The following video is going viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVUnUnWfHI. If you have not already watched it, please click on the link and watch the video before continuing, as Jordan Peterson makes a number of very good points. Doctor Peterson does a great job of illustrating some of the things that are wrong with identity politics, and specifically, he explains why it would be impossible to build a world based on postmodernist belief.
Jordan Peterson has, in many other videos, discussed the piecemeal way the left disseminates information to the mob. Everyone on the left knows that they want to tear down our so-called, ‘Euro-centric patriarchy,’ and Doctor Peterson is clear that most of the people on the left don’t even really know what that means. Most postmodernists have no idea what we would replace that so-called ‘Euro-centric patriarchy’ with, either, which is why when asked what a postmodernist world would look like, leftists give slogans rather than structures.
Doctor Peterson tells us that the agenda of the left is taught in pieces, with only those who lead the movement seeing the whole thing. As long as all of the pieces of the movement are in the mob, the mob will coalesce around the whole movement, even if nobody in the mob knows what the whole movement entails. This is a brilliant strategy, allowing the movement to continue, while also making it possible to deny that the movement exists. When we call leftists out, we are told that ours is nothing more than a conspiracy theory, while at the same time we can see the conspiracy in action all around us.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that ending the so-called ‘Euro-Centric patriarchy’ really means dismantling Western culture, and Western Civilization, to replace it with something else, and when everything that makes individuals free, from free markets to free speech, is under attack, the end-goal becomes clear to all who will look: a totalitarian, collectivist state.
On all of this, I agree with Doctor Peterson, but most of this comes from other videos rather than the one linked above. In the above video, I disagree with Doctor Peterson on two important points.
First, I disagree with the notion that racial superiority is a product of the right.
Identity politics is driven by the belief that group identity matters, and that individual traits do not. Postmodernists want to tear down what they view as an oppressive ‘euro-centric patriarchy,’ but postmodernism teaches one identity group (white men) that they are at the top of the existing structure. To the degree that this group believes what they are taught by postmodernism, is it not logical for some of them to want to stay on top? If the worst white nationalism has to offer stems from leftist ideology, how can they be classified as a right-leaning movement?
Conservatives reject postmodernism entirely, making it hard to lump any identity group, including white nationals, in with the right. With the possible exception of Christian Conservatives (who are arguably an identity group), the right is not an affiliation of groups at all, but of individuals that reject identity politics entirely, and even the Christian Conservatives focus on belief, rather than gender, or ethnicity, or any of the other identities that are so important to the left.
White nationalism is a logical extension of identity politics, making it a leftist movement. Even the name, “alt-right,” stands not for ‘right’, but ‘alternative to the right’. The alt-right is an alternative to the right that opposes the rest of the left, and it is nothing more than that. White nationalists are not any different than are many other groups on the left, such as the New Black Panthers, and the various groups founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, all of whom want to replace the existing hierarchy, with one in which their group is on top. The left welcomes other groups who want to be on top with open arms, and the only real difference between the alt-right, and these clearly leftist groups, is the specific identity group the left puts them in. The left cannot logically disown white nationalists anymore than they can disown the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Doctor Peterson said that the right has it’s markers, beyond which we all agree things have gone too far, but he has those markers wrong. The markers on the right that go too far are not based on race, but on anarchy – those who call for there to be no government, rather than calling for a limited government. Furthermore, while those on the right generally acknowledge that anarchists are whacked, the left believes that any call for any limitation on government power is ridiculous. There is no agreement at all on what the correct ‘markers’ on the right should be.
The second disagreement I have with Doctor Peterson is in calling the flaws of postmodernism ‘fatal.’ There may be fatal flaws in postmodernism, but if there are, they are not the ones Doctor Peterson mentioned.
The whole point of modern leftism is to destroy the so-called ‘Euro-centric patriarchy,’ or in other words, to destroy Western Culture and Western Civilization from within. We are witnessing an orchestrated effort to end the enlightenment, and to restore the world to what is effectively a feudal state – communism being nothing more than a form of feudalism where the royal structure is replaced by a party structure.
Identity politics does not need to work, on a functional level, to still work as an axe with which to bring Western Civilization down, and when your goal is to destroy, you do not need to define a point beyond which things go ‘too far.’ Rather, the farther the left can stretch its postmodernist message, the more damage they do to our existing civilization, making Dr. Peterson’s call for ‘markers on the left’ silly. The left, rather, has a firewall somewhere left of center, everything right of which is completely off-limits. Everyone to the right of insane becomes a member of the ‘bucket of deplorables,’ and anything that can be called ‘too far left’ is instead termed ‘right’.
The left does not need to worry about building something new, as the existing bureaucracy is more than sufficient to restore order, under a communist purge. Once communism takes over, all of the identities will be a thing of the past; the only groups remaining will be the communist leaders, and the comrade serfs.
The fatal flaw of postmodernism, if there is one, is it’s tendency to fracture itself. Postmodernists can’t just protest. They have to organize their protests across identity group lines. As such, POC are often told to go up front, with white people relegated to the rear. Women take the front, and men the rear. Gay people take the front, and straight people take the rear. Whatever group is deemed most oppressed takes the front, and other groups are told to fall into place behind them. There is, of course, no clear way to define which groups are the most oppressed (particularly when there are an infinite number of possible identity groups) making it impossible to find broad agreement over who should be up front. If the identity groups turn on themselves, to vie for position within the protest, the movement will implode upon itself, leaving Western Civilization intact, and if postmodernism has a fatal flaw, it is this tendency to turn on itself, and implode. Whether postmodernism is able to destroy the enlightenment before postmodernism implodes upon itself has yet to be seen, but so far, one has to like their chances. The postmodernists seem to be winning.
