God help me, I actually like Jordan Peterson. Or at the very least, I find him interesting to listen to, which may or may not be the same thing. (I've linked to his videos on this blog before HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. And I've talked about him in the comments on Whisky's Blog: HERE. If you follow those links, you'll notice I sometimes talk about him in approving terms.)
I've also been following him on Twitter for a while, and it's noticeable that the Jordan Peterson on Twitter is not nearly as charming as the Jordan Peterson on Youtube. The Jordan Peterson on Twitter isn't a thoughtful philosopher, but a typical knee-jerk reactionary rightist.
Here are some random examples from his recent Twitter feed:
Leave those kids alone you virtue signaling puppet @JustinTrudeau https://t.co/pOR3xqKs9f
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 25, 2022
Enough. Enough COVID mandates. Drop the damn masks and the idiot rules and get on with life. Today. https://t.co/hReCA19rMH
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 24, 2022
You're not an "environmental leader." You're a hypocritical moralist willing to sacrifice whole productive provinces to your own apocalyptic doom-ridden delusions @s_guilbeault https://t.co/9lDIR2YFpE
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 24, 2022
Those are just examples pulled from the past couple days, but take my word for it, it's frequently like this. Go ahead and follow him for a bit on Twitter, you'll see him angrily railing against environmentalists and Covid precautions in a way that make him indistinguishable from any other right-wing crank.
I'm not sure if this is because of the limitations of the medium, or if this is his true colors coming out. (Or, as I sometimes suspect, Peterson might be mixing his drinking with his Twitter. That's just pure supposition on my part, but it would explain it.)
But either way, it's done a lot to disillusion me.
Jordan Peterson likes to portray himself as a nuanced thinker--and in his videos, sometimes he is--but on his Twitter account, he's full on right-wing, and he's completely embraced the goodguy/badguy tribalism of modern politics.
The issue that gets me the most though is his climate change denier stuff that he frequently spouts off on Twitter. This bothers me partly because I personally am really worried about climate change, but it also bothers me because Jordan Peterson is not a climate scientist, so I don't know where he gets his confidence to make pronouncements in this area.
P.S.--I've been thinking about writing this post for a while. (I expressed these same opinions before HERE), but it was seeing this several times on Twitter today that finally prompted me to opine.
Holy moly. I don't think I can do this. First words out of Peterson's mouth in the Joe Rogan interview are complete self parody. I can't even dunk on it. pic.twitter.com/hIDYPi0KDc
— bad_stats (@thebadstats) January 25, 2022
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