Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

English

Supervisor

Pero, Allan

2nd Supervisor

Dyer-Witheford, Nick

3rd Supervisor

Preston, Jeffrey

Abstract

This thesis identifies two complementary tendencies of the right wing. The first is the loud, proud, and aggressive reactionary politics of Donald Trump; the second is its seeming opposite, the introspective, self-critical, therapeutic program of Jordan Peterson. Where Trump emphasizes external action and political agitation, Peterson emphasizes internal reflection and political withdrawal. To that end, this thesis charts Peterson’s calculated rise to fame via his exploitation of social media, and the subsequent success of his didactic 2018 tome 12 Rules for Life; it draws from memetics, Marxist theory, and psychoanalysis to interpret him as uniquely successful in speaking to the collective insecurities of a generation of young men, who sympathize with right-wing politics even as they recognize its inability to improve the sociopolitical conditions under which they live. It analyzes Peterson’s honing of his own brand of anti-communist, anti-ideological, and anti-rational thought from his early years of obscurity to his flourishing as a public intellectual in the late 2010s. His dispositions lead him to familiarly right-wing opposition to novelty, feminism, and trans people; however, unlike Trump, who emphasizes masculine aggression and political engagement, Peterson adopts an aesthetic of meekness, of despair, of pre-emptive defeat. He does not expect that the right’s political program will succeed, and exhorts his audience not to try. In contrast to the neverending rally of MAGA Trumpism, Petersonian thought renounces political agitation as a route to happiness, and promotes focus on self-improvement instead. It accepts misery and hardship as a universal constant, telling adherents to refrain from attempting to change the world, lest they make it even worse. In this philosophy, neither America, nor the world, can be made great again, as they can under Trumpism; on the contrary, the apocalypse is unavoidable. In short, the Peterson movement is simultaneously reactionary and impotent.

Summary for Lay Audience

Although US President Donald Trump and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson both lie politically on the right wing, they express their views in opposite ways. Trump is loud and aggressive, assuring his followers that victory is almost at hand, and that they must mobilize themselves to agitate for political change, and win the struggle against their enemies. Conversely, Peterson tells his followers not to organize, and not to pursue political change collectively. Unlike Trump, he promises no victory, instead accepting decline and apocalypse as inevitabilities. He opposes communism, ideology, and rationality, leading him to celebrate tradition and abhor novelty, which he associates with the radical left wing. In doing so, he is reactionary. However, he believes that the left’s victory is inevitable; the world trends, for him, toward its own destruction, and he views feminism, trans people, and what he calls “postmodern neo-Marxism” as the current engines of its decline. Peterson offers no vision in which his reactionary views will win, and thus, he is impotent. He instead focuses inward, addressing his followers’ psychological insecurities and vulnerabilities, and telling them they must focus on improving themselves, rather than the world. This philosophy complements Trump’s, addressing an area that Trumpism ignores, while aligning with the right wing. To demonstrate the contrasting, but complementary roles of Peterson and Trump for the contemporary right, this thesis follows the developing media personality cult around Trump in the 1980s and 1990s, and then tracks Peterson’s rise to fame; it contrasts his esoteric 1999 tome Maps of Meaning with his best-selling 2018 follow-up, 12 Rules for Life, which repackages his earlier work into a more digestible, and overtly right-wing style. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates Peterson’s deliberate cultivation of viral internet success along the way, showing the positive reception of his reactionary ideas among both professional critics and fans.

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