In a bizarre tweet, Canadian provocateur and far right figure Faith Goldy suggested that Dr. Jordan Peterson was a communist.
You heard that right. Jordan Peterson.
The centrist psychology professor who travels the world teaching people about the dangers of socialism and communism, the man who wrote the brilliant new foreword to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s anti-Soviet novel, The Gulag Archipelago, the scholar who crusades against cultural Marxism, the dude who once said that communism is “the most destructive economic and political doctrine … that has ever been invented by mankind.”
Yeah, that guy.
It appears that the reason behind this smearing of Peterson has to do with payback. Goldy’s disinvitation from an event entitled “The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses.” apparently still stings. This decision was made after Goldy appeared on a white supremacist podcast in the wake of Charlottesville.
Goldy claims that Peterson’s involvement, as a child, with the Alberta NDP party, his daughter’s name (Mikhaila), and his interest in Soviet era art are all clues to some sort of secret commie identity that Peterson is allegedly hiding from the world.
While the Alberta NDP of the 1970’s were certainly on the Left side of the political spectrum and advocated for generous social programs, they were by no means full blown communists.
As Peterson himself said about his youthful run for the vice presidency of the party back in 1977 at age 14 ” “I was probably attracted by the essential idea of fairness, something like that. [I was] interested in policies that were designed to help ordinary people.”
This is a common political path for many young people, as the data shows. Most start out with a liberal mindset and a focus on fairness but as they age, their views tend to become more realistic and conservative.
In regards to Goldy’s claim about Mikhaila Peterson, this, on its face, is true. Mikhaila admitted as much in an interview earlier this year.
Why Peterson, a well-documented critic of communism and totalitarianism, would name his daughter after Mikhail Gorbachev, is indeed puzzling.
However, when you consider his rationale for collecting Soviet era artwork, it makes a little more sense.
Peterson, on a podcast in February 2018, said that he collected the art both for the irony of buying Marxist artifacts on a capitalistic website like eBay and also to constantly remind himself about “the human capacity for atrocity.”
Following the same logic, it wouldn’t be such a stretch for a man so obsessed with the evils of the USSR to name his own daughter after the man responsible for bringing that regime to an end.
Either way, regardless of the inspiration behind Mikhaila Peterson’s name, it’s clear that suggesting that a man like Jordan Peterson is a communist is one of the more ridiculous things one could say.
Goldy is no stranger to conspiracy theories and outlandish claims. But this one is particularly hard to take even the slightest bit seriously.
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