video evidence to the contrary.) The substantive portions of this video were provided by a PhD candidate who is working in this very area.

It’s about as dispassionate a video as you can possibly make about refuting Jordan Peterson’s opinions about the holocaust. If you want an angry or contemptful take, though, I’d be happy to provide one: for someone who is ostensibly glad the Nazis list the war, Jordan Peterson sure spends an awful lot of time talking about how he would have led them to victory.

Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that Jordan Peterson is teaching his students that forced labor wasn’t used in the Holocaust. Being angry is appropriate.

His video on gun ownership and Nazi Germany is really well done too, in response to the typical right-wing refrain of "if only Jews weren't disarmed".

Thanks for summing up its contents for me, because I didn't get past the 30 second mark. Look, I don't doubt that whoever made this video put some thought into it and made a good case. It even sounds like it was more interesting than i would've expected. But that's kind of beside the point. The fact that Peterson makes patently false claims about Nazism doesn't shake my conviction that caring so much about Jordan Peterson that one would spend time siting through a refutation of his remarks is to be caught in an emotional trap which is similar in kind to the madness that grips his fans.

It's the kind of thing that I'm trying to get away from so I think the best thing to do is to pullback from this thread. Not because I'm trying to "own" anybody, but because I mean what I say, and I'm expending more effort than I want to on Peterson just by engaging in this conversation. Something people do a lot (especially when it comes to the internet) is recgonize that something is beyond pointless -- sometimes even destructive --, yet do it anyway. So why not stop doing that thing? The fact they continue to engage in the behaviors means something not quite rational is in play. Perhaps it's an addiction of some sort. Either way, best just to stop.

That’s reasonable.

To be frank, lately you’ve been on something of contrarian kick defending people on the “intellectual dark net” list and others like them. So when I read your post, I honestly understood it as a defense of Jordan Peterson, not as opposition to discussing him in general.

I see your point now though, and I do agree in principle. People definitely are paying Jordan Peterson a lot more attention than he deserves, and his negative attention is what’s mostly responsible for promoting him and inflaming his fan base.

Yeah, I agree with that. It seems notable that the formula there is so similar to Trump's: get as much attention as possible through controversy, because, whether good or bad only, outrage will only produce more outrage, as people become furious over other peoples' anger, and, whether what they say is good or bad, they're still boosting your profile. It seems like the really significant part about dog whistling (or the really clever, manipulative thing about it) is that the ambiguity produces so much to argue over... endlessly. It seems like there's something inherently emotional about virality.

I'm not actually angry about anything he has said.

I like what's been posted because it reifies the counter argument. Having an intuition of his error is one thing, but it's nice to see the errors detailed by a knowledgeable person. It's important in debate to not hide behind the belief that a counter argument exists against people like Peterson, but it's good to actually do the work of seeing through the argument. Just like it's good to actually solve math problems to learn math, or practice the piano to become a musician. And if we don't present solid counter arguments, it leaves the field open for his interpretations to dominate. I don't think this work feeds into his media trolling tactics.

As a side note, when I complain about people not paying attention to academics, this is the kind of video I'd prefer people watch. People pay attention to people like Peterson when they should pay attention to triple arrow. By linking the video, I'm advocating people consume media that's informative, historically accurate, and academically sound. It's rare, but when it exists it should be appreciated.

I don’t think a counter-argument needs to be difficult, well-researched, or even informative in this case.

Jordan Pererson’s apparent thesis is that the holocaust never happened.

Follow his logic to its conclusion. Jordan Peterson suggests the holocaust was wasteful; he thinks instead the Jews should have been enslaved to power the war machine, and then exterminated later on (which, of course, is what the Nazis actually did, although Peterson is either unaware of this or has deliberately chosen to deny it). Peterson suggests this failure to economically exploit the victims of the Holocaust is partly responsible for the Nazis’ defeat. In his professional opinion as a Jungian half-wit, we cannot estimate someone’s intentions any way but by looking at the outcome and assuming they intended for that outcome. Therefore, by prosecuting the Holocaust, the Nazis intended to sow death and chaos (mark of cain) and specifically they intended to lose.

Which is just reductio ad absurdum. Obviously the Nazis intended to win (i.e achieve their stated goals, even per the above Jungian horse**** they must have intended to complete the outcomes they had previously achieved). However, the Holocaust implies they intended to lose. Therefore the Holocaust never happened.

So is he a moron, or is he a Holocaust denier? Well, his fans sure don’t think he’s a moron.