Jordan Peterson upsets academia. Their determination to ‘shut him up’ has little to do with arguments about free speech and everything to do with the fragility of left-wing dogma.

It’s the reason his detractors picket university talks and mumble nonsense along the lines of, ‘I’m in favour of free speech but not speech that causes “harm”…’ In this Utopia of moderated dialogue, ‘harm’ is deliberately left open to interpretation.

To the climate zealot, ‘harm’ could be a few quips comparing wind turbines to bird-murdering machetes. If your religion falls under the thousand genders of fluid identity, a lecture in biology may resemble a crucible of violence.

Peterson’s frequent criticism of climate ideology, transgender politics, and the Canadian government has been ruthless. Deservedly so. This doesn’t sit well with social media policies related to his standing as a clinical psychologist where his comments have attracted a number of complaints.

Throughout subsequent legal proceedings, Peterson has maintained the argument that his social media commentary exists separate from his profession, but it was decided that his profession is regulated and contains obligations and rules governed by a regulatory body that ‘may limit freedom of expression’. According the CBC, ‘The college’s ethics code requires members to use respectful language and not engage in “unjust discrimination”.’

Peterson is not the sort of person you can throw a censorial spear at and hope he’ll stay on the ground, bleeding out in a puddle of self-pity. He is a battle-hardened social commentator who has run out of patience. Importantly for the future of this conversation, he is also shielded by the armour of independent wealth.

When I think of Peterson, I remember his 2016 speech held on the grounds of the University of Toronto. He appeared furious at the behaviour of students cosplaying Maoist-style censorship. These teenagers were supportive of Bill C-16 which effectively compels the citizens of Canada to uphold the scientifically illiterate politics of gendered pronouns.

To be clear, we live in a world where political leaders instruct us to ‘trust the science’ and then reserve the right to redefine science to suit feelings in defiance of reality. Or put more simply, ‘trust the dogma’.

‘Free speech is the mechanism by which we keep our society functioning,’ bellowed Peterson, at the rally. ‘The consequence of free speech is the ability to speak so people can put their finger on problems, articulate what those problems are, solve them, and come to a consensus! And we risk losing that!’

Peterson went on, rising in volume and fury as the students appeared to beg the government to silence freedom of expression. They are examples of history’s useless idiots cheering on the iron fist in the mistaken hope it will only smash their ideological opposition.

The line that caught me was this:

‘I know where that leads. I’ve studied totalitarianism for four decades and I know how that starts.’

It was the battle cry of someone acquainted with history. He had a devastated look in his eyes. Exasperation. Peterson was someone tired of the wheel cycling human idiocy back on itself, caked in the muck of failed sadistic empires.

This was eight years ago. Peterson gave his speech surrounded by morons shouting, ‘Shame!’ and someone with a loudspeaker drowning out his words with static. Their childish behaviour suited their childish beliefs.

If there is one lesson to take from the aching bookshelves of humanity, it’s that we learn every lesson the hard way and then promptly forget those lessons. We do not have to burn books to destroy history. In the modern world, we simply fail to read them. It is a species of silence measured in dust.

While history is dog-eared by terrifying dictators, our era is governed by what Peterson refers to as ‘petty tyrants’.

Writing in the National Post a few days ago, his article Bureaucrats will rue the day they tried to shut me up screeches from the page as a declaration of war.

It was penned after his peers labelled him ‘a disgrace’ to the profession.

‘I was therefore sentenced by that board, the Ontario College of Psychologists, to a bout of mandatory re-education, of indeterminate duration, at my expense, with my learning not evaluated by any standard method but subject to the opinion of those charged with, profiting by and exploiting my forced studentship. I took those decision-makers to court, and lost. The decision of the Ontario College of Psychologists was upheld. I then appealed, to a higher a court. On January 16, 2024, that appeal was rejected. There were no reasons provided.’

This situation is not unique to Peterson.

How many ordinary workers have been subjected to ‘re-education’ courses to indoctrinate them into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines on ‘correct speech’ and political opinions? How many companies force staff to insert ‘pronouns’ and nonsense statements in their email tags – or openly employ bigoted hiring practices to fit the ‘equity’ standard of ‘positive’ discrimination?

Peterson is the man who said no.

His article wrestles with the choices available to him within the current legal environment. There are not many. He can comply or, as he colourfully puts it:

‘Alternatively, I can tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else.’

The obvious consequence of this choice would be the loss of his licence.

More broadly, when the collective Left insists ‘speech should not be free of consequences…’ they do not mean libel cases or incitement to violence. They mean that if you speak against the accepted political religion, they retain the right to invoke communist-era tactics. If they cannot erase the person, they can devalue their speech by deconstructing the speaker’s character. Even towering figures traditionally of the Left have had their awards stripped by institutions annoyed by ‘controversial’ comments.

‘Speech is literally violence’ is another phrase normalised by the university class to explain their otherwise deranged behaviour of sobbing and screaming at speakers on the other side of the political fence. It allows them to argue that a refusal to engage in pronoun tango is ‘violence’ instead of a difference in opinion. There are plenty of ‘serious’ articles in ‘respected’ journals that argue the line ‘gender critical speech is hate speech’, or at the very least they are happy to imply it. Is it ‘hateful’ to state the biological reality that human beings cannot change sex? If facts are hateful, science becomes shackled to political correctness as it was formally bound by the limitations of religious faith. An exchange of prison cells, but a jail nonetheless.

Unlike Peterson, I live in a country where I can ask questions such as: ‘If gender is a social construct, why does surgery “affirm” it?’ Although I do not live in a country where I can refer to someone’s correct biological gender in a print publication without some random state nanny coming at me with zip ties and duct tape. Australia is on the slope toward Canada, of that there is no doubt.

Peterson says he is in a position to tell the College to ‘do your worst’ but others are not. A generation of academics have their thoughts held to ransom by an invisible framework of political offence.

‘Canadians, mark my words: Your much-vaunted Charter of Rights isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.’

As for Australia, we don’t have the flimsy protection of a bit of paper. Our system of liberty is based on … the goodwill of politicians.

Covid showed the world that the law is ‘whatever it needs to be’ to serve the political needs of the day. Privacy, liberty, speech, employment protections – these are subservient to the ‘greater good’ and urgency of lumbering apocalypses which switch due dates like hermit crabs trade shells.

The danger for the Left is that Peterson will accept their terms and document his ‘re-education’. Such an act will not change his mind, but it may change the mind of the nation about Woke politics.

‘I’ll play along,’ he says, ‘find out exactly what you will do, now that you’ve been emboldened to do whatever it is that the darkest resentful demons lurking in your evil little low-level administrative hearts most truly desire, even to your own detriment. I’ll see how burdensome playing your pathetic game becomes, and I will publicise every single bit of it.’

Peterson is a patient man who seems capable of enduring these tasks knowing he’ll have enough fresh material for his next year or inconvenient political speech.

‘You have won the battle, minions of the deep state, faceless-for-now but not for long bureaucrat-authoritarians, but you haven’t won the war.’

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Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.

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