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12 Rules for Hating Jordan Peterson

Ayodeji Awosika
14 min readNov 30, 2020

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Some employees at Random House Publishing asked the company not to publish Jordan Peterson’s new book. Apparently, several employees broke down crying.

One employee had this to say about Peterson:

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him.”

I’m tired of this. Whatever this is.

I’ve stood on the sidelines and watched this culture war brew. I’m done. You guys want to talk about this stuff? Fine, let’s talk about it.

But I’m going, to tell the truth, as I see it.

Jordan Peterson was, for a time, the central figure and lightning rod in this culture war. The irony of it all?

His ideas aren’t radical at all. That’s the state of society right now. Basic personal responsibility is now counter-culture.

It’s ridiculous. I’m done with it.

I’ve studied a lot of Peterson’s work. More than any of those Random House employees at least.

Today, I’m going to try to analyze why people seem to hate him so much. I’ll use the same format as his mega-best-selling book.

Without further ado, I present 12 Rules for Hating Jordan Peterson.

Rule 1 — Mischaracterize Everything He Says

Peterson hit the crescendo of his career during the now-infamous interview with British reporter Cathy Newman. Instead of letting Peterson share his views and engage in a good-faith debate, she literally mischaracterized everything he said.

He’d make a statement. Then she would say, “So you’re saying that” and then replace what he said with a statement of her own to make him come across as a misogynist, racist, bigoted, or mean.

There was an amazing exchange in the interview where Jordan used Newman’s own logic to defend his stances:

Newman: Let me move on to another debate that’s been very controversial for you. You got in trouble…

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Ayodeji Awosika

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