Renas Mele

Over the past five years, Jordan Peterson gained much attention by appearing in countless interviews and publishing his lectures on Youtube. His fame was exclusive to Western, English-speaking audiences, but lately, many Arabs and Middle Easterners have started to show positive sentiment, even admiration, towards his ideas. The ideas and topics Peterson tackles can not be quickly listed here. Still, we can describe the ideology they are rooted in, despite his claims of not having an ideology in his rhetoric. It can be described as an amalgam of Christan conservatism and Adam Smith’s capitalist market doctrine. He defends the first’s values by attacking liberal values from the latter’s perspective.

Peterson is known for his fierce opposition against LGTBQ rights laws, complete rejection of non-binary pronouns, and denial of the gender pay gap. He is also known for his strong opinions against Marxism, which is popular among Social Science and Humanities students in western universities and students’ social justice movements. In addition, by defending the “successful” rich, he denies white supremacy. 

After his debate with Slavoj Žižek, Peterson faced a lot of criticism. Many perceived his arguments as weak. His 15 minutes of fame seemed over. Remarkably, he gained more recognition among Arabs in the diaspora and their own countries after he quit his job as a professor at the University of Toronto and began sharing his ideas with the public as a full-time Youtuber.

Who is Peterson’s target audience? And why do some immigrants get fascinated by his ideas? The second question highlights a paradox – between the rhetoric and its audience. As Peterson spreads his hate speech in disguise, which supports class and symbolic privileges, while denying their existence, it falls on the ears of marginalized immigrants living in harsh conditions…and fascinates them.

The Left, labelled as a conspiracy

Peterson bases the rejection of any leftist ideology on accusations of it being a Marxist conspiracy against western democracy, an attempt to tamper with human nature and hierarchical society. His fame sprouts from his zealous adherence to the perceived social hierarchy, which necessarily produces a class order that justifies dividing the job market between the hardworking rich and the lazy poor. This pairs with his gender determinism, which divides the market according to each gender’s characteristics and assumes it’s a typical result of human nature. For instance, according to his “psychological understanding of a woman’s personality,” he wholeheartedly argues that a woman working as a nurse fulfills her motherly role as a caretaker and that men are equipped to perform physically demanding tasks such as mining. He tirelessly employs so-called axioms of the theory of evolution to defend and justify social hierarchy, while ignoring how they were used by the Nazis – whom he claims to have studied extensively – to justify the Holocaust.

What we are facing here is not a new ideology. Peterson is an old-fashioned conservative, singing old standards and acting within them, while complaining about oppression at the hands of “political correctness.” He claims to practice theoretical science, using the method of direct observation, to find connections between sociology and biology, thereby introducing himself as more credible than other researchers in the humanities. 

Peterson gained considerable popularity among members of the far right who adopted his opinions and reused them in classist and/or racist spaces. His admirers reject these accusations against him because they see him as a highly compassionate person, which sets him apart from other right-wing figures. He does not accept being labeled right-wing. Instead, he describes himself as a classic liberal. Despite this, his adoring audience ignores how he found his place among the xenophobic, right wing, as he repeatedly appeared with left-demonizing figures such as Ben Shapiro. 

Peterson relentlessly attacks Marxism, socialism, and postmodernism – even though the latter is in a different position than the first two. He invented a conspiracy while reviewing the history of these ideologies. He claims that Marxism evolved within the postmodern discourse, replacing “the worker and the capitalist” with “the oppressor and the oppressed” to diminish the power of individual freedom. This conspiracy rhetoric opened the doors for the western right to dismantle any structural criticism of these institutions or classes, as he considers it a leftist ideological expansion, aiming to take over the western state.

Individual success instead of social justice

Peterson’s ideology and values are based on classist racism which justifies any policies of discrimination and oppression. If we read through his work or listen to his lecture, we immediately notice that he centralizes the individual and ignores the group across all his rhetoric. This can be attributed in the first place to his scientific background as a psychologist, where studies focus on the individual, their experience, neurology, and personality. Another factor is his belief in individuality according to the capitalist definition of social relations, where the individual is seen as the center of biopower and consumption. At the same time, the individual is a productive and democratic entity that follows neo-liberal market rules and principles of competition, which in turn leads to individual success. And it’s all justified because the market is ”neutral” and “just,” and some individuals happen to have more success in gaining profit and accumulating capital. 

For Peterson, individuality is the only path to success, while the collective represents laziness and failure. Individuals can determine what they want by understanding their personality strengths and honing them to become more productive. He bases this idea on Nietzsche’s recommendations for self-improvement, where he suggests looking at oneself to recognize weakness and strength, and to avoid aspiring to accomplishments beyond one’s capabilities. Peterson continues building on that, warning people from blaming structural factors that cannot be changed by personal effort for their problems. He has repeatedly discouraged people from engaging in public sphere politics. Engage in your immediate surrounding and make your bed. 

Peterson’s discourse carries an exclusionary, discriminatory load of two dimensions: institutional and classist-racist. This discrimination is based on the classist belief in the capitalist individual. It welcomes people with the ambition of success and competitive financial capabilities into Western society. It also caters to those who believe in categories of people’s inferior nature within the job market. Therefore there is no point in demanding a change within institutions, whether same-sex marriage or income equality. The second type is not welcomed due to Mr. Peterson’s generosity; rather, it stems from his belief that capitalist market economies cannot function without a productive workforce. Its absence will disturb the upper strata of this hierarchy. Therefore, a non-political workforce is ideal and welcome.

Arabs’ infatuation with Peterson is not based on misreading his ideas. It is based on cross-cultural ideological compatibility between eastern and western patriarchal ideologies. Peterson presents to the Arab patriarchy what it can adopt without changing core beliefs. Nevertheless, it is merely one of the ideological paths Peterson follows, leading to his conceptual schema.   

Peterson’s popularity in non-Western societies is mainly due to the capitalist market perception that hard-working, ambitious individuals are rewarded with success and wealth. It is a discourse used by many who strive to rationalize individual success through competition and market rule. This pattern of thought is rooted in theories of evolution, suggesting that evolution in a society is often individual and depends on an individual’s ability to survive and that the cooperative behaviour of some being hinders their ability to survive and thrive. Peterson does not offer anything new but returns to the natural, prehistoric, where life is self-justified, and the social hierarchy is a “civilized” aspect that confers merit to those with material and symbolic superiority.

Some who identify with, and defend, Peterson are entrepreneurs aspiring to accumulate wealth and join the white male class, proud of their individuality. This class sees leftist attempts to achieve social and gender justice as a threat to their institutional position, which grants them material and symbolic superiority to them, their ancestors, and their positions in the world. As Peterson takes over the hearts of many entrepreneurs and hierarchical believers, we face an academic populist phenomenon similar to Trump’s political populism.

Trump invested in angry right-wing factions convinced that the popular left rhetoric and movements and immigrants threaten their symbolic status and infiltrate social ideology to control institutions. In comparison, Peterson is openly flirting with individuals and courting right-wingers in the hope of subverting the left’s voice in academic and political institutions to glorify individual successes. This is a method by which to maintain the vitality of the present social hierarchy, and therefore defeat any politics of racial-social justice as well as the remnants of class consciousness.