What a rant by the West’s ‘hottest intellectual’ Jordan Peterson says about gender fluidity, Trump and threatened white males
The Canadian psychologist’s threat to slap critic Pankaj Mishra had echoes of The Donald vs Joe Biden. The comparisons don’t stop there – perhaps the forces that took Trump to the top are now fuelling Peterson’s popularity
Peterson posted on Facebook and Twitter: “And you call me a fascist? You sanctimonious prick. If you were in my room at the moment, I’d slap you happily … You arrogant, racist son of a bitch Pankaj Mishra.”
If that’s the way public intellectuals carry on these days, what chance do the rest of us have to debate divisive issues in a civilised way?
Peterson was responding to an incendiary piece by Pankaj Mishra, the respected literary critic from India, on his new book 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, in the New York Review of Books.
In more than 2,000 words, Mishra managed to mention just one rule of Peterson’s – “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” and don’t forget to “clean your room”.
Rather than a book review, it was more like an epic takedown on the so-called Peterson phenomenon itself. No one, after all, expects the premier literary publication in the English-speaking world to review just a self-help book. Mishra’s essay may be brutal, but it is civil and as we will see, he does have a point.