The Plumley Pod: Jordan Peterson and the ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship): Just how does it bend?
‘I was saying, “Pay attention to yourself! Listen to yourself! Go back and play some of your old videos, your interviews, because it’s all there. It’s called totalitarianism. You know it, [Jordan]!’
Neo-Noahs or Nothing-Burghers?
He has plumbed the potentially fatal problems of our civilisation to a depth that, for all they had been partially described and diagnosed by others, took on a new clarity in the embrace of his fierce and gentle sentences. He is a brave, brilliant and extraordinarily coherent warrior of words. He has his tens of thousands of hours of clinical practice as a psychologist to erect as a shield around himself, but still you have to say that he is brave, brilliant and extraordinarily coherent. And still you have to say: He speaks like a man, not like a psychologist. He was, is, devastating in argument, dazzling to watch and listen to, a source of envy for his gifts as well as sympathy for his exposure and admiration for his heroism.
So I began a lengthy exploration of Jordan’ Peterson’s mysterious absence from the Covid discussion, nearly three years ago now. The mystery arose from contemplation, in the wake of the Covid coup, of his by then familiar meditations on the nature and indicators of totalitarianism, albeit historically, on which he seemed to be an undoubted expert. As we scrathed at the surface of the new tyrannies, we pondered: how long before Jordan emerges to save us the trouble, before he lays the whole thing as low as it ought to be laid, with a few deft karate chops of the mind and leaves it lying on the slab to be formally autopsied. This was the scale of his ability and promise. Such, by then, was his preeminence in the academic and intellectual firmaments that he had the power to take things further than almost anyone else. But, in the critical period, he was absent through illness — a pretty serious illness, by all accounts — and when he returned he seemed evasive and, when not evasive, ambivalent. When asked relevant questions, he paused in his usual deliberative fashion, cogitated for somewhat longer than anyone else might have dared to, and then changed the subject.
As the subsequent years edged by, he has feinted, hinted, stabbed, shimmied and dummied at and around some of the relevant questions raised by what happened to Western societies — and by extension to Western civilisation — in those dark days of 2020 and since, but he did not anywhere go as far as counteracting or countermanding his own seemingly befuddled and dismaying 2021 injunctions to ‘take the damn vaccine!’ In 2022 — sure — he supported the Canadian truckers (he is, of course, Canadian) and issued occasional though loosely-aimed excoriations at his prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Later, he spoke elliptically about the events which we had waited for him to address with the clarity that had been his forte, but in a manner as to suggest that he had already dealt with all that. The listener might have been forgiven for imagining that there was somewhere a book, an academic paper, even an extended podcast, in which Jordan had done what Jordan tends to do with things that get his dander up. And he would rant a little, to be sure, albeit in short bursts, about the terrible things that had occurred and being done, as thiough reprising a more substantial denunciation. The trouble was that no one could remember the exact occasion of his original intervention, or produce the relevant book, academic paper, newspaper article or podcast in which his castigation of the nouveau tyrants could be apprehended in all its fury.
Perhaps the straigntforward answer to the mystery is that, despite his recent trajectory, Jordan Peterson is actually quite a mainstream figure, and clearly anxious to remain such. He rightly values the reach he has obtained into the ‘normal’ world. He also wishes, understandably, to protect his academic credentials from any suggestion of irrational or, worse, unempirical thinking. Perhaps, also, he genuinely doesn’t feel qualified to comment on anything arising at the medical end of the Covid smorgasbord, having been out for the count for most of the critical period at the start, when he might have been in a position to incrementally read his way into the various relevant subjects and disciplines. Perhaps some comity of experts is what unmans him. Although the ‘hoax theory’ of Covid is now all but universally proven — and the bioweapon theory of the ‘vaccines’ likewise — he has continued to sit on the fence, casting handfuls of comfort-dust in both directions.
Many months ago, I was greatly buoyed-up to be told about ARC’s inaugural public meeting, over Halloween 2023, in Greenwich, London. The point of the ARC, I gathered in the first instance, was to take on — or, better, down — the motherWEFfers, an endeavour I was, and remain, quite prepared to lay down my life for.
But, as time passed and the project became woolier and woolier, the less faith I was able to muster. Back in February 2023, we were told very clearly that part of the purpose was to ‘counteract the drift to the left in this society,’ and accordingly to create a force or movement that would ‘fearlessly intervene in the discourse’ in a decisive manner. It seemed clear that a central element of what was to be explored was the Covid coup of early 2020.
And this, in the past year or so of anticipating the launch of the ARC project — of which Jordan Peterson has been the most visible principal — has been the foremost concern of many who have observed his odd behaviour for a long time, and also carry a sense of grief that Peterson — who, with a different approach, might have made a great difference — has been whistling past what many of us recognise as the sepulchre of our civilisation.
Jordan Peterson believes that everything comes back to individual responsibility, and ithat is true in the sense that the world does not owe us a living, and that it would be a bad thing even if it did. But, by the time we gathered in the Magazine London, last November, for the inaugural ARC conference, we had been under assault for some 44 months by constant collective brainwashing and mass hypnosis, matters that seemed to call for a rather different diagnosis. Surely these darkening circumstances would be Jordan’s priority in opening up a discussion of the state of the Western world? Alas: Three days later, it was by no means clear that Jordan Peterson or any of his fellow neo-Noahs had remotely shared our view that all this began and returnd to Covid.
In this podcast conversation with Sarah Plumley, who takes a similar interest in matters Peterson and matters totalitarian, we explore the possibilities and meanings of all this, and ask whether there is still time for Dr Peterson to use his remarkable influence and charisma to finally open up the discussion he has so far elided.
Access Sarah’s Substack article on our conversation, and various links to my Peterson articles, below:
To go drectly to the Plumley podcast, click on the pink arrow on the right:
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