Is Jordan Peterson a fraud?

I originally gave his ideas a listen after a recommendation from a friend following the Cathy Newman interview. I read his book and watched some of his videos too. His self-help stuff seems genuinely useful but aha... he is not just a self-help guru because he has politics. I'll be more specific... he has very very bad and very stupid politics.

Someone needs to explain to me how Post-Modern-Neo-Marxism is supposed to work. I've read Marx and some post-modernism and they are not mutually compatible. Post-modernism is a fringe faction within social-science academia which is critical of power and also grand narratives, universal truth, and positivism. I don't get what it has to do with political correctness or a desire to define people as victim groups. I also don't get how it was supposed to take over the world, regain its Marxist aspects and also stay a fringe faction within social science academia.

I also don't get how Peterson can define all things he does not like as collectivist as therefore linked to Stalinism. Trans-gender activists apparently have the 'same philosophy' which has killed millions of people. The Google HR department is the same thing too. 🤷

What Peterson is doing is producing the same silly right-wing conspiracy theories and straw-man arguments of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones whilst repackaging it with a fake intellectual mystique. He might be a talented academic psychologist but his understanding of political theory wouldn't pass undergraduate standard. He doesn't use sources and his arguments do not hang together. I struggle to think that he does not understand the flaws in his own arguments.

He speaks confidently and he speaks well. He is an excellent clinical psychologist and his videos probably help turn some people's lives around. Its because of this he is a snake charmer who fools people who should know better into being uncritical of his very weak political ideas.

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BlovingN8 · 26-30, M

"hurhur right wing conspiracy theories! These people that go on about the many before the few can't be grouped as a collective or linked to Stalinism despite so many of them being self-identifying marxists and communists and calling for the current system to be torn down to make way for their arrogant utopian fantasy. Peterson must be a fraud!"

The fact that you're entirely leaving out that Dr. Peterson holds traditionally classical liberal values is very telling. It's like you're trying to convince people that he's right wing. But hey, I suppose to people that are far enough to the left every single person to the right of you is right wing.

P.S. Nice poisoning of the well in the first paragraph. Peak intellectual dishonesty.

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@BlovingN8 Everything I wrote is true, even the personal story.

But hey, I suppose to people that are far enough to the left every single person to the right of you is right wing.

I think its more apt to say that Peterson massively generalises the left. Please explain to me how Marxists and Post-modernists are the same. Or how the Google HR department believes in historical materialism? These narratives can only be sustained if you completely misunderstand and completely generalise the left. I think Peterson does this deliberately. I think you do this by accident.

I make plenty of distinctions within the right; though on that point Peterson is more of a traditional Burkean Conservative than a Classical Liberal.

He is right wing. He has appeared on platforms with Lauren Southern and been interviewed by Stephan Molineux. He thinks abolishing divorce laws was a mistake and has done work for the Canadian Conservative Party. He thinks that human beings live in glorified lobster society. This is not me straw-manning Peterson, just facts and what he has said in his own words.