This is hardly the first or last article to come out this week- let alone this month or year- about the right-wing "classical liberal" who has been variously described as "the world's most influential public intellectual," the voice of a reborn conservatism, or a racist mythmaker. It is, however, I believe the first to be focused on a topic that rarely- if ever- receives attention as point of contention among "intellectuals."
Jordan Peterson is, put simply, a denier of climate change. Going against the grain of 97 percent of scientists who have studied the matter, he has expressed the opinion that there has been "no warming over the past decade," and that "the planet appears to be cooling," truly unbelievable statements that any educated person should be frankly ashamed of believing.
Peterson has pushed the ludicrous claim that "human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation & extinction," citing the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a denialist think tank chaired by Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher's neoliberal chancellor, and like practically every other "anti-warmist" think tank, linked to oil-company funding.
Perhaps most ridiculously, Peterson has heartily endorsed fracking - a process known to cause innumerable harm not just to the biosphere and public health, but also local communities destroyed by the installation of wells - on the grounds that it "reduces North American dependence on Middle Eastern Oil." Given the fact that fossil fuels are equally detrimental for the environment no matter where they come from, the remark can only be seen as an expression of national-security state doctrine, or worse, anti-Arab bigotry.
Peterson has been rewarded for these stances with fawning articles on climate denial conspiracy blogs, as well as ever-increasing praise and airtime from Koch-backed corporate media hosts like David Rubin and Ben Shapiro. The opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, long home to anti-science editorials from pro-GMO hucksters and corporate front groups like the Heartland Institute, recently published a full-page profile of Peterson hailing him as a successor to conservative lions (and supporters of Apartheid South Africa) William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol.
These perspectives, openly contemptuous of the "reason" and "deep thinking" that so many seem to believe defines Peterson and the "intellectual dark web" he is part of, deserve some serious scrutiny and self-reflection by journalists and intellectuals alike.
Why isn't climate change denial seen as a career-ending, conspiratorial perspective that disqualifies someone from the public stage altogether, let alone the rarified heights of the ivory tower? Fundamentally, it is no different from moon landing hoaxes, flat-earth ideology, UFO theories, or the views of Alex Jones or David Icke. Yet we are supposed to trust Tory and Republican denialists whenever they appear on CNN, the BBC, MSNBC or Sky as experts on matters ranging from foreign affairs to economic policy, while ignoring the fact that they are either lying or severely misinformed about the most important issue of our time. Such people are even, in some cases, seen as legitimate "philosophers!"
Furthermore, at a time when those with dissenting views on legitimately contentious topics - such as capitalism, liberal democracy, "new cold war" narratives, and globalisation - are largely excluded from the public sphere, mocked, and declared by Peterson to be "pathological," it is offensive to see opinions that verge on the kooky- from climate denial to "cultural Marxism" allowed to gain so much sway.
In the end, perhaps Jordan Peterson's status provides us with a lesson after all - the selectiveness of the Establishment on which views are "rational" and which are seen- often rightly, sometimes incorrectly- as "conspiracy theories" is now, more clearly than ever, based on power and money, and nothing else.