Peterson’s “baseless” critique of the left?
Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance
Ideology is the idealization of pathology
Albert Mayes
I first became aware of Dr. Peterson’s work in june of 2017 the same week I had applied to speak at a local TEDx on addressing the unknown, focusing on interpersonal power dynamics from a systems thinking perspective and the necessity of metacognition in personal development / conflict resolution and how identity politics and ideology undermines the efficacy of that process.
I’d caught a video on YouTube where DR. Peterson was talking about communist protesters and said to myself “who the hell believes in that kind of BS anymore. Low and behold the next video showed protesters with a hammer and sickle flag...and I was transported back to my university days in the 1990s…
The early 90’s seemed to be the rise of the comfortable giving a voice to the oppressed by speaking for them. The Steinem template for identity politics was already showing it’s failings clearly with bisexual and trans people arguing for intersectionality and inclusion into the “movement” while gays and lesbians generally derided bisexuals for “passing” for straight and trans people for risking the social capital they had developed. The moral contradictions in behavior were clear at that time. Bisexuals were fighting to make inroads into the “gay and lesbian community” as it was still constrained and Trans people of any form were “persona non grata” in that “community” because they challenged the level of cultural capital/acceptance gay and lesbian people had at that point in time. Ironically…or utterly predictably gays and lesbians would accuse bisexuals of appropriating their struggle or the greater crime of “passing” by not overtly signaling their group status with the rest of the oppressed.
If you can’t Blind ’em with Bernays, Steinem with Bullshit
It seems a bit fitting that one year after Steinem’s political shift from anti-war to feminism the Flynn effect had apexed and was starting to decline. Here was someone who worked for the CIA for 4 years during some of the worst atrocities in central america yet described the agency as “the kind of liberal activists who epitomized the Kennedy administration”…after his assassination.
Gloria had a few ideological “Lucky Strike”s, the gimmick of the “patriarchy” ensured adult conversations about sex and gender would be impossible and “the personal is political” ensured instability and disruption would drive the movement.
On the cultural side of identity politics the emergence of privileged suburban kids deciding the could “right the world…giving oppressed people a voice by speaking for them” in that commodified manner the very comfortable or complacent are comfortable with. If you want to give marginalized people a voice, give them the space to do so and leave it to their choice of whether or not to do so.
When this version of identity politics that empowers people “by speaking for them” started to gain a real cache along with the hyper amplification of in/out group sentiment. It was pretty clear the methodologies and philosophies behind these actions were far from effective at best and at worst, completely undermining any real development towards a more civil society. It was clear the tools were poorly engineered when the religious right in the US started to claim oppression when they were exposed to any opinions in the public sphere that challenged their ideological suppositions.
History of Hypocrisy
From the “birth of the gay rights movement“ onward modern identity politics has been a moral fraud. The fact is, that the individuals who stood up in the Stonewall Riots did so in high heels and full drag. That movement lost all credibility when it appropriated the resistance of those Puerto Rican drag queens and marginalized sex workers as its own yet continued to marginalize people like them for another 2 decades.
In the early 90’s intersectionality was being raised by the “B,T&Q” portions of the current acronym. Each fought for inclusion against aspersions of “passing for a normie” if you didn’t signal or “being a traitor” if you were female and bi or by undermining the acceptance the movement had gained by not conforming to the cisgender heteronormative model or its (nihilistic) inversion.
When I brought Xanthra Phillpa McKay and Mirha-Soleil Ross to present their film “Gender Troublemakers” the year “GLAD days” was re-branded “BGLAD Days” it had to be presented off campus because of complaints by the Trent Lesbian and Gay Collective. They had similar issues trying to present their film at the Queer Sites Conference, Toronto, 1993 where I met them. Toronto Pride Day in 1994 another friend of mine had their singing performance pushed from the main to a side stage “because they were too effeminate”.
Nearly decade later in 2001 Ross was elected Grand Marshall of the Toronto Pride Parade.
I guess you should know you’ve hit social acceptance is in the winds when you achieve commercial acceptance and become a target market.
Where does the left fail/go to far?
Where everyone does, with homodoxy when the group boundary is defined by group think, challenge and anything outside of the group boundary raises suspicion.
Homodoxy quickly degrades into orthodoxy and the group think is impenetrable and challenge is derided and anything outside of the group boundary is derided.
Orthodoxy quickly degrades into ideology and the group think is unchallengable and anything outside of the group boundary is attacked.
A lack of critical self reflection
The term “politically correct” and it’s full etymological history from a term of (self)critical derision for succumbing to ideology to coveted technicolor dream coat of victim-hood and virtue signaling clearly demonstrates both the lack of self reflection of the movement”writ large” and the acontextual and ahistorical malaise of modern culture. Over the preceding decades the “movement”:
- Could have learned something from the proliferation of victim-hood and they shouldn’t lay such crude tactics bare in public view to be “adopted by their enemies” like the Christian extremists who were “oppressed” by having to experience a different world view in the public domain in the late 80’s & 90’s.
- Failed to understand or learn anything about effective problem solving or meta analysis including their own increasingly ideological constructs.
- Failed to root out bad actors from COINTELPRO to toxic personalities and abandoned the tools to identify them when the mantle of “politically correct” was adopted as an adulation rather than criticism of reactive fundamentalism.
Its like a Reganomics model for social change, if something fails, do it again but harder, it’s also an analog for one of the simplest definitions of insanity. The fact that the same arguments that appeared in the 90’s are being regurgitated currently in increasingly degraded resolution and emnity it should be clear this is no longer (and may never have been) an effective methodology to develop a fair and civil society.
The resurgence of the ultra right is a direct response to the left “jumping the shark”, loosing all credibility yet continuing to push an unproductive criticism as its core platform. In the past couple of years I’ve heard and seen the kind of overt racism I wouldn’t have expected from anyone but a redneck uncle back in the 70s and I don’t even remember him doing it in such a brazen public fashion. There has been a clear escalation of this behavior in direct response to the Social Justice Warrior movements lack of credibility.
Civil discourse has degraded to an incredibly dangerous point. Through the petri dish of social media I’ve watched people for whom I had great respect for their intelligence, integrity and community involvement degraded into virtue signaling ideologues unable to process any information that doesn’t clear the confirmation bias band pass filter.
Anyone ignorant enough to think our society hasn’t changed should have a look at this interview with Hunter Thompson on CBC in 1969 and listen carefully to the dialogue and the responses of the entire audience in reaction to Thompson’s intervention in a domestic violence incident.
Over the last year Peterson’s emergence has allowed for cracks of nuance to appear in the mass media wall of BS, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. He’s established a rally point for the “Intellectual Dark Web” as Eric Weinstein coined or the “Intellectual Deep Web” as Andrew Sweeny detourned, in the subnet of social media.
Thanks to the efforts of this group, that in part coalesced around the Rubin Report, there is (at least more) public access to intelligent, nuanced and diverse perspectives like Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying (I’ve listened to both Rubin interviews twice in the background and still have to sit down a 3rd time for undivided attention), and collective efforts like Heterodox Academy led by Jonathan Haidt and RebelWisdom led by David Fuller.
I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve been waiting 3 decades to see this kind of refinement in social discourse.