Counter-Currents
Jordan Peterson’s Rejection of Identity Politics Allows White Ethnocide
Ricardo Duchesne1,298 words
Jordan Peterson’s rejection of identity politics makes no sense in the face of an establishment from left to right committed to the diversification of all Western nations through relentless immigration, which is fast reducing Whites to a minority, and is premised on the prohibition of White identity, while encouraging the inherently collectivist identities of non-Whites.
Peterson often says he is a “classical liberal” or a “libertarian” in response to charges that he is an Alt-Righter because he dismisses the claim that there is “White privilege.” He insists both leftists and Alt-Righters are into identity politics, the prioritization of group differences over individual choice and character. He values the Western ideal that the rights of an individual should not be determined by membership in a racial or a sexual group.
Peterson is a mainstream conservative inside an academic sea where only leftists are welcomed to navigate. He appears to be Alt-Right because he condemns the way our universities have been taken over by academics who sacrifice the peculiarities of individual identities with their relentless overtures to minority racial groups, Muslims, and LGBT people.
This attack on postmodernist identity politics is all good. The problem is that a politics of individualism in our current age of mass immigration and multicultural identities is fatal to White individuals. Europeans were uniquely responsible for a politics of individual rights, and this libertarian way of thinking worked as long as European nations were not open to millions of immigrants coming from inherently collectivist cultures. Europeans were classically liberal only under the taken-for-granted assumption that their nations were actually created and inhabited by a people with a strong ethnic identity, strong traditional customs, and ancestries. No nation was ever created by abstract individuals without ethno-national identities and a strong sense of who belongs and who does not, friends and enemies.
Western nations were unique in successfully combining individual rights with a strong ethnic identity, as was evident in their immigration restrictions before the 1960s. Minority rights for historical minorities is consistent with ethnic liberal nationalism. What is not consistent with liberal rights is the mandate that all Western nations must grant citizenship rights to millions of alien immigrants.
The libertarianism Peterson is defending is hardly “classical”; it is really a cultural Marxist version concocted by the same leftist academics he despises. John Locke (1632-1704) took for granted the fact that the “liberties” he valued were meant for “British” individuals rather than for hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming from vastly different collective cultures.
The difference Peterson draws between males and females inescapably separates individuals into distinctly identifiable sexual groups. He is saying that individuals are more than abstract beings with “classical” rights since they are also members of sexual groups. While he is not calling for special rights for any one group, he is identifying and judging individuals in terms of their membership in clearly demarcated biological groups. And he believes that this membership plays an important role in the career paths and outcomes of particular men and women. The Alt-Right accepts this view. This is not a dangerously controversial view outside academia and some media outlets.
It is not that one side is into identity politics and another is not. Insomuch as leftists say that males and females are really equal, they are saying that males and females are just individuals. The difference is that for the left the playing field in the West still favours males, and for this reason leftists insist that we must play identity politics. While leftists are always finding new victims, in principle their identity politics is meant to be temporary. They want a future individualistic world in which social conditions allow for the development of the full potentialities of all individuals regardless of race and sex.
Leftists believe that male-female identities are far more fluid than “biological determinists” would have it. They say there are many other identities besides heterosexuality, and that individuals should have a right to decide which differences they prefer to be identified with, rather than being boxed into a male-female “binary.” They emphasize the ways in which individuals can “socially construct” their identity. The male-female binary is itself a social construct, an imprisoning construct imposed by males. While postmodernists sometimes say that these multiple sexual differences have a bio-psychological basis, “I was born gay,” they like to stress individual choice, and the possibility of changing one’s identity in the course of one’s life, or living out multiple identities. They want political changes that will give all individuals room for full expression of their individual identities.
The same logic applies to the way postmodernists use racial categories. They don’t believe in races. They believe that in our current society minorities are “racialized” by dominant Whites, and that overcoming this racial hierarchy necessitates race identity politics. Their aim is to transcend altogether any form of racial identity for the sake of a society in which everyone is judged as an individual.
The same goes for classical Marxists. They speak of class identities in light of their understanding that capitalism with its individual rights is a system that groups individuals into unequal classes. To create a society of real individual merit, they insist, we need to get rid of class structures. Marx abhorred the grouping of individuals into classes. The history of classes was a history of exploitation. He wanted a society that would live up to the principles of the liberal Enlightenment. He wanted “the genuine and free development of individuals.”
On the other hand, the identity politics implicit in Peterson’s distinction between the sexes is naturally-based and is thus meant to be permanent. He is locked inside a battle for individualism he cannot possibly win. It does not matter how many times Peterson says he is not into identity politics, against preferential treatment for any one group, human beings are naturally and historically divided into sexual and ethno-national groups. These natural inclinations are gaining traction and will intensify as feminists and diversity trainees carry on their war against males and Whites. You can’t fight a system that emboldens multiple identities by asking males and Whites to behave as individuals. This is unilateral disarmament.
The only way the identity politics of the left can be effectively challenged is with an identity politics that recognizes the biological grounding of humans as well as the kinship-based identities of nations. The identity politics of the left, based on double standards about the biology of homosexuality and the purely socially constructed identity of males, must be challenged by the very identities that are under attack in the leftist effort to promote the proliferation of identities based on individual whim in a borderless world.
The claim that the left and the Alt-Right play the “same identity politics” but from opposite ends is extremely misleading. Alt- Righters recognize there is a spectrum, a certain “fluidity” between races and sexes. But they disagree with postmodernists in believing that this fluidity does not invalidate clearly demarcated identities. The postmodernist focuses on multiple differences without a proper sense of which differences amount to substantive distinctions. The Alt-Right focuses on primordial and millennial differences, and accepts the political dynamics that follow from these differences. The Alt-Right does not deny the crucial role of constructing-socializing natural identities and improving national cultures. Traditional conservatives have always emphasized socialization, except that they work on bringing out the full potential of what nature has given us rather than socializing nature out of existence.
Emphasizing a pure individualist politics is excusable only temporarily for reasons of expediency, but not in the long term at the cost of violating obvious truths.
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17 comments
This is really all that needs to be said of Jordan “I can’t do it” Peterson.
Jordan Peterson is yet another ‘alt-lite money-making e-celebrity’ who has emerged in the wake of the trumpian, anti-establishment, and mostly online, rebellion. They are a species in themselves : all safely within the boundaries of the liberal consensus of the ruling class (all classical-liberal), all oriented toward creating YouTube materials and thus making money by lampooning the SJW phenomenon, and all avoiding as plague the alt-right/white-nationalism/ ideas.
They are useful for preserving the consensus, that’s why they are invited to speak, though the Left-liberals are so crazy and poorly-educated nowadays that sometimes it attacks them viciously as well, as if they were ‘alt-right’.
On the other hand, many people arrived/shifted to the alt-right positions after fist passing through a Ron Paul (libertarian, classical-liberal) phase and gradually understanding that it is not working. It seems that all young people interested in politics have to go through such period when their discontent with the present system seem to find its solution in Right-liberalism and its critique of the culturally dominant Left-liberalism. Only after some struggles one understands that individualism and liberalism itself is the problem, and that the Left uses the identity politics of the minorities in order to organize them politically and attack the potential/virtual (and the only really dangerous for the system) group identity the white majority.
Maybe alt-right should increase its ‘critical-output’ on subjects as individualism and laissez-faire economics (which is the underpinning ideology of Right-liberalism). It should produce more material on these subjects in order to help the Peterson-like groupies to undergo this transition form libertarianism to white nationalism. It seems to me that the alt-right avoids economics in order to focus on culture, and neglects of how much of culture and politics is a consequence of economic interests.
There are a lot of them out there. And they could do far worse than Jordan Peterson.
“Conservatives have always emphasized socialization, except that they work on bringing out the full potential of what nature has given us rather than socializing nature out of existence.”
Nicely put.
Jordan Peterson also has the ridiculous habit of bursting into tears during his talks.
He clearly has unresolved issues with the mother figure.
Vlad the Impaler would be a more useful role model for today’s dire situation.
The divide on the question of identity politics can be clearly understood if we replace the labels Left and Right with Cosmopolitan Globalist and Communitarian Nationalist. Not quite as snappy, I’ll grant, but perhaps more accurate.
Consider. Cosmopolitan globalists are defined by their rejection of the organic nation as a legitimate unit of shared identity. Their objections vary depending on whether they lean libertarian or socialist on questions of personal freedom and the role of the state. CG socialists believe in the sanctity of individual identity, expressed in any number of racial, gender, sexual preference or other personal identity combinations, often laced with minority grievance issues. CG libertarians believe in the sanctity of individual identity, expressed through personal choice as a rational economic actor in the market (sorry, The Market). Their differences are those of emphasis and focus, but not of fundamental assumptions about identity.
Communitarian Nationalists (CN) on the other hand do not value individual identity over biologically defined group identities like our nationality or gender. We like identity politics – so long as it’s shared identity we’re talking about. We may still differ on questions of individual liberty or the role of the state along the old left/right divide, but we agree that the fundamental basis of society is shared genetics, history and culture. Nationality, in other words.
As the question of identity assumes greater importance in the politics of the coming years and decades, recognising those with the same underlying assumptions will be important.
For nationalists, this may mean focusing on uniting those with a communitarian national outlook regardless of their position on economic or state power issues.
Another idiot libertarian. They ought to try out for the Darwin Awards.
Wake up Jordan. The inconsistency and refusal to debate ethno nationalists while debating anyone else says a lot about the hypocrisy.
The West, including Canada and America, is not and never was intended to be, a place for “all races and nations”. To claim that it is, or was, is a direct attack on the identity, legitimacy, and existence of the Western people.
Pepe Schools Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Utpk_RyKlU
Jordan Peterson needs more Red Pills. He may not want to take them, because it would marginalize him and his popularity would plummet. He doesn’t seem to see the big picture. He still believes in racial egalitarianism–or he’s afraid to talk about racial differences because it would turn off a lot of his followers. He doesn’t see that his, and our (European ) way of life will end if whites become a minority and don’t stand up and fight against those who would destroy them.
BTW, Greg–I also reject ‘ Fascist and National Socialist party politics, totalitarianism, terrorism, imperialism, and genocide’ ; however, I think we’ve passed the point where violence can be avoided. Small groups in remote rural areas, well armed, may be the only places where white people will survive. See what’s happening in South Africa. Take a look at Simon Roche’s interview with Stefan Molyneux–civil war and possible genocide appears imminent there, and S.A. is the ‘canary in the coal mine’ so to speak. He uses the analogy of a python slowly, ‘silkily’ slithering into a sleeping camper’s sleeping bag, and coiling around him. By the time the camper awakens, all the python has to do is clamp down and suffocate the camper. If enough of us don’t wake up in time, this is exactly what will happen.
JBP understandably doesn’t want to “go there” but there is zero chance he does not understand the “alt right” or the broader white nationalism.
His hesitance comes primarily from the practical consequences to his position if he were to move any closer to us.
For our part, where he is at he is wrecking the Enemy, so why would hassling him be on our to do list? This strategy of attacking the nearest neighbors on the ideological spectrum is a proven failure – just stop.
Secondarily, but not insignificantly, he rejects the hooliganism and lack of boundaries displayed by the alt right (as would any thinking person).
Thirdly, he rejects the amorphous solutions of the alt right and is unwilling to write a blank check to people who have not only not earned any trust, but have actually earned distrust.
This is a killer problem for the movement, a poorly articulated path to a poorly articulated end state, with many ideological riders trying to leverage the fight against white genocide for other pet projects. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
I see JBP as the emerging New Center, that’s great for us! Let us focus on our weak points and try to get the ethnostate on a reasonable time table.
Jordan Peterson takes Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), which, in my opinion, is an important factor to consider when analyzing his personality and his worldview and philosophy:
Jordan Peterson: “I take antidepressants”
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x35Rbe81vkU
Jordan Peterson STILL takes antidepressants in 2018
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvWKYGKh-Yg
Here highly interesting research on why taking SSRIs likely does more harm than good:
The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734449/
Anti-depressants likely do more harm than good, researchers find
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqCygE0jwgg
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – it’s just that some things kill you
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqCygE0jwgg
I have done extensive research into this subject matter, and there is actually research that has found that higher serotonin levels (which SSRIs cause, and which naturally/genetically are more prevalent in Asians and Africans than in Europeans, due to the higher frequency of the low-activity MAOA allele in those populations) make a person less “utilitarian” and more “deontological”:
” We found that the SSRI influenced people’s moral judgments. On placebo, subjects were less likely to endorse personal harms, relative to impersonal ones, just as other studies have shown. When we enhanced serotonin function with an SSRI, this difference became even more pronounced: the SSRI made people significantly less likely to say it is morally acceptable to kill one person to save many others, especially in those emotionally salient personal scenarios. In other words, the drug made people less utilitarian.2
Pause for a moment and consider that the debate between utilitarians and deontologists has been raging for hundreds of years. Yet we were able to shift people’s judgments, from more utilitarian to more deontological, by manipulating their brain chemistry. Could the difference between Hume and Kant boil down to a few chemicals in their brains? And what implications might this have for other ethical questions?”
– https://thinkneuroscience.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/can-pills-change-our-morals/ Archived version: http://archive.is/LGNhw
Apologies, I linked to the wrong video, here the correct link:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – it’s just that some things kill you
Correct video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unx4PNPieic
“There is also concern that antidepressant medications are not as safe or effective as is commonly believed. In this talk, Dr. Paul Andrews shows how evolutionary theory is crucial to resolving these significant public health issues, demonstrating many of the points with research that his lab has conducted on depression over the last several years.
[…]
Recorded at McMaster University on January 22, 2016 as part of the Discover Psychology lecture series.”
You put a lot of effort into your comment based on the silly idea that I provide a platform for the likes of you. I have deleted your post and banned you from further commenting. — Greg Johnson
“Alt- Righters recognize there is a spectrum, a certain “fluidity” between races and sexes. But they disagree with postmodernists in believing that this fluidity does not invalidate clearly demarcated identities.”
This is exactly what I think on the subject. Gender is like darts thrown at a dart board. Not all of them hit the bull’s eye, but they all only matter so far as they get there. The way to think about gender is complicated, however. Who is the most male male? The guy who has the most children, grandchildren, or the guy who ensures his population balance of genes increases by getting people from his gene pool to have babies and not miscegenate? Regardless, it’s an important concept.
Research on the platypus genome suggests the X-Y chromosome is up to 166 million years old, and that is a relevant appeal to tradition because it’s hard-wired in who we are. Also, “[i]n the eukaryotic fossil record, sexual reproduction first appeared by 1.2 billion years ago.” Counting it out is crazy because it is built into who we are at a very foundational level. When they can modify themselves genetically then it will make sense. Until then it is hormonal window dressing. If you’ve ever talked to someone who has “transitioned,” someone who you knew beforehand, I swear they become more like the gender they used to be as the conversation goes on. Again, it’s window dressing.
Talking about gender without talking about procreation is like seeing a boat on the river and not caring where it came from or where it is going. Gender came from somewhere, and it is going somewhere too, but these things happen slowly on the generational level, that is, without genetic engineering.
If you believe in race, you’ve got to believe in gender because Jack Donovan has a point that genetically and phenotypically, the races are closer than the genders, but the point he misses is that men and women are necessary for survival of the people (sans genetic engineering) and therefore gender is a sunk cost of being human, but racial difference isn’t because the races don’t need to be around each other to survive.
I would argue that Peterson is good for white nationalists because he unwittingly makes a great argument for separation between African Americans and whites. He says a person with an IQ below 87 cannot be employed in the modern world and says economic inequality breeds crime. Well, blacks’ average IQ is 85, so most cannot hold jobs according to Peterson, and because of this, they’ll be poor, angry, and crime-prone. This is why, it seems to me, that despite having slightly higher IQ than their full-blooded African cousins, they commit more crimes of impulse. They have the impulses partly because they know they’re poor and low status and want to get out of it. The trouble is their IQ won’t let them.
Take East Asians. Half of all East Asian women in America say they don’t want Asian men. Although Asian men may earn slightly more than white men in the US, they might as well earn as much as black guys. Was it any coincidence that Elliot Rodger was half Asian? How many young Asian guys are miserable in America when if they were in an all Asian nation, they’d be happily married? Any East Asian family with a son who moves to America is doing their son a disservice.
Status is linked to number of friends since millionaires have more friends than poor people, but diversity reduces our number of friends via the bowling alone effect Putnam discovered, so in a sense it makes us all more low status and as such unhappy.
Peterson doesn’t make the right conclusions, but he tells you what you need to know to do so.
Poor Jordan is in bad shape. He was sickly in various ways; went on an all-beef-diet, which helped some of his symptoms; had bad anxiety; took strong anti-anxiety drug; wife has cancer; Jordan got toxic from the drug; went to Russia for properly-done emergency detox. And now, thank the Lord Himself, he’s “smiling again”.
In any case, I hope he remembered to make his bed this morning.
https://sputniknews.com/russia/202002081078259858-jordan-peterson-goes-to-russia-for-emergency-treatment-after-4-weeks-in-icu-daughter-says/
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