“Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson in Conversation” — some comments
An excellent, measured (even subdued), 48-minute discussion.
A few quibbles, from what I recall:
Discussion of IQ tests. They (and especially Peterson, the psychologist) should have defined “intelligence” and acknowledged the pros and cons of IQ as a measure, whether it’s the only measure of intelligence we need to consider, etc. As a scientist, at least on the soft side of the sciences, Peterson should also go through videos of discussions like this (or get someone else to do it), and provide citations for some of the more fundamental scientific findings he is making reference to.
Discussion of “alt-right”. Again, definitions at the start would be helpful. No doubt the term is used in various ways, as well as simply misused, but it’s possible to summarise the main things that people mean by it. The claim they made (if I recall) that they couldn’t really think of anyone who fits in this category, could be tested. If what they meant is that the term isn’t useful, and we should stick to “left-centre-right”, then they should have said that.
Even more fundamentally, they could quickly define what they mean by “left” and “right”, and whether everyone can be usefully put into a box like that. Tangentially, Peterson did say something about looking at things in a different way, something like collectivist v individualist points of view.
Discussion of the excesses of the left. That seems to be a valid point, that if someone announced they are on the hard right or, worse, support fascism (however defined), there would be an uproar. And a fuss would also ensue in response to positions which are to the right, but not necessarily hard right. Whereas, as Murray correctly recalled, a commentator on British TV recently announced that she was a communist, i.e. hard left, and nobody batted an eyelid. Peterson scorned the fact that many academics are still Marxists. This is all in spite of the fact that the body count of communist regimes has been horrific (i.e., they said, the extreme left leads to the gulag, just as the extreme right leads to the Holocaust).
There must be some scholarly articles/books on this specific topic, but even without knowing the literature, I found Peterson & Murray’s argument disingenuous, at least in part:
- Communists did not instigate world war in quite the same way as fascists (or at least Nazis) did — okay, this may also have involved luck, and efforts to prevent the expansion of communism.
- Most of the death toll directly and indirectly caused by communist governments, I think I’m correct in saying, was against their own citizens and less well-documented, which reduces the impact on public consciousness, internationally.
- Reducing communism to the worst excesses of Stalin (for example) also ignores the fact that some people who lived in the former Soviet Union (and not just extremists) preferred things in the old days.
- Parties calling themselves “communist” have also continued to exist in numerous countries, for decades, without causing too many problems (partly due to not being popular enough to have much power).
Hence, there is some basis for paying more attention to the extremes of the right than those of the left. Peterson and Murray may have been on stronger ground if they’d acknowledged this, but argued that it has been overdone.
