Doctors, psychotherapists, liars and butchers

[beastlyslumber]

This is really pretty good.

I'm no fan of JP but this is very good. Disappointed he likens trans indoctrination to Marxist indoctrination. It just clouds the issue. This is not about a Marxist mindset, its about a totalitarian mindset (yes there have been Marxist regimes with a totalitarian mindset but such a mindset is found all along the political spectrum)

Slightly OT but this interview with Giles Udy was interesting about the history of the overlap of Communism and Labour in the UK. (I'm overlooking the UK and North America difference of left and right politics.)

I've heard Peterson say that himself about totalitarianism many times - I suspect he intends it here to be about something a bit different. He tends to see identity politics as being largely the invention of marxists who were disappointed with the political failure of class based marxism in the 20th century, who then adapted the structures to talk about identity charachteristics rather than class relations. So it may be that he sees gender ideology as a form of that.

I recently met a mental health care worker who works with trans people (transsexuals by the old fashioned term, but needed here for clarity). He had stopped all work with under 18s because he was so disgusted by what he was seeing. And his approach with adults wanting surgery was that it's absolutely possible - and it was his job to support them through it - but he still advocated a slowly slowly approach, because the ramifications even for adults are immense.

Peterson has been under the most enormous attacks for what he says. I haven't followed enough of him to know what exactly makes him so mistrusted and his opinions so easily discarded. This piece, especially voiced by him, should be played on every undergrad psychology degree. Especially as some are quite happy to offer opinions in direct contradiction to this. Somehow I doubt any psychology student will come across this in any academic capacity.

Continuing OT... That is my favourite Triggernometry interview ever, the book is well worth a read.

Thanks for this - will check it out.

Only slightly on topic but I never knew until recently that Marx was such a fucking racist! They keep that quiet, don't they?

He tends to see identity politics as being largely the invention of marxists who were disappointed with the political failure of class based marxism in the 20th century, who then adapted the structures to talk about identity charachteristics rather than class relations. So it may be that he sees gender ideology as a form of that.

I think that's pretty much the analysis offered by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose in Cynical Theories. They trace the origins of identity politics back through the universities and it does basically wind up there. Plus a lot of the ideologists are very open and explicit about the marxist origins of their politics. Although they never seem to mention what a virulent racist Marx was... funny, that.

Thanks for that second video - it was really interesting and I've asked for the book at the library.

But what strikes me is how closely what he is describing morrors what has gone on with gender ideology. You have these people on the political left, who are wedded to an ideology and to a vision they have of the utopia that will come if only this ideology is instantiated. So they can justify all kinds of horrors. The element of deliberate denial of evidence when it doesn't fit the narrative, and the fear that it undermines the project, is really notable.

And it also seems to speak to some of the discussions that go around in circles where some people just can't understand why some others, even if they like some Labour policies, just don't feel comfortable with Labour over all. I think it's this tendency to adopt over-riding ideologies that many people distrust.

I read quite a reasonable article by him on this issue in the Telegraph the other day; but I don’t trust all of his opinions. I don’t think he’s at all right about Marxism (or most likely he simply doesn’t really understand Marxism): actual Marxist theory tends towards the complete opposite of contemporary identity politics, and critiques both that and postmodernism. (Both he and Pluckrose/Lindsay also don’t seem to understand the difference between postmodernism as a cultural form; and postmodernist theory, a large part of which is actually a critique of postmodernism/anti-postmodernism).

If anything, contemporary identity politics is most closely related to and comes directly out of a specific trend in US civil rights/gay rights discourse which was always really rather opposed to Marxism (Marxism in the US ran instead through lesbian and second wave feminism, which was the forerunner of radical feminism, but was pushed aside by the rise of identity politics).

Identity politics in its current Americanised form actually has a great deal in common with US right-wing individualism (and is thoroughly rooted in late capitalism); it’s a shame that Petersen can’t see that — it’s pretty lazy of him to resort to tired American tropes about the Marxist left. (The left in America hasn’t been anything remotely like a sniff of Marxist for at least half a century. It’s as thoroughly late-capitalist as he is himself.) And he also has some rather jumbled and quasi-nineteenth century ideas about myth and the psyche and so on: he might be spot on about aspects of gender ideology, but there’s a fair amount he doesn’t have a handle on or gets arse about face. But no matter - it should be fine to have opinions on things; I don’t go in for cancellation of any kind!

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus and @beastlyslumber Those spinning Marx as a virulent racist have an agenda and grossly take comments out of context or overstate them. For a rebuttal check out this article by Ben Burgis, a philosophy professor at Morehouse College, and the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters

No, Karl Marx Wasn’t a Hideous Racist by Ben Burgis

jacobin.com/2022/05/marx-race-antisemitism-history-andrew-sullivan-enlightenment

I think we can all agree that if major multinational corporations are pushing Gender Identity and waving the trans flag etc its really not about challenging the economic system in any meaningful way. So it may have originated in Marxism but now it has been highly monetized and made into a faux Civil rights issue to distract from massive economic inequality that had developed especially since the crash of 2008 in the West.

Its sinister how tech and pharmacy companies are very keen to wipe out biological definitions and biological relationships such as woman and mother. Its easy to see where that takes us.

I saw something Peterson did recently actually where he was talking about the various roles postmodernism has played and how it plays into current discourse, and he certainly wan't entirely negative or reductive (given the context) - I'm not sure you're giving him enough credit on that front, nightwalkingmoon.

His book (can't recall the name now) is rather deeply sexist and patriarchal. That's all I know about his work.

Stephen Hicks is a scholar of postmodernism and has done some long-form interviews and lectures that are available to watch free on YouTube.

His theory is more-or-less that PoMo and its close cousin IdPol are the left's reaction to the many repeated and seemingly unavoidable catastrophic and mass-murderous failures that arise from attempts at communism (including Marxism), socialism and anarchism.

It's a rhetorical strategy that attempts to reframe truth as a purely subjective concept, because those people (be it Marxists or IdPol acolytes) believe that rhetoric is king and that everything (literally everything) is socially constructed. They believe that when the current system collapses (whether they view it through an economic or social lens) a communistic, equitable utopia will spontaneously appear.

This is why they constantly try to tear everything down, why they are no good at building anything to go in its place, and why they are so impervious to strong evidence. It fills a religion-shaped hole, but I suspect it will be forced through a reformation soon enough.

Which parts did you think were sexist and patriarchal?

The parts which combed through Biblical stories were rather openly anti-women, and a later chapter on sex differences in education. I can dig out my notes if you are interested in more detail.
Also, the interview he did on British television gave inaccurate data and theories about why so few women are in top decision-making roles in the UK.
My impression is that he's one of the gender critical people who is certainly not a feminist but rather a believer in traditionally ordered sex-based hierarchies.

Well, Marxists certainly don’t believe that rhetoric is king - rather the complete reverse!

When you say “PoMo” what is it that you’re talking about? The trouble with these claims is that many theorists of the postmodern argue that postmodernism is not a position, but a state of late capitalism or a stage of history. They are largely critical of this - and precisely through a cultural-materialist or Marxist lens (eg coming out of Frankfurt School Marxism, which is highly critical of the nihilism inherent in society’s move towards postmodernism).

Marxists view postmodernism as a catastrophic stage of late capitalism, where we internalise the nihilism of capitalism to a degree that it is impossible properly to understand our own alienation.

The classic poststructuralist theorists of the postmodern were also deeply critical of it as a negative cultural force - they were diagnostic of it rather than approving of it (eg in Lyotard’s foundational The Postmodern Condition). They also saw postmodernism not as a belief you can adopt; but a malaise, a stage in cultural history with malign consequences.

So I’m interested in the reduction of these positions - often extremely nuanced and historical - to “PoMo” — because one of the other things about the postmodern is that it has a huge range of meanings (postmodernism in architecture means something completely different to in literature or in intellectual history, for example). It’s a term with a big range of histories and sometimes contradictory definitions, so it would be helpful to specify what it means in this context, because it’s widely thrown around without much clarification - often caricatured and lots of times inaccurately so.

Also Stephen Hicks, if he’s the person I’m thinking of, is notoriously reductive and inaccurate in terms of what he calls postmodernism - lumping in to his book all sorts of figures who weren’t postmodernists at all; and notoriously misreading a lot of the crucial texts. It’s polemic rather than actual intellectual history scholarship.

Which book? I've only read 12 Rules for Life, which is like a self-help book. It's excellent and genuinely helpful. It's not sexist or patriarchal.

I haven't read his other books, though. I've seen quite a few of his podcasts, and find him a very interesting and insightful speaker. He is definitely a bit of an odd character, but not in a nasty or sleazy way. He's very upright!

Sorry, but you can read what Marx said and decide for yourself. The article that Burgis is critiquing is actually very good and contains some direct quotes. andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-will-they-cancel-karl-marx-55c?s=w

I first heard about Marx's racism from Douglas Murray, a man who is very seriously committed to research and fairness. He doesn't make stuff up.

Marxists view postmodernism as a catastrophic stage of late capitalism, where we internalise the nihilism of capitalism to a degree that it is impossible properly to understand our own alienation.

Have you read Thomas De Zengotitta's (sp?) book 'Mediated'? I think this is an excellent critique of what's happening to our society. To be fair, I don't think 'Marxists' all agree - there have always been variations and divergences among those who call themselves Marxist. The US writers use 'Marxism' to mean a specific kind of intellectual tradition that was developed in the 60s and 70s towards identity politics. This was developed by Marxists who identified themselves as such, so it's not like they're wrong. But there are other self-identified Marxists who claim different intellectual precedents. Marxists argue over Marx, of course. They also tend to deny any negative consequences from the regimes inspired by Marx et al.

Thanks for that second video - it was really interesting and I've asked for the book at the library.

Like @FOJN it's the interview that has stayed with me since seeing it. The book is in my 'to be read' pile and I hope that we have an opportunity to discuss it on a thread at some point.

I'm still turning over a lot in my mind since that interview. And I've acquired more related material to read in this thread ( 😱).

Woah that Giles Udy interview is incredibly interesting and so sad. It's unbelievable that people still call themselves communists and marxists - to me it sounds just like it would if they were calling themselves fascists. It's amazing that anyone would want to associate themselves with such horrors.

The book I meant is that one.

Its basic framing is between struggle and chaos, and Peterson names chaos as the eternally feminine and order as the eternally masculine, and then mines various religions for support of that while mostly erasing the female goddesses and ideas which don't fit into that framework.

Although he wants us to tiptoe along the borderline of order and chaos, it is very clear that he also believes the old Western sex-based hierarchies are the correct and natural ones, i.e., men above women, and that any attempt to get rid of them results in chaos as in Mao's China.

Chapter 11 in the book is about education and the short-changing of boys in it. He asserts, in that chapter, that the reason for the rise of the far-right in Europe and the election of Donald Trump is the feminisation of the culture.

Peterson then goes on to present most of the conservative arguments about why having so many women in higher education is, in fact, bad for women, mostly based on the argument that women with higher education levels will not find a man to marry or if they do, the marriage will be unhappy. Data on that shows pretty much the opposite, i.e., women with university education, at least in the US, are more likely to be married and to stay married than women with much less education.

He also presents a novel theory about why adolescent males might not want to go to college:

He believes that any 'game' in which boys play against girls or men against women cannot be won by the boys or men, so they will refuse to play that game. According to him, if girls win in such a game, they are praised, and if they lose, that is seen as understandable, while if boys win in such a game this is not seen as OK and for him to lose is even less OK.

And that's why adolescent boys won't go to college if college is viewed as a girls' intellectual game, says Petersen.

But this whole theory is based on the assumed inferiority of women and girls, to begin with! That is the reason why boys or men winning is deemed as not really winning, and that is the reason why boys or men losing is seen as particularly bad.

And so on.

I find him an interesting writer in places, perhaps too pessimistic and dark in some ways, and but I also find him rather clearly opposed to feminism of any kind.