Welcome to our special series on Dr Jordan B Peterson—ex-university professor, disgraced clinical psychologist, and leading “intellectual” in today’s far-right culture wars.
In our first ever post, we promised we would analyse Jordan Peterson in this publication. Originally, Peterson’s life, work, and politics were to be the focus of the fifth chapter in the Main Series of Infinite Discontent. That chapter would show how Peterson—like Dürckheim, Bowie, and Kanye—moved between liberalism and fascism after traumatic periods of his life. It would show how Peterson, a self-identified ‘classical liberal’ and opponent of genocide, became a hateful figure at the centre of an emerging fascist international who tacitly supports Putin’s war in Ukraine, openly agrees with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and argues that gender-affirming care is more odious than Holocaust medical experiments.
Instead, we will now publish this special series on Peterson and excise his story from our Main Series. We made this choice for three reasons:
Alasdair wrote a long essay on Peterson for his forthcoming book, Infinite Discontent: Writings on the Allure Fascism, that was excluded from the final manuscript.
There is no longer any need to ask whether Peterson is a far-right, authoritarian, or fascistic figure. It is obvious that he is.
Because Peterson has become so toxic in the last few years, so vocally fascistic, the thought of wasting any more time writing about the man became unbearable.
So, instead of writing a chapter on Peterson for our Main Series, we are publishing Alasdair’s essay on Peterson.
The essay deviates in important ways from our Main Series. It examines Peterson’s descent into fascism from a perspective more theoretical than historical. The essay was also written in 2021. Much of it is still relevant. What is outdated today, though, can be read as an earlier point in the time-series analysis of Peterson’s decline.
We hope you enjoy this special series. Click the link below for Part I, ‘Postmodern Neo-Marxism’.