Is Jordan Peterson a gateway to the alt-right or a gatekeeper?
Critics on his left say the Canadian prof is an entry point to fascism, while the far-right calls him ‘controlled opposition’
Part of Jordan Peterson’s appeal is his accessibility. Young men in search of a surrogate father are willing to shell out an average of $122 for tickets to his lectures in part because they offer an opportunity to ask him questions. But at his in-person appearances and live chats, Peterson keeps running up against a question he’d rather not answer: The Jewish Question.
At a Q&A session in New York City last year, a young guy claiming to be a “Jewish American” started off by giving the Canadian professor a copy of 200 Years Together, a book by one of Peterson’s favorites authors, the Russian anti-communist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
About 10 seconds in, it becomes clear where he’s going. He starts rattling off neo-Nazi “Judeo-Bolshevism” talking points about how Jews were overrepresented in Communist party organs, alleging that the Jews committed a genocide in Ukraine out of “ethnic hatred” against Christians.
Noticeably uncomfortable, Peterson fidgeted and started to interrupt, but then let him continue:
If Jewish individuals hated…
