Anyone who rolled their eyes at the nonsense the Durham City Council’s wrote on a facebook post denouncing the “racist, misogynist, and transphobic views” of University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson and his upcoming appearance at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), will be interested to know that Jordan Peterson offered his own response to the post on his web site. He doesn’t hold back.
Peterson writes….
The City of Durham’s statement is one of the purest demonstrations I have yet seen of the tendency for the ideologically possessed to use denouncement tactically as a means to amplify and exaggerate personal or identity-group virtue. To lay this bare, I have composed this analysis of the psychological motivations and narrative structure of the statement.
It opens with what appears to be a purely objective account of my upcoming 12 Rules for Life tour lecture/discussion in Durham, but is in fact an outright lie, as well as an act of betrayal (quite the accomplishment for a single sentence): “We recently learned from coverage in the Indyweek [a local newspaper self-described as ‘progressive’ and one founded, by the way, by the mayor Steve Schewel, a signatory to the statement] that the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) has invited Jordan Peterson to speak in the venue this September.”
The lie? The Durham Performing Arts Center did not invite me. I rented the theater. There is a world of difference. But, of course, without the allegation of ‘invitation’ there is no one to cast into disrepute. And that leads us to the betrayal, which is the purposeful and motivated casting of aspersions on the character of the people who run the DPAC, who are in any case directly or indirectly under the supervision or jurisdiction of the mayor and councilors. So the perpetrators have been identified.
Peterson leaves his best for last.
Everything that is reprehensible about the radical and ideologically-possessed left – all the moral self-righteousness, the platitudes, the clichés, the mindless celebration of diversity for the sake of the demonstration of tolerance, the naivete, and the appalling malevolence of casual denunciation – is on painful display in this missive. Exposure to such a piece of writing left me with a strong desire for a hot shower accompanied by plenty of soap and a scrub brush.
What more need be said?
