Jordan peterson 12 rules for life

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Metadata[edit | edit source]

Title: Jordan Peterson, the obscure Canadian psychologist turned right-wing celebrity, explained

Organisation: Vox Media

Distribution: Vox Website

Author: Zack Beauchamp

Date Published: March 26 2018

Style: Reporting

Central Claims[edit | edit source]

Criticism, Needs Sorting[edit | edit source]

Jordan Peterson is also a right-wing internet celebrity

Incorrectly placing JBP into the right-wing camp. He is a classic liberal.

referred to developing nations as “pits of catastrophe” in a speech to a Dutch far-right group,

" The left's characterization of the event is interesting because the organizers' original concept was to have both left-wing and right-wing speakers come together to discuss this important issue, and hopefully come up with possible solutions. But almost all left-wing guest-speakers declined to attend, which obviously left an impression of the event being a right-wing gathering "

Quote from sott.net illustrating why the event had the attendance it did. The inference a reader might make about JBP's political alignment would be incorrect, and as such it did not need to be included that JBP spoke to some people, who happened to be of the Dutch far-right.

When Cathy Newman, a journalist for the UK’s Channel 4, challenged Peterson’s arguments in a televised interview, she received so many death threats that she had to get help from the police. “There were literally thousands of abusive tweets — it was a semi-organized campaign,” she recalled in an interview. “ It ranged from the usual ‘cunt, bitch, dumb blonde’ to ‘I’m going to find out where you live and execute you.’”

It's not legitimate to state that Cathy or Channel 4 did actually get police in to deal with the alleged thousands of abusive tweets. Channel 4 got in a team of security experts and did not contact police. Independent.co.uk source

These seemingly distinct men, the accomplished scholar and the controversy-courting culture warrior, are one and the same, and their work is integrally interlinked. And that hybrid of scholarly air and provocative trolling has netted Peterson a huge following; he has 560,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers.

There is a suggested claim that JBP has "courted" controversy, as if he seeks to invite it in or increase it. It is not correct. It goes on to suggest that the character of JBP has netted him a large following, rather than the content of his talks.

His reactionary politics

JBP does not yearn for a previous time of increased authority, respect for authority or discipline inside the body of governance. He instead argues against philosophies and courses of actions he dislikes. He is actually more seriously progressive in terms of dealing with real world problems, than many of our time. He does highlight the value of discipline in the individual's life, at times, but it is not the main body of his political work, or his attitude towards government.

Peterson’s denunciations of identity politics and political correctness are standard-issue conservative

To make this claim is to recast the current political landscape. The current sitting Republican President bathed heavily in identity politics. Even to the point of being accused (true or not) of supporting a NeoNazi movement.

but his academic credentials make his pronouncements feel much more authoritative than your replacement-level Fox News commentator.

There is an implication that the comparison between JBP and a Fox News commentator is fair to either side of that comparison. It is not.

He’s become a lifestyle guru for men and boys who feel displaced by a world where white male privilege is under attack

Author participates in stereotyping or otherwise casting a large generalization over JBP's audience.

Experts on Canadian law said that Peterson was misreading the bill

Experts is a link to an article that features an analysis by a single expert, not multiple. Brenda Cossman.

This is an early example of what would become a hallmark of Peterson’s approach as a public intellectual — taking inflammatory, somewhat misinformed stances on issues of public concern outside his area of expertise.

Direct claim that as a generalization, JBP is talking from a misinformed position. This is incorrect.

Actual experts on postmodernism note that the thinkers Peterson likes to cite were often quite critical of Marxism.

This is an error a subject of the article makes, not the author. The failure to separate between the story of political thought JBP describes starting at Postmodernism and ending in Marxism, is different to criticism of the theories themselves.

Perhaps more fundamentally, there is no evidence that 20th-century French thinkers have a dominant influence on any sector of the left in contemporary Western politics, let alone society as a whole. I know of no credible political scientist who believes this, and Peterson’s adherence to the notion can lead to bizarre outbursts.

This pre-supposes that since Postmodernism is not present in contemporary politics (arguable claim), that the effect of Postmodernism once taught need not be measured in the final outcome of people's political actions or thought outcomes. This is incorrect. The author backs up his claim with a list of zero credible political scientists "he knows", that believe as such.

But Peterson’s grand theory is brilliant as a political stance — one designed to weaponize the grievances of the kind of young men attracted to the alt-right.

A direct claim of "weaponizing grievances" when JBP pretty much universally talks about self-improvement and holds large scale projects like building software close to his chest and leaves challenging political thought up to the individual by enforcing open boundaries on his places of discussion, so any thought can enter.

This theory elevates battles over political correctness and free speech into existential struggles over Western society. He is very literally arguing that if the “postmodernists” win, if people start using others’ chosen pronouns, we’re one step closer to modern gulags.

This incorrectly cast's JBP's fears of Compelled Speech as legal mechanism to actually be about "the other side winning", which indeed, it is not.


These arguments are catnip for a very specific kind of young white man — Peterson himself said in his Channel 4 interview that 80 percent of his YouTube audience is male. These young men are upset about the erosion of white male privilege, about the need to compete with women and minorities for jobs and spots at top universities, and they are angry about the way feminists and racial justice activists describe society.

In Peterson, they found someone telling them that their grievances are not only justified but, in fact, important: that they have picked up on a secret threat to society writ large, and that they are its first victims. Peterson is drawing on a deep well: This kind of anger about the declining social status of white men is incredibly common across the Western world today, and finds a comfortable home in reactionary political movements on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The underlying mass-appeal of [Peterson] is that he gives white men permission to stop pretending that they care about other people’s grievances,” writes Jesse Brown, host of the Canadaland podcast and a longtime Peterson watcher. “He tells his fans that these so-called marginalized people are not really victims at all but are in fact aggressors, enemies, who must be shut down.”

But Peterson isn’t only giving these men an architecture in which to ground their frustrations. He’s also giving them a road map on how to succeed in a society they no longer understand.

Fundamentally stereotyping his audience and using the same language of modern day identity politics. It is pretty hard to say that any specific topics of the 1hr:30min lectures Peterson goes on about, is why an individual chooses to watch. You could just as easily cast him as a religious allegoric speaker or a summary of scientific research. This is a mischaracterization of his audience.

The lobster has become a sort of symbol of his; the tens of thousands of Peterson fans on his dedicated subreddit even refer to themselves as “lobsters.”

As a frequent reader of the mentioned community, we do not refer to ourselves as lobsters. It's fun when it comes up, but it is not a signal for shared identity. At most it's a signal of a shared thought.

Inequalities of various kinds aren’t wrong; they’re natural.

The definition of "wrong" here implies more than what JBP would say.


This aspect of Peterson’s work is far more sympathetic than his ill-informed and frankly nefarious politics

Accusation without backing that Peterson's politics is ill-informed and nefarious.


But Peterson has inextricably intertwined his self-help approach with a kind of reactionary politics that validates white, straight, and cisgender men at the expense of everyone else. He gives them a sense of purpose by, in part, tearing other people down — by insisting that the world can and should revolve around them and their problems.

Outright lie. More identity politics language.

This painful contrast is on display later in that very interview, in which he explicitly argues that concern for sexism is to blame for the plight of the West’s young men.

This sentence's interpretation depends on what you believe the word "concern" to represent in this context. If you are to believe that sexism in the current political sphere is something that is under attack, and not poorly construed to begin with, then you are likely to believe the outright lie above.


The empathy that he displays for men and boys in his BBC interview and 12 Rules for Life is touching. The problem is that he can’t seem to extend it to anyone else.

Outright lie. He has had interviews with women and displays the same empathy.

Errors in Criticism[edit | edit source]

Author mischaracterizes JBP's audience and some of his arguments.

Truths in Criticism[edit | edit source]

Some of facts are good.