Counter-counterpoint: I found out about Jordan Peterson through their podcast and it gave me a little detour in the wrong direction, at the time in my life where his pseudo intellectual slop was very appealing to my young idiot cis het dude brain. The fact that they seemed relatively progressive really massaged his image for me. I don’t see this mentioned often, but I can’t be the only one.

They seemed in awe of having him in the studio, he took a big vape hit insisting that “rituals are important”, probably called himself a Classic British Liberal™. Amazing PR move. Coming from a very conservative culture I don’t think I realized how much of a reactionary he was, but to be fair to me, I totally think he was holding it back on purpose during that time. I think I moved away from him well before he went fully mask off, but I distinctly remember a conversation where I was arguing with a relative that he wasn’t that right wing. The same relative who no longer talks to me after a different argument where I didn’t insist transgendery stuff was the death of society. Fun. I love how the US exports bullshit culture war talking points to fuck up the little things too, love dealing with that.

And yes, one thing I liked was the biblical stuff, it was very appealing how he ostensibly discussed these old stories from a cultural perspective. I still think I’d like that from someone who isn’t fucking evil. “These old myths have shaped a lot of archetypal narratives within our culture" still seems cool to me, I don't know. I don't want the worst people to have a monopoly on that.

Funnily enough in the context of this post, I always found it interesting that these two moved from Israel to the US. I’m from (and in) Lebanon and I quite liked how much they said things along the lines of “Yeah we get lied to about how good living there is, it was a rough few years, more people should move out”. A sort of validation from the other side that the whole apartheid experiment is undercooked and not even worth it for the people it’s supposed to be “helping”. And they were just putting it out there as good advice. You may not be surprised that most people around me who can fathom an end to Zionism don’t picture it this way, I’m not sure how to explain to a mainly Western forum how refreshing it was to hear them say that. It was a big part of the appeal.

I stopped watching them long ago but this whole arc has been unfortunate, but not all surprising. Didn’t really expect them to move leftward like I did, but seeing how popular the show became, I do wish they did.