Jordan Peterson: The awe-inspiring conservative counter-offensive against woke nonsense

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I have worked with people of many political stripes now in many different countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. This has provided me with the luxury of accurate comparative judgement and comparison.

Something is brewing in Canada — something of deeper than mere national significance. It’s a veritable sign of the times. Just as our nation was and so unfortunately on the cutting edge of the moralizing woke globalist eco-utopian nonsense promulgated oh-so-charismatically by the beautiful Justin Trudeau, so are we leading the charge of counter-offensive.

To put it succinctly: Canadian conservatives are growing a spine. Or a pair. Pick your metaphor.

When I first started speaking with the leaders of the conservative movement in Canada — something that happened in earnest about eight years ago, when I rose to some degree of political notoriety — I was struck by the degree to which the progressive mob had managed its task of radical demoralization. Conservatives, who tend to be conscientious, orderly, dutiful and industrious by temperament are also in consequence of that proclivity easily led to feel guilty. The woke narcissists who on the other hand make up the progressive left are characterized by an absolute lack of such conscience, but are expert at exploiting its presence in others.

What are the allegations typically levelled at conservatives — and even, increasingly, at classical liberals? “You’re racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, ageist, ableist, privileged, colonialist, exploitative.” For the bloody-minded left, life is a search for victimizer, to serve as target, and victim, to “identify with” — and for almost entirely self-serving purposes. And God help you if you are placed in the former category (are you listening, my Jewish friends?).

It’s a constant refrain, and the borders and rules shift constantly, because the point isn’t to improve the life of the so-called marginalized, but to gain the upper hand morally with no effort or sacrifice. And, if the lives of others can be ruined by unjustified and all-too-often anonymous or mob-inspired denunciation, so much the better. So say the bitter, as they forever have.

The accusing mob exploits the fact that in a civil society, unwarranted allegations are frowned upon. This has created the place of public trust upon which the stability, prosperity and safety of a polity truly depend, while simultaneously making it so that those daring to bring forth an allegation are given duly serious attention. However — and there is always a however — this enables the psychopathic.

I saw this happen at the University of Toronto, as it has at all those once-great institutions, where I once served as professor. The administration and faculty at such places bent over backward to address even the smallest complaint, on the grounds that everyone deserved to have their concerns addressed. That is all well and good, when the complainants are playing a straight game, but absolutely counterproductive, when the Machiavellian, psychopathic, narcissistic and sadistic Dark Tetrad types come crawling out of the woodwork, as they did then and most definitely and dangerously are now.

The same types came for the conservatives, even within their political parties, with the so-called social conservatives bearing most of the brunt, sent away with their tails between their legs, in shame, for their sin of abiding by the traditional dictates that have served western culture so well not only for centuries but for millennia. All the conservatives I spoke with in Canada in 2016 were afraid and for good reason that if they stuck their heads above the parapets they would be lopped off and with plenty of accompanying hacking and all the pain thereof.

The demented accusers are particularly good at, and also delight in, reputation savaging. How do conservatives respond to allegations of X-phobia, privilege and oppression? Well, such conscientious types are extremely susceptible to and even often defenceless against manipulation of the guilt to which their temperament makes them prone. So, they’re immediately back on their heels, mumbling shamefaced apology: “We’ve probably made some mistakes. We’re probably more sexist, racist, ageist, etc., etc., than we could be if we were perfect and we’ll try harder in the future. Are we good?”

This is a response pattern that can even be admirable, when your accusers are people who have been genuinely hurt by what has been truly abusive — and it’s no easy matter to separate the wheat from the chaff concerning such matters. However, it’s a seriously losing game when the psychopaths and the narcissists come out to play, as they so clearly have, occupying even the highest of ministerial positions in the land, as well as swarming online, where they can organize, even though no one can stand them long enough for such things to happen in the real world. So we had a generation or even two or three of conservatives who were positively ashamed of their old-fashioned, stodgy, un-cool, dull, traditional, oft-religious, work-hard-and-you’ll-get ahead ways.

The assault by the self-righteous lefties was so effective that the conservatives did more than retreat: they adopted the agenda of the progressives, in self-defence, justifying what they were doing by its comparatively slow pace. Long-term defeat, my conservative friends, is the most fundamental form of defeat. And you true liberals should attend to this, too: you’re no more to the radicals than useful idiots, and your usefulness is temporary, at best.

But something has changed in the last few years, and in many places, simultaneously. First, we see a worldwide phenomena, which is an increasingly conservative stance adopted by young men. This will happen among young women too, although there will be a lag, because young women need young men, and will eventually turn in their direction. This is not happening precisely because the young men are genuinely becoming more conservative, but because they are sick to the soul of the demoralization foisted on them from toddlerhood through maturity: sick of their innate play preferences being demonized (“we should socialize little boys to be more like little girls,” as the demented social and developmental psychologists have continually brayed); sick of their ambition and proclivity for competition and victory being deemed toxic; sick of being portrayed as oppressors on the political and economic front and as pillagers and rapists on the sexual and environmental side; sick of facing redistributive discrimination in the marketplace; sick of the constant accusations flung at them by the increasingly mentally-unstable radicals of the feminist left.

Young men are therefore not “more conservative” — they’re merely rediscovering a necessary and sustaining sanity, as the political landscape increasingly shifts into the demented calling-unconsciously-for-the-strong-hand-of-a-tyrant neurotic narcissistic hedonism of the radical worshippers of nature and chaos. This shift is happening in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australia/New Zealand, as well as South Korea and Japan. Conservatives could and should stand for that solidity and sanity. That’s what conservatism is for.

But something more specific and specifically political is also happening in Canada. The conservatives have rediscovered their spines! — and not just the ones that enable them to stand up straight, but the ones that make them spiky and witty and able to spar with some truly devastating confidence and humour. They appear increasingly willing to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune inevitably aimed their way when they say anything remotely conservative, having discovered that they will be pilloried no matter what they say anyway, having noted that their noisy and noxious enemies squawk and crow loudly for a moment but don’t have the discipline to keep up the show, having regained some faith in their foundational beliefs, developing some real strategic intelligence, and becoming increasingly willing to risk the adventure of the truth.

Let’s consider, first, federal Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Right Honorable Pierre Poilievre. He has brilliantly circumvented the blighted legacy media, the anachronistic conspiracy of CBC, CTV, and Globe and Mail — all that elite central Canada self-congratulatory government-subsidized we-know-which-side-our-bread-is-buttered-on insufferable pseudo-intellectual coterie, and started his own media empire. Very successfully. His last two self-produced documentaries, one on housing, and one on the debt crisis, went truly viral, not only by Canadian standards, as have many of the artful ads he produced with his truly professional communication team. This is exceptionally forward looking, and places the man who will be our next prime minister at the very forefront of political communication, worldwide.

I have literally seen no one anywhere in the many countries I now have the privilege to have come to understand occupy the cutting edge of social media communication with the skill of Poilievre. If he can do the same on the political and economic front, we have reason to be optimistic. He also avoided the catastrophe of the “expert” political adviser class whose idiot bromides castrate most would-be conservative leaders, brought his message directly to the people, listened to what they were telling him, modified himself in appearance and approach as was right and necessary, and swept the conservative leadership race. He is therefore rightly poised not only to become the leader of Canada but to be a force on the international stage, and he has an extra year now, to get his act together, courtesy of the collusion of the unspeakable Jagmeet Singh with his puppet master, our current Prime Minister (he whose name cannot be spoken).

Then there’s Danielle Smith. I have come to know Premier Smith and to appreciate her. She’s brave enough to take on the rainbow brigade and its false claims of universal community. That is a daunting challenge, given their expert propensity to wield victimhood and exploit compassion. She’s witty, smart and tough. I saw her show her fist in velvet glove recently on stage in Alberta to Tucker Carlson, whose sometimes excesses she opposed with grace and humour, while simultaneously noting his many contributions and advantages. In the aftermath of that spectacle, she stepped forward to protect the Canadian children, took the heat unapologetically, and stayed the course. God only knows how many young people she thereby saved from sterilization and surgical mutilation (I can’t believe I have to write that about Canada: what’s happened to our country?). In doing so, she followed in the courageous footsteps of Premier Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, the relatively unheralded leader of that relatively isolated and oft-silent province, who took the first public stand against the tyranny of the gender-benders and manipulators and also stuck so forthrightly to his guns. Good work, Mr. Higgs. That kind of bravery is far rarer than we might hope.

Smith has also set herself firmly and unapologetically against the manipulative woke lies of the deluded Steven Guilbeault, who might well be the most dangerously bent political mind currently operating in the western world (although there’s Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, as well as Trudeau himself as powerful competitors). She’s set to double the oil and gas production that makes Canada work economically, that heats, cools, feeds and provisions the world, and that could be provided to our European allies to protect them against the still-tyrannical governments and economies that are now and will be for a long while the only alternative suppliers of the energy and much else their people so desperately need.

She is allied intelligently on those fronts with Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan, a very popular leader in his home province, a sensible man who generally remains above the fray but who stands up when necessary and who is guiding his mostly-sensible and often rural western constituents toward the stable and ever-expanding prosperity that the prairie economies have within their grasp if they have the requisite courage and discipline. Even Doug Ford, who’s a bit slow on the uptake with regard to standing forthrightly against the woke mob, has the self-possession, humility and good sense to surround himself with people who are smarter and more expert than he is and to run a government that is competent in the main. That ability is a true sign of character, and bodes well for a province that flirts all too dangerously with progressive ideology. Ford is perhaps a bit too nice, and a bit too prone to the guilt that I mentioned earlier, but the emergence of some stauncher allies on the more socially conservative side (which is where most Canadians now stand, in comparison to their Liberal “leadership”) might well embolden him further.

This is all very promising. There’s real leadership emerging on the center and on the right in Canada (which is now the entire political spectrum less to the left than Che Guevara). The sky’s the limit for conservatives, in consequence, and they could truly embolden the world. Alberta’s energy resources (and Saskatchewan’s, as well, particularly on the nuclear side) put Canada in a potentially enviable and influential position — a position, as well, of domestic abundance.

What’s the appropriate path forward, therefore, on the conservative side, and where are the associated pitfalls?

First: conservatives, look to Poilievre for mastery of social media. That is the future of political communication. You don’t need the woke legacy media. Stop giving them attention and certainly stop giving them money, governmental and otherwise. No more subsidy and no more paid advertising. They’re dead. You’re pumping money into the corpse of a self-righteous suicide. Stop doing it. And shed your bloody handlers and advisers, your PR types. If they could run a campaign, successfully, they’d be the politicians, not you. Write your own speeches. Answer the questions you are asked with your own answers. Say what you believe to be true and learn to lead with that. It’s what everyone everywhere increasingly needs and wants, particularly the young.

Second: conservatives, don’t make the essentially Marxist mistake of assuming that “it’s the economy, stupid.” Material well-being is important, obviously, but it’s by no means everything, as the increasingly misery that accompanies our increasing wealth indicates. People need virtue more than wealth — the treasure stored in heaven, more than the earthly treasure that rust and moth destroy and thieves plunder. Furthermore, material wealth itself is reflection of the underlying ethos of a community. The ethically well-situated flourish. Truthful hard-working generously productive people flourish because they are productive and can trust each other in trade. Conservatives know this, however implicitly, and young people are desperate to learn it.

Make the moral case, therefore, that you can and should make. Learn to make your implicit traditional convictions explicit and communicable and have some faith in their power. You are attracting young men for a reason. And here’s something else, in that regard: Conservatives now have something to sell to young people. Responsibility. No one has made that offer in six decades, and the time has come. Enough of the continual rattling regarding rights. All rights come with responsibilities. Why shoulder them? Because there is earned self-regard and opportunity in responsibility. There is the adventure of calling and conscience in responsibility. There is the excitement, meaning and security of marriage, family and community in responsibility. Call the young — particularly the men — to responsibility. That will help them succeed, psychologically and socially. It will restore their competence and their confidence. It will also make them more attractive to young women, which is what they want more desperately than anything else.

Third: watch your backs. You need to be wise as serpents, as well as innocent as conservatives. Seriously. You are dealing with an adversarial enemy who will stop at nothing, and who is both expert and delights in the cancel-culture innuendo, slander and behind-the-scenes serpentine maneuvering that more and more characterizes our entire culture. When Poilievre wins the next election, as he almost certainly will — obliterating the dross of the Trudeau years in the doing — he will immediately be blamed for the crisis that worst of all possible leaders has produced.

We have lived through eight years of perma-scandal under Justin. The economy is in dire shape. Canadians now make on average less per capita than the inhabitants of the poorest of our U.S. cousins’ state. Our health-care system is irreparably compromised, the judiciary is stacked with progressives, the federal civil service ballooned to cancerous proportions, the housing market bubbled, the debt load unsustainable, the deficit out of control, and the education system from K-12 through university demented.

This is a lot of trouble and Canadians are seriously asleep at the wheel. They plan to hand the whole mess over to the hapless conservatives, who will instantly be blamed for the catastrophes they inherited, which will be far more dire than we currently understand. Here’s a future to avoid: Poilievre’s government spends one term discovering and attempting to mend a million leaks, some very large. They are held responsible for producing whatever they uncover, not least by the now-reformed Liberals, under the influence of whatever glad-hander and reprobate the conniving progressives manage to rope into replacing whatever the hell they have leading the country at the moment. They lose and the bloody radicals take control again.

Don’t let it happen, conservatives. Continue with the courage. Tell the truth. Call people to responsibility and the adventure of their lives — as you are signalling, Poilievre. Make our economies boom, Premiers Smith and Moe; keep your courage intact, Premier Higgs. Help Pierre understand how to manage a truly expert cabinet, Premier Ford.

Step up to the plate, boys and girls of tradition and competence, and take your best shot.

And watch out for the snakes. Seriously.

National Post