Thursday 14 February 2019

Dr. Jordan Peterson is set to tour New Zealand and the Left is opposed


Another anti-free speech shitstorm brewing in New Zealand?

New Zealand was not always this intolerant.

The old-fashioned liberal adage was always "I disagree with what you are saying but I will defend your right to say it"

That has now become " you have a right to your opinions so long as they are the RIGHT opinions"

Last year we had the most disgusting spectacle of Stefan Molyneux and Laura Southern being more or less hounded from the country for expressing an opinion - or rather trying to get people to have a conversation.

Now we seem to be having a repeat of this with a pretty pathetic attack on the popular Jordan Peterson who is about to tour this country

TEG Dainty and Nice Events are excited to announce that renowned professor, clinical psychologist and international bestselling author Dr. Jordan B Peterson will bring his 12 Rules for Life Tour to Australia & New Zealand in February 2019.

Following sold out dates in 2018, the new show will expand on previous discussions and feature revolutionary talks on overcoming life’s biggest obstacles, how to improve oneself, the psychology of religion, mythology, and much more. 

This is a press release from Auckland Peace Action:

Jordan Peterson threatens everything of value in our society

Monday, 11 February 2019, 7:41 pm
Press Release: Auckland Peace Action
Jordan Peterson threatens everything of value in our society
From: Auckland Peace Action
Date: Monday 11th February
In the lead-up to Jordan Peterson’s visit to New Zealand we have a duty to condemn his sexist, queerphobic, racist and deeply reactionary views,” says Iris Krzyzosiak of Auckland Peace Action.
Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto turned right-wing media celebrity, is in New Zealand to promote his book Twelve Rules for Life. This book, while offering superficially useful life advice to an audience of disaffected white men, promotes a reactionary, misogynistic view of the world utterly in opposition to New Zealand values.
While we as a country have many problems, we can be justly proud of our values of gender equality, egalitarianism and social inclusivity,” said Ms Krzyzosiak. “Jordan Peterson is actively trying to undermine these values. This is distinctly unhelpful.”
Dr Peterson is well-known for his objectionable opinions. He has bemoaned the fact that men cannot “control crazy women” by means of physical force. He has stated that feminists tolerate the US’s alliance with Saudi Arabia because of their “unconscious wish for brutal male domination”. And he claims that being expected to use correct pronouns for trans people is equivalent to Stalinism, a claim that astoundingly manages to both belittle those millions of people murdered by Stalin and equate the simple respectful act of referring to someone by their chosen description with an ideology of brutal authoritarianism.
Peterson’s associations are equally objectionable: he’s appeared on noted racist and misogynist Stefan Molyneux’s Youtube channel no fewer than three times, and he has publicly defended Lauren Southern’s attempts to disrupt rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
While we have any number of better things to do than picket his talk, his presence in this country is worrying as it threatens many of the basic values of our society,” said Ms Krzyzosiak. “We strongly encourage the media and citizens of New Zealand to be very wary of Jordan Peterson’s statements and subject them to careful critical analysis, lest we fall victim to an ideology that will inflict more suffering on those people in our society who are already marginalised.”
****
Now, if they were to devote their energies to opposing the various wars being waged - from Afghanistan, to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and now - potentially Venezuela they might have had me with them.

But I don't see much evidence of that:

From a quick perusal of their website they seem more interested in identity politics than peace to me.
Now we seem to be having a repeat of this with a pretty pathetic attack on the popular Jordan Peterson.

The language of the above - stringing together as many epithets and insults as possible in lieu of a debate - is very familiar to me from my youth in which time I dabbled in a left wing that was replete in such rhetoric although it was never directed towards "identity politics" in those days.

In short it is the language of the Far Left which appears to me to have been co-opted by the Establishment  for their own ends. Put another way, these people are being manipulated  by people they should (by rights) be opposing.

That baton seems to have been handed over to the "Alt-Right".

The leader of this movement stupidly agreed to appear on the radio with the combative journalist, Sean Plunket who quite correctly in my mind, ripped into him (most with simple questions, I must say) while he reacted like a deer caught in a car's headlights.

Don't get me wrong.I have no particular love for Sean Plunket, certainly after his ad hominem attack on writer, Eleanor Catton four years ago.

But I was right with him in this exchange and cheering him on from the sidelines.

            I am happy to see that not everyone on the Left (the true Left - not the 'Woke Left' - a term that baffles me has caught the same disease.

Even if he describes Molyneux and Southern as 'crypto- fascists' (something I've never understood - it's just yet another meaningless and inaccurate epithet attached to them) Bradbury does NOT approve of this latest action, albeit for very different reasons.


One would have thought the Woke Left had learned the mistakes of their anti-free speech campaign that only empowered two visiting crypto-fascists and Don Brash last year.
One would have thought.
Sadly I don’t think the Woke can help themselves and so they have launched an anti-free speech attack on the person who can manipulate their stupidity and convince more young men who feel lost without an identity that feminism is their problem.

Auckland Peace Action are promising protest against one of the internets leading Mens Rights intellectuals – Jordan Peterson.


I’ve written many times that I see why Peterson is popular, but that there are crucial places his theories fall down, unfortunately, rather than debate Peterson, the Woke scream and try to deplatform him.
This always ends terribly and actually serves only to empower Peterson.
Can the woke Auckland Peace Action fuck up as badly as People Against Prisons Aotearoa did with the Pride Parade?
Let’s see shall we? I predicted last year that woke activists wouldn’t be able to help themselves when Peterson visited this year. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

PS – Phantom Billboards deciding THIS is acceptable to censor while promoting an anti-free speech campaign is pretty funny.

I have just come off listening to Plunket talking to Jordan Peterson and I have to say I was VERY, VERY impressed in the way he talked to the young people who rang in. It is as clear as day that he has reached a lot of young people who find themselves lost in various ways and has managed to instil a sense of meaning into these young people.

And yet this twerp is saying Peterson is threatening "everything of value in our society"

I won't even mention planting fake bombs at a film festival by way of protest.

***
Vinny Eastwood, who I see as bit of twerp, but for whom I have some affection has produced his own rant on this:



I am a great fan these days of allowing people speak for themselves rather than following what others are saying about them.

Firstly, because Iris Krzyzosiak raises it so inaccurately some words about why the hell the new wave of feminists refuse to condemn Saudi Arabia for its repression of women, or, I might mention, defend women in Sweden or Germany raped by Muslim migrants,


And, finally the sort of discussion (from Swedish TV) that we should get (and don't) on our pathetic mass media.



As a final word I would say that irony and sophisticated argument seems to be as dead as a dodo in our academic scene.  

Life is complicated and messy and, in almost every case we can say "on the one hand.. but on the other".

Unless we wish to tear each other apart as as society collapses in the wake of war, economic collapse and the destruction of human society by abrupt climate change and the new wave of extinction we should learn to get on with each other and LISTEN.

Whatever his views, whether or not I agree with him or not, i thank Dr. Jordan Peterson for inviting us to have the conversation no one wants to have.


Listen to Sean Plunket interviewing Jordan Peterson HERE

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