posted on December 29, 2019 04:40 PM by
u/Hailanathema
72
u/oneLguy67 pointsat 1577648981.000000
Two illustrative cases are Maajid Nawaz and Jordan Peterson, both
staunchly anti-genocide enough to dedicate decades to preventing it, and
pilloried and hated by the progressive left because of it.
Ah yes, the reason leftists hate Peterson is because he…opposes
genocide?
What exactly has Peterson done to combat genocide, anyway? Has he put out some especially poignant YouTube videos about what’s going on in Myanmar or something? The last time I checked Peterson’s bread and butter was self-help content, not anti-genocide campaigning. He has as much human rights credibility as Gwyneth Paltrow.
That’s fair, I hadn’t realized that he was focused on that.
Even if we accept as stated that he is an anti-genocide scholar, it’s hard to draw the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with him must therefore be in favor of genocide. That argument is (to put it mildly) somewhat inflammatory and the person who makes it should have made some effort to back it up.
The motivation they presumably have for making that argument about progressives or whathaveyou is a fairly simple albeit silly one, and can be made without reference to Peterson (though references to Peterson may be a helpful guide to the internal logic). Rather than saying that progressives are *necessarily* "in favor of genocide", the idea is roughly that in order to be progressive one has to have a sufficiently "unreconstructed soul" as I previously put it as to then advocate progressive policies, which is supposed to imply that one is simply not *anti-genocide* enough. The final piece in the puzzle is the link between progressives and approval of genocide: the idea is that advocatingsupposedly progressive politics is equal to advocating discrimination on unjust grounds, which further entails possessing the psychological pathology which ultimately leads to Stalinist purges and the Holodomor.
What specific pathology is this supposed to be? It's often hard to tell when it comes to individual rhetoricians who try to make this argument, thanks for example to Peterson's constant cross-talk and the resulting confusion amongst his fans, but the common demoninator seems to be something akin to the old-fashioned horseshoe theory: progressives and nazis are both willing to enact what a self-declared "centrist" or "liberal" or "small-c" conservative sees as interventionist politics (fucking around in people's lives) at the far end of the slippery slope of which is supposedly mass murder.
It's not a very original argument of course, and was already put to bed for most right-thinking folk in the contemporary era for anybody who paid attention to the nonsense logic in Hayek's *Road to Serfdom* more than half a century ago.
This is very interesting and it explains a lot, thank you for sharing. It reminds me a bit of a conversation I had with a relative who is rather centre-right (straight white dude), and has previously suggested Tim Pool and Jordan Peterson videos to me. He told me that he felt certain leftist policies such as those aimed at increasing diversity and positive discrimination etc. leading to Hitler and Nazi Germany situations. He said he realised this sounded weird and tried to explain it further by talking about too many groups with political and social power could result in clashes and fighting etc. I felt his thinking was obviously flawed, but I think what you have discussed above explains my relative's thinking a lot more, and what might be driving his thinking.
(I personally found it ironic that he did not agree with me that Trump's style of policies and rhetoric were more likely to lead to a Hitler-esque situation, and he showed a painful lack of understanding of leftist politics and theory, and he kept relating it back to "diversity politics". But anyway).
The right's understanding of the left is comically low. Remember that for all his commie bashing, Peterson admitted to not having read a single communist book prior to his debate with Zizek (except for the Manifesto which he skimmed for the express purpose of the debate).
Nothing imho, he just mispresents Hitler a little bit. He talks a lot about having studied extremism, but he never shows his work in a valuable way. (Apart from shouting about 'read anti-semetic anti-communist russians!').
Well, see, [this one time](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11633305/University-union-officer-who-wrote-kill-all-white-men-tweet-will-remain-in-post.html) a college welfare and diversity officer used the hashtag \#killallwhitemen *and didn't even get fired for it* so progressivism must be a pro-genocide ideology.
That's reprehensible!
The fact that we want white genocide must be kept secret in order to prevent white men from realizing the truth so they won't rise up against the minorities. How dare she jeopardize our postmodern neo-Marxist gay feminist agenda!
Funny that you comment it, but as an autistic person I am yet to receive half the hatred from "alt-right chuds" than I receive from the dirtbag left calling me a failed abortion, a 'sperging reactionary nerd', a sociopath or whatsoever.
To give a little bit of credit to themotte, this particular piece of
garbage at least has managed to get a negative score, even if only
barely, so I’m not gonna count it against the place as a whole.
Though on the flipside, it’s kind of alarming that among all the
posts that find their way here, this manages to be a noteworthy
occasion. Like when I saw that one about impregnating teenage girls at
double digit positive I didn’t even bat an eye because of course it
would get upvoted why would I expect anything else.
And in other cases, “centrism” just means “right winger who doesn’t want to deal with the cultural and political baggage of the right but still wants to advocate for the same stuff they believe in”. Notice the clever sleight of hand here where the author conflates progressivism (eg the entire left of the political spectrum) to murderous extremism.
He appears to be criticizing “both sides” but if you look closely he is writing off the entire left and only the most extreme right, but carving out a space for regular conservatism that doesn’t reach the level of genocidal fascism.
Ah yes, the reason leftists hate Peterson is because he…opposes genocide?
what
quick maffs
the post just kept getting worse and worse the longer i read it
Oh that’s actually a quote
/r/dirtbagcenter
To give a little bit of credit to themotte, this particular piece of garbage at least has managed to get a negative score, even if only barely, so I’m not gonna count it against the place as a whole.
Though on the flipside, it’s kind of alarming that among all the posts that find their way here, this manages to be a noteworthy occasion. Like when I saw that one about impregnating teenage girls at double digit positive I didn’t even bat an eye because of course it would get upvoted why would I expect anything else.
The centrist
It’s the height of arrogance for that person to think anyone’s going to waste a good several minutes of their time reading all that garbage.
Ah yeah. Saying “kill all white men” is somehow a pro-genocide platform, I see.
Belatedly I realize that for some people, “centrist” means someone who’s opposed to any kind of change whether it’s rightward or leftward.