When Jordan Peterson’s Defenders Selectively Use History

“Both Tavana and Peterson have expressed support for capitalism and Western civilization without ever addressing the atrocities committed in their name.”

Recently, Merion West contributors Matt McManus and Conrad Hamilton were criticized for their negative reviews of Jim Proser’s biography of Jordan Peterson, a man considered by many to be the most important public intellectual alive today. The critic in question, Kambiz Tavana, excoriated both authors for their “viciousness” in denigrating the self-help guru, who, by all accounts, has gained a mass following for his lectures on ethics, personal morality, and the evils of “postmodern neo-Marxism.” For Tavana, Hamilton and McManus’ critiques of Jordan Peterson’s philosophy and political arguments are a clear example of the Left’s narrow-mindedness and provincialism, and Tavana encourages both writers to examine their own “sweeping sentimentalities” about social justice and the atrocities committed in its name.

Not having read Jim Proser’s biography, I will refrain from making any statements about the book in question or its reviews by McManus and Hamilton. Interestingly enough, Tavana also omits any clear references to the biography or the reviews in question, instead preferring to introduce his article with a brief summary of one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s lesser-known works called L’Engrenage, or In the Mesh. The plot hinges on a naive and idealistic revolutionary named Jean Aguerra who rises to power and ends up becoming the very tyrant he sought out to destroy. A clear allegory for left-wing revolutionaries in general, Tavana uses this story to hammer Hamilton and McManus for their presumed belief in “equality of outcome” and all the historical atrocities committed in its name. In contrast, Jordan Peterson and his followers are portrayed as devoted truth-tellers trying to engage in honest criticism of McManus and Hamilton’s excessive egalitarianism. Tavana then encourages both writers to read the Black Book of Communism, a book dedicated to exposing the human casualties of Communist regimes in the 20th century, implicitly connecting their political and social egalitarianism with the monstrous totalitarianism of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

There is much to unpack in Tavana’s rather brief article, so let me start with the play In the Mesh. It is interesting for Tavana to be including a work by Sartre, given the latter’s long affiliation with Marxism and revolutionary socialism. Sartre was famous for his work on existentialism—and for his attempts to combine existentialist philosophy with Marxism, an attempt that ended in failure and Sartre’s later conversion to anarchism. But, while he was a Marxist, Sartre was a major advocate for socialist revolutionaries and political regimes: he reportedly visited Castro’s Cuba, along with Simone de Beauvoir, and he later publicly supported the pro-independence revolutionaries in Algeria fighting against French colonial rule. Given this context, Sartre’s writing of In the Mesh may be construed as his recognition of the inherent futility of violent revolution and the repressive authoritarianism that such revolutions inevitably devolve into.