#PCMadness - De-Platforming, Cancel Culture, Safe Spaces, Universities, Progressives, Illiberals

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UK government launches plan to fight ‘unacceptable silencing’

in UK universities

16 Feb, 2021 11:24

© Getty Images / Laurent Hamels

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has unveiled the UK government’s plan to tackle “unacceptable silencing and censoring” on university campuses after speakers have been no-platformed and censored for views deemed controversial.

The new measures could force universities to accept a free speech condition if they want to receive government funding, require student unions to guarantee that their members and any guest speakers are entitled to lawful free speech, see institutions that fail to protect free speech face fines and allow speakers who are denied a platform or academics who are dismissed to seek compensation in court. “Free speech underpins our democratic society and our universities have a long and proud history of being places where students and academics can express themselves freely,” Williamson declared while announcing the proposals.

I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses

of unacceptable silencing and censoring.

A 2018 report from the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights supported Williamson’s concerns, as it found numerous examples of censorship and debates being shut down, raising concerns about restrictions on free speech and the use of “safe space” policies in educational institutions.

Read: the exaggerated overuse of 'safe space' policies...

But, the new measures have received a critical response from some in the education sector, as they see the move as unnecessary, believing that concerns about censorship are overblown and there are bigger issues that need to be addressed, particularly given the challenges facing the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There is no evidence of a freedom of expression crisis on campus,” the vice president for Higher Education at the National Union of Students, Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, said opposing Williamson’s proposals, claiming institutions are “constantly taking positive steps to help facilitate the thousands of events that take place each year.”

The National Union of Students currently has a no platform policy, which was introduced in 1974, to fight back against fascist and racist organisations, that allows members to vote on barring speakers from campus to “keep students safe” at the organisation’s yearly national conference.

There has been a growing list of academics experts and speakers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who have been banned or no-platformed by UK universities in recent years due to remarks they’ve made which have been seen as controversial or offensive by some students. 

Journalist Peter Hitchens had a talk at Portsmouth University indefinitely “postponed” when the Students Union claimed he shouldn’t speak during LGBT+ History Month due to previous views that he’d expressed in his published work. 

Labour politician Chris Williamson was denied a platform at the Royal Holloway Debating Society over comments that were deemed offensive and controversial by Jewish students. 

Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Levitt was “uninvited” from a joint university bio design conference for his “Covid claims” despite not planning to discuss the pandemic during his appearance.

Author and ethologist Richard Dawkins had a planned talk at Trinity College, Dublin cancelled due to his views on religion, particularly Islam. 

Dawkins is renowned for trashing religion, especially Christianity. That, however, apparently wasn't a problem for Trinity College, until they discovered he also trashed Islam. 

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Scientist Richard Dawkins ditched: are university students stifling free speech?

Libertarian: UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, a keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society.

Photo by Steve Humphreys

John Meagher, The Independent

October 03 2020 02:30 AM

It is one of the oldest university societies in the world. The College Historical Society - popularly known as the Hist - has been a feature of student life at Trinity College Dublin since 1747.

It boasts about 10,000 members and has achieved a mild sort of celebrity outside of Trinity's venerable grounds thanks to the controversial debates it has hosted over the years.

This week it found itself in the glare of public opinion once more when it was revealed that an invitation to the veteran atheist, evolutionary biologist and contrarian Richard Dawkins to speak at the society had been rescinded.

According to the TCD student newspaper, the University Times, the Hist's auditor (chairperson) Bríd O'Donnell said the society would "not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members' comfort above all else".

Professor Richard Dawkins

Announcing the cancellation on her Instagram page, O'Donnell said she had been "unaware of Richard Dawkins' opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening.

"I had read his Wikipedia page and researched him briefly," she wrote. "Regretfully, I didn't look further into him before moving forward with the invitation... I want to thank everyone who pointed out this valuable information to me. I truthfully hope we didn't cause too much discomfort and if so, I apologise and will rectify it."

As soon as the University Times tweeted the story, the floodgates opened. The vast majority of those who responded to the post suggested the society had made a mistake in favouring student "comfort" over robust debate and engagement with different ideas.

The Trinity professor Brian Lucey tweeted: "I suspect that almost every headline speaker over decades has had some comments that were regrettable, unfortunate, disreputable or disgusting. That doesn't mean they're not worth debating."

Some suggested it was a form of cancel culture and one that was becoming more prevalent in Irish universities.

TCD economics lecturer Ronan Lyons, a former member of the Hist, was among several academics to argue that the society had acted unwisely. "College life is supposed to be a time where you are out of your comfort zone and where you are challenged to ideas that might be different to your own," he says. "The idea of 'comfort' just doesn't come into it.

"I have no problem if there are established rules. For instance, if it's a case of, 'We welcome debates of all kinds, but the following topics are not up for discussion, such as the Holocaust', that's fine. But the idea of a debating society that would prioritise the comfort of its members sort of misses the point of a debating society. 

Think of the Oscar Wilde quote: an idea that is not dangerous

is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

Wilde himself attended a number of Hist debates while an undergraduate at Trinity.

"I'm not telling any society what it can and cannot do, but I'd be worried if it affected the attitude of learning new ideas in education," Lyons adds. "I mean, I'd be worried if my students didn't want to hear new ideas.

"One of the modules I teach is the development of the Irish economy and, in principle, somebody with certain personal, political beliefs, might be uncomfortable with some of the ideas that you come across when you study Irish economic history. Like, 'Was the Famine a genocide?' Almost certainly not by any reasonable definition, but if you're of a certain political persuasion that would be an uncomfortable view.

"Another module, the history of the world economy, also covers some very uncomfortable topics, such as slavery. It's not easy to talk about that, but it is something that has to be taught. You don't go to a gym to be comfortable, you go there to push yourself and I think college is like a mental gym where you're getting yourself out of that comfort zone."

For University College Cork student Bryan O'Shea, the founder of Free Speech Ireland, third-level education is the very life-stage when challenging ideas are confronted. "University should be anything but a safe space," he says. "Debating societies and universities should provide an open forum for discussion and critical thinking. It is the key tenet of a university - to confront students with challenging ideas and dissenting opinions.

Illiberal trend among progressives

"No-platforming a speaker suggests the correct position has been decided in advance. This is unacceptable. Any institution genuinely committed to public debate should push back against the illiberal trend prevailing among left-wing, progressive students.

"We see this manifesting itself elsewhere in society as well. The ostracisation and dogmatic response to anyone who questions the Covid-related restrictions is an example. There is an absolute refusal by a lot of people on the left to engage in a free and open exchange of ideas with those whose opinions they disagree with."

O'Shea believes the no-platforming phenomenon is, chiefly, employed by liberals. "They have totally rejected the idea of free speech and embraced their own b
eliefs that they deem to be the morally correct and unquestionably virtuous ones," he says. "They seek only to enforce their orthodoxy. Progressives have wormed their way to the top of Irish society and have demonstrated their absolute intolerance for dissent."

And not just Irish society, it's all over the western world.

It is a sentiment that is echoed outside of Ireland, particularly among academics such as Jordan Peterson - equally loved and loathed for his 12 Rules for Life bestseller and refusal to recognise words such as 'cis', a comparatively new derivation to describe someone whose gender identity is the same as their sex at birth.

The provocative broadcaster Piers Morgan is set to challenge the no-platforming orthodoxy in his forthcoming book Wake Up: Why the 'Liberal' War on Free Speech is even more Dangerous than Covid-19.

Some are especially concerned by what they see as an erosion of free speech on our university campuses - a trend that is said to have been prevalent in some US universities over the past decade.

In their polemical 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that today's teenagers and early twentysomethings are being disadvantaged as a result of 'safe spaces', 'trigger words' and the banishment of those deemed to cause offence. They argue the phenomenon of 'safetyism', coupled with over-parenting when children are young, has led to the emergence of modern identity politics and hypersensitivity. And to cancel culture and no-platforming.

Labour senator Ivana Bacik, who has long associations with the Hist, believes it is unfair to castigate today's university students as less robust than those in her time at college and argues that modern-day campuses are just as willing to entertain challenging ideas as before.

"No-platforming is not a new phenomenon," she says. "It's been happening for years. In 1988, I was one of a group of students at the Students' Union at Trinity who wanted to no-platform the Holocaust-denier David Irving. At the time, we made a strong argument that he should be prevented from organising on campus; but it wasn't a free-speech issue."

The issue provoked much controversy at the time - and did so again a decade later when students at UCC planned to have Irving address them. For many years Irving, who is now 82, had been a free-speech test case for universities here and in the UK.

"I would never want to de-platform anyone, unless their views have been shown to be completely wrong, as has been the case with Irving," says Bacik. "His assertion that the Holocaust did not happen is outrageous. I think anyone who wilfully distorts history should not be afforded the free speech rights of everyone else."

While such contentious issues would be magnified by social media today, Bacik says the students' union stance on Irving caused considerable publicity at the time. "It wasn't just a college issue," she says, "there were all sorts of letters published in the Irish Independent and the Irish Times - as students, we were strongly criticised for denying him a platform."

Bacik, who has spoken on panels alongside Richard Dawkins, has been on the receiving end of the no-platforming phenomenon. "Some years ago, I was invited to speak at Notre Dame University [the private Catholic research university in Indiana] and the invitation was rescinded by the university organisation over my pro-choice views on abortion."

Where does she stand on no-platforming those who have inflammatory views, but don't distort history or, by any reasonable measure, tell lies? "It's very tricky," she says. "You have to take each speaker in context. Free speech is a hugely important principle in any democracy, absolutely, but it's never been an absolute right. In our constitution, it's subject to restrictions. There are libel laws and incitement to hatred laws in Ireland, too. And one has to bear that in mind.

"When it comes to universities, the whole point of debating societies is for students to hear different sides of a debate. At the same time, there's no right to be invited. It's up to the students on these committees to decide who to invite and who not to and I'm not going to wade into that one."

UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society - commonly known as the L&H - believes college can be a key time for being confronted with ideas diametrically opposed to your own. "I always spoke on the freedom of speech side because I'm a big believer in it and a big believer in pushing against cancel culture and no-platforming in general.

Flaw in the debate

"I'm a libertarian, so I'm all about individual people feeling enabled to do what they feel is the right thing to do economically, freedom of speech-wise, socially, whatever. And I think people absolutely should have the right to say what they feel even if it's obviously wrong, or inflammatory, or stupid, or hurtful. But I similarly think the flip side of that is that individual organisations also have the right to choose who they want to give a platform to."

Barnes has been following the Hist/Richard Dawkins story with interest this week. "A flaw in the no-platforming debate is where we can sometimes assume that a platform is a privilege you have when a platform is actually not synonymous with free speech. Free speech is the right you have and the platform to execute that upon is the privilege."

For Barnes, there is a difference between controversial figures being invited to a debate with those of opposing views as distinct from merely getting to address an audience, uncontested.

"A situation where there is a debate and the audience is getting to hear both sides is a reasonable contention," she says. "When I was in college, there was a big furore [at TCD] over the Hist inviting [then Ukip leader] Nigel Farage and people saying that the issue with him being invited was that he was just an individual speaker in an environment that wasn't being moderated by a hardened journalist and that would give him [Farage] an opportunity to say what he wanted and ride roughshod over everything."

Ultimately, the Farage visit went ahead - with the political journalist Pat Leahy chairing the discussion - but not before the Hist decided to revoke the awarding of the gold medal that it presents to many of its guest speakers.

For Bryan O'Shea, it represented much that has gone wrong in college campuses today. "They [the Hist] issued a grovelling apology for the high crime of inviting Nigel Farage. It will be interesting to see who they invite through the rest of the year. Will they all be left-wing? If so, will these speakers make people feel uncomfortable?"

While committee members of the Hist may have been feeling the weight of opinion this week, some have called for tolerance. Tomás Ryan - the TCD neuroscientist who has become a well-known figure thanks to his media engagements during the Covid pandemic - urged those critical of the decision to rescind the Dawkins offer to take a philosophical approach.

"This was a mistake," he tweeted. "But undergraduate students need to be allowed to make mistakes, ideally without intense international social media pressure. This seems like an error of judgment rather than intolerance. TCD encourages respectful debate from diverse perspectives."

What Can You Believe Anymore? Not So Much Apparently

In my persistent quest for the truth, I have been persuaded that

almost nothing is ever as it seems anymore.

In today's news from Dubai comes a report of a man from Kerala, India, who applied on a mechanical engineering job in the Gulf State. The email he received from his prospective employer was astonishing for its candidness. It has since gone viral:

Gulf News - Shaheen Bagh is the epicentre of ongoing mass demonstrations against India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

The act makes it more difficult for Muslims to become citizens of India:

The Shaheen Bagh protest is an ongoing 24/7 sit-in peaceful protest, led by women, that began with the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in both houses of Parliament on 11 December 2019 and the ensuing police intervention against students at Jamia Millia Islamia who were opposing the Amendment. Mainly Muslim women, the protesters at Shaheen Bagh, since 15 December 2019, have blocked a major highway[a] in New Delhi using non-violent resistance for 43 days now as of 26 January 2020. It has now become the longest ongoing continuous protest against CAA-NRC-NPR. -Wikipedia

Abdulla S.S., 23, who had applied for a mechanical engineer’s position in Dubai said he is still reeling from the shock of the email he got from UAE-based Indian expat Jayant Gokhale in response to his job application last week.

Rs 1000 is about $14 USD; free food and tea, sweets, are a pretty tempting offer especially for an unemployed Indian. 

The question is: 'is this going on elsewhere, or is it a one-off event?'  

This week in Vancouver, the extradition trial of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Hauwei, and the daughter of the founder of the spectacularly successful Chinese telecom company, got underway with a couple dozen protesters at the courts to support Meng. 

It turns out that they were hired to be there and, at least some, didn't know why they were even there until the last minute. 

Some of the participants have since alleged they were paid to take part in the protest.

Ken Bonson told the Star a friend recruited her and later deposited $150 into her account. At the courthouse, a woman she had never met before named “Joey” supplied them with posters, Bonson said. After learning more about Meng and the allegations against her, Bonson said she wished she had never taken part and felt “ashamed and embarrassed.” The Star has since spoken to the friend, who denies being paid or paying anyone to take part in the protest. The man refused to go on record for an interview. He said he did not know anyone named “Joey.”

Julia Hackstaff, an actor, wrote on Facebook that she was the victim of a “filthy cheap scam.” She said someone had contacted her Sunday evening asking if she wanted to be a background performer in a production for $100. When she arrived, she said, she received ambiguous instructions to hold a sign. When reporters approached the group and started asking questions, she thought it was all part of the production but quickly realized “everything was ‘too real.’

“I left after 5 minutes of being there.” - The Star

Another reason to suspect protests.

There is no reason to suspect the greatest protest of the 21st century - the Yellow Vest protest in France that has been going on for almost a year and a half, but, it might be worth investigating anyway.

But, perhaps the most disturbing example of paid protesting has to do with indigenous people of British Columbia and Alberta being used as pawns by American environmentalists, some of whom are sponsored by David Rockefeller (The Rockefellers were founders and owners of Standard Oil), to isolate Alberta oil and gas and keep it from reaching tidewater. This ensures Americans can buy it at ultra cheap prices, and they can't take markets that might otherwise be open to American oil and gas.

A left-wing lobby group in San Francisco wired $55,000 to the bank account of an Indian chief in Northern Alberta, paying him to oppose the oilsands.

The same IRS disclosure shows Tides Foundation (started by philanthropist Drummond Pike) made 25 different payments to Canadian anti-oilsands activists in a single year, totaling well over a million dollars. And that’s just one U.S. lobby group. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund out of New York, spends $7 million a year in Canada, with an explicit campaign strategy of fomenting Aboriginal unrest, through protests and lawsuits. - Toronto Sun    Alberta's Oil Not the Only Thing That's Dirty

The Rockefellers are known as great philanthropists, and they were. However, one has to wonder how much of their philanthropy was self-serving. 

Drummond Pike, started Tides Foundation, then Tides Center, then Tides Canada. Much of Pike's work was involved in supporting progressive politicians in both Canada and the  USA:

Pike along with George Soros and other Democracy Alliance members John R. Hunting; Paul Rudd (co-founder of Adaptive Analytics); Pat Stryker; Nicholas Hanauer; ex-Clinton administration official Rob Stein; Gail Furman; real estate developer Robert Bowditch; Pioneer Hybrid International-heir and congressional candidate Scott Wallace; Susie Tompkins Buell; real estate developer Albert Dwoskin; and Taco Bell-heir Rob McKay, funded the Secretary of State Project, an American non-profit, 527 political action committee focused on electing reform-minded progressive Secretaries of State in battleground states, who typically oversee the election process. The Alliance was critical in getting California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie re-elected. - Wikipedia

See also:

Talk About ‘Collusion’: How Foreign-Backed Anti-Oil Activists Infiltrated Canada’s Government   Or, how wealthy American environmentalists bought the Canadian government and destroyed Alberta's Oil Sands industry

How America is Strangling the Canadian Oil Industry, and We're Helping Them

Anti-pipeline campaign was planned, intended, and foreign-funded: Vivian Krause

Jordan Peterson is Completely Misrepresented by Left-Leaning Journalists

Well written and very intelligent article. Below you will find a video of Peterson's explanation of Peter Pan that is absolutely brilliant and gives us a glimpse of why this man has become so astonishingly popular.

What the left gets wrong about Jordan Peterson

J Oliver Conroy

One might think that by now progressives would figure out that

vilifying Peterson almost always redounds to his advantage.

One would be wrong.

‘Immersing oneself in the Peterson fandom sphere is a perspective-changing experience.’ Illustration: Rob Dobi for the Guardian

Perhaps you’ve heard of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist, self-help guru, and social media star who is also, if some media accounts are to be believed, a dangerous stalking horse for far-right ideas?

“In reality, Peterson’s ideas are a mixed bag,” the journalist Cathy Young wrote in a balanced recent Los Angeles Times piece. “He says some sensible and insightful things, and he says some things that rightly draw criticism. But you wouldn’t know this from reading Peterson’s critics, who generally cast him as a far-right boogeyman riding the wave of a misogynistic backlash.”

The current media narrative about Peterson is often lazy, as Young notes. But worse, this narrative doesn’t take account of, let alone try to explain, the appeal Peterson’s message holds for his millions of fans – most of whom are more interested in his affirmative spiritual message than his pugilistic views on gender and political correctness.

True, Peterson’s own followers sometimes feed the perception he is leading a reactionary counterrevolution. They upload YouTube clips highlighting Peterson’s apparent triumphs over leftist foes – “Jordan Peterson Leaves Feminist Speechless”, “Jordan Peterson on Homosexuals Raising Children”, “Transgender Professor INSULTS Jordan Peterson, Gets OWNED”.

But these (fan-edited) videos give the false impression that most of Peterson’s fans are attracted to his attacks on political correctness. They’re not. If anything, Peterson’s penchant for polarizing political claims distracts from his core message. In his lectures – freewheeling mixtures of self-help counsel, pop philosophy and Jungian theory – Peterson emphasizes self-worth, responsibility, and a Christian-ish notion of man as fallen but redeemable.

Cathy Newman’s combative interview with Jordan Peterson has been watched millions of times on YouTube. Photograph: Channel 4 grab

In fact, immersing oneself in the Peterson fandom sphere is a perspective-changing experience. For every rant about “social justice warriors”, there are a dozen completely apolitical posts: geeky discussions of Peterson’s lectures about mythology, personal testimonies to the effectiveness of his self-help advice.

Peterson’s advice appears to have helped thousands of people. (Peterson has estimated he’s received more than 35,000 letters of appreciation.) Fans say his message – which starts with seemingly banal directives to “clean your room” and “stand up straight with your shoulders back” – has motivated them in battles against addiction to drugs, alcohol, video games, or pornography; helped them form positive relationships, or exit toxic ones; become better spouses or parents; take charge of their physical health; and rekindle relationships with estranged family members.

In their messages of appreciation, Jordan Peterson’s fans sometimes border on religious testimony.

In a post on Quora, a commenter describes a harrowing period in which his six-year-old almost died of auto-immune disease. During “those dark days”, Peterson’s lectures were “something to anchor me” when “my emotions were in turmoil”, the person writes. “The man is a gift from God. He will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the great thinkers and possibly a person that changed our culture in a significant way.”

It seems questionable that Peterson will go down in history as a great thinker. And, as with all gurus, he ought to be treated with instinctive skepticism. But that skepticism should extend to how he has been presented by the media.

 Anyone who investigates Peterson’s work knows that his

harshest rebukes aren’t addressed to women, but men

One might think that by now progressives would figure out that vilifying Peterson almost always redounds to his advantage. One would be wrong. By repeatedly trying to put words in Peterson’s mouth during a 29-minute interview this January, Cathy Newman, a British journalist, came across as misreading his ideas.

During a recent panel debate in Toronto, on political correctness, the preacher and academic Michael Eric Dyson’s ad-hominem attacks against Peterson, whom he called a “mean mad white man”, only turned audience sentiment against Dyson.

None of this is to say Peterson’s more inflammatory statements shouldn’t be contested or scrutinized.

In a recent New York Times profile, Peterson appeared to suggest that “incels” – aggrieved young men who describe themselves as “involuntarily celibate” – should be assigned mates to prevent them from taking out their rage on society.

“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Peterson was quoted as saying of the 25-year-old man who went on a killing spree in Toronto in April. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”

‘None of this is to say Peterson’s statements shouldn’t be contested.’

Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images

The article continues: “Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.”

Besides failing to clearly condemn incels, Peterson’s quote made it seem as if he believes women should be required to sacrifice themselves against their will to fix male violence. He doesn’t. He’s said that by “enforced monogamy” he merely meant encouraging monogamy through social norms. Peterson, of course, is a public figure commanding a vast following, and he should expect to be held accountable for what he says. It is impossible to defend his wild regressive flourishes – like his suggestion, in a recent Financial Times profile, that women would be happier under traditional gender roles.

But anyone who makes even a cursory investigation of Peterson’s work knows that his harshest rebukes aren’t addressed to women, but men, whom he urges to reject self-pity and embrace self-improvement. These aren’t messages tailored to resentful, women-hating “incels” and men’s rights activists; they’re the opposite.

Despite the notion, popular on the left, that Peterson functions as a pipeline to the “alt-right”, it seems as likely, as Peterson himself has claimed, that he saves more directionless young men from far-right radicalization than the other way around. And, if nothing else, the Peterson phenomenon may leave at least one lasting achievement: it has gotten men to open up about mental health.

Although Peterson’s fans are probably more diverse in their ethnicities, genders, and walks of life than described, critics nonetheless like to highlight his following among young white males. It only requires a little empathy to see why such men – grappling with addiction, unemployment, depression, and a feeling of uselessness and failure – desperately crave the paternal encouragement and affirmation Peterson provides.

I had heard that Peterson’s online fandom was a swamp of reactionism, but it turned out to be less striking for its politics than its relative lack thereof. 

One of the recurring themes of Peterson’s lectures is that life is painful; only by accepting that pain – “shouldering the heaviest burden you can bear” – can one begin to transcend it. It is a seemingly simple message that turns out to have enormous emotional resonance. (Quotations have been lightly edited for clarity.)

In a Reddit thread called “I think Dr Peterson saved my life”, a 24-year-old Polish man describes how Peterson’s lectures pulled him out of self-imposed isolation and the brink of suicide:

I hope that thanks to [Peterson’s advice], in a year or two I will be a different person, both mentally and physically. Someone who is finally happy, who finally lives and not just barely exists. […] So … thank you, Dr Peterson. Perhaps you have saved another soul.

In another Reddit thread, called “There are people who are 20+ years [old] that have never had a friend”, commenters discuss loneliness. One commenter describes growing up in an impoverished and abusive household:

I didn’t have friends until I was about 17. […] I was the smelly kid at school because I couldn’t shower, had no way to wash my clothes, and I wore the same clothes every day every year for a really long time. […] I’ve been working on social skills for years and years. Finally I “broke through” with the help of Jordan Peterson.

When news consumers get around to reading or watching Peterson’s work for themselves, they often find his ideas far less radical than characterized – and feel betrayed by the media and cultural elite’s representation of Peterson.

The notion that there is nothing redeemable in Peterson’s message – and the accompanying assumption that any fan of his is beneath contempt – is not only wrong, but represents a rather bleak, zero-sum vision of politics.

The left’s most profound message used to be that all human beings deserve dignity and worth, and those who need help should receive it, regardless of their race or gender or class or other characteristic.

If that axiom still holds true – these days I’m not always sure – then it applies to many of Peterson’s fans.

J Oliver Conroy is a writer and journalist based in New York