Jordan Peterson Is Just Not This Important

A Bad Faith Fraud

Why is Jordan Peterson so goddamn important?

In … I want to say 2017, but it might have been 2016, honestly – I remember waiting to get my hair cut, and as a broke University student I didn’t have a data plan, so my options while I waited were “do nothing” or “read the Ottawa Sun”. Eventually, I broke down and read the Sun, wherein two of the pages of the paper were dedicated to Mr. Peterson.

The first was about his ongoing war against trans people and the issue of non-traditional pronoun usage, and how he was truly the one oppressed when students got mad at him for misgendering them. Putting aside the merits or dismerits of that situation, it never really made sense to me why a University of Toronto Prof being in what amounts to a pissing contests with his students was an issue of national importance.

The next, however, was even stupider, because he was being interviewed about his thoughts about whether or not Kathleen Wynne would win re-election. Now, he was right that there weren’t the votes for Wynne, but I’ll never get over the deep surprise I had when I read it. Even if you take Peterson at his supposed talents, he’s got no credentials or evidence that he should be opining on the likelihood of election outcomes. And yet, he was, because at some point down the line he crossed over from being a Prof and an author to an “Intellectual”, and therefore being an “Important Person” who “Knows Things”.

And now, that designation has led to another fracas, this time over whether he can remain licensed by the Ontario College of Psychologists due to complaints stemming from his tweets. He is trying to make it a story of national attention, and he has been aided by Pierre Poilievre and the National Post, and I am now at the point where I have to ask a very important question.

Why, exactly, does it matter?

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Jordan Peterson has not practiced as a Psychologist since 2017, when he claimed his fame made it impossible for him to do the job in a moral and ethical way. Honestly, he was probably right then, because by that time, he had made himself a sufficient name both nationally and internationally that he was unable to have that role for people without him being the star of what should be a patient-driven process.

None of what I think about Peterson is really about him – I consider him to be the same as various players of the left who, for whatever reason, have managed a level of fame (or infamy) for their controversial takes. Hell, even take away the politics of it, and he’s a Malcolm Gladwell-esque figure – someone who thinks big thoughts and gets paid to do it for a living through book sales and speaking fees.

That is a level of fame, and it can be, and clearly is, a good life for people. Chuck Klosterman is one of my inspirations for this site, and the way he wrote in his essays has endurably impacted how I write for this site, for good or for ill. But I don’t revere Klosterman for what he says, but how he says it, and that is the fundamental truth for most of these “Intellectuals”. The reason Klosterman or Gladwell stay in the news and in our minds is because people like hearing them talk. Like or loathe the actual takes they emit, I like hearing Klosterman riff about how basketball is different now or whatever he says when he’s chatting with Bill Simmons.

What they aren’t, however, is viewed as people whose status is of national importance. When Malcolm Gladwell went on Bill Simmons’ podcast and defended Joe Paterno on the grounds that he was so old and batty he couldn’t have known to actually stop Jerry Sandusky’s actions, or claimed that Nigeria had all the best athletes and then named Steve Nash and a ton of athletes from the broader continent, most of whom had no Nigerian blood in them, we just moved on because it doesn’t matter if these people have good takes or bad ones. They are, fundamentally, irrelevances to the important things happening in this world, and “Malcolm Gladwell defends horrible behaviour” just doesn’t crack the top 500 most important stories going on at any given time.

So why does Jordan Peterson’s travails always end up a story of (Canadian) national concern? The actual answer is because we are led by a media company who loves him and thinks his travails help their cause, but it’s also because they think people are dumb. What this story comes down to is not some governmental overreach into censoring tweets and “enemies” of Justin Trudeau’s, it’s about someone facing the music for being a shit disturber on Twitter.

I’m really sorry, but if this were a downtown Toronto lawyer being called to the Bar for tweeting that all conservatives were fascists and anybody who opposed mask mandates was pro killing people, would anyone care? I haven’t been able to read all of what Peterson said that was cause for complaint (the file he tweeted is now not opening), but from what examples he’s tweeted I can’t particularly say I’m outraged either way.

Do I think what he’s said – mostly just anti-COVID restrictions and mandates stuff, attacking Gerald Butts, saying that someone concerned about overpopulation was “free to leave” earth, and a lot of claims to want freedom back – deserves him having his license taken away? No, not really (although, I didn’t watch his Rogan interview so he might have said worse there). Would I have complained? No, I wouldn’t have. But that’s not what this is about. This isn’t a defence of the idea he should have his license taken away or an argument it should be, this isn’t about that. My argument is simply this: who fucking cares?

This is not, as some in my Twitter mentions are trying to make it, a case of censorship because of distasteful political views. Just as with Elon’s free speech policies, exactly none of this is a speech issue. You know why I know that? Because nothing protects you from consequences for your speech except from the state. Longtime readers will remember some of the vile shit said about me when I called 2020 wrong, which was fine. It was my free speech that allowed me to be an asshole for months leading up to the election, and it was their free speech to call me various forms of idiot and asshole when I was wrong.

Peterson is being investigated by a professional standards committee for failing to uphold those standards by being a blowhard on Twitter and in his media appearances. Is that grounds for losing your license? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because at a time when Doug Ford is taking nurses to court to avoid paying them more and we have a health care crisis and a very real and meaningful difference in how to resolve it, this is what we’re going on about.

The reason I find this so fucking nauseating is not because I hate Jordan Peterson, because I don’t. I don’t think about Jordan Peterson enough to hate him, because he is a fundamentally unimportant person in the grand scheme of things. He’s a professional opinion haver, and as an amateur one of those, I know our role is not that big, even at the peak of the talent.

The problem is, he has convinced this country that he is important, and that his travails are actually important. There’s no chance Justin Trudeau will be baited into this, but the Leader of the Opposition has already opined on it, because of course he did. And this is making our country worse off.

I’ve never explicitly said this before, but there’s a reason I’m not really covering the Canada polls much these days on these pages – I’m trying to pivot from being a “politics” writer to both a more narrow focus, and a broader one. Most of modern “political” reporting I find to be fundamentally useless – who’s up, who’s down, who had a good week, who had a bad one is just not a style of writing I think I provide much value in doing. I used to do it, but now I am trying to pivot from that into a more two-track approach – focus on what matters in terms of elections, and then a much broader set of writing on this country. Sometimes that broader set of writing will be media criticism, sometimes it will be angry shitpostings, and sometimes it’ll be me losing my mind at the Nova Scotia RCMP. If someone were to say to me that they used to like my work when it was more driven by “poll of the week” coverage and that they won’t read me unless I return to that style, that would be their right.

Jordan Peterson wants free speech, sort of. He wants the freedom to say what he wants, but he does not want any of the consequences of it or pushback for it. He is a fraud, because his commitment to free speech doesn’t extend to anyone else, and he wants all the benefits of being able to shitpost and go on Rogan and say loony shit without having to abide by a basic set of professional standards.

That said, what is vastly more important is that this country stops being played for fools by obvious frauds, because that’s what this is. Peterson doesn’t want to lose his license, and is trying to gin up some sympathy. I get it, and if I were in his shoes I’d so the same. But it doesn’t make this important and it doesn’t make it worth fucking talking about. We as a country are being played for fools by bad faith actors like Jordan Peterson, and ignoring their tantrums would do well to start fixing this country.