Protestors gather at controversial media personality Jordan Peterson’s Sydney show

By CHRISTINE LAI

Activists gathered in front of the Aware Super Theatre to protest controversial right-wing Canadian media personality Jordan Peterson on Saturday evening.

Jordan Peterson is a former psychology professor who has built a following off reactionary politics which have espoused homophobia, anti-women speeches and critiques of identity politics and political correctness.

Peterson gained traction in late 2016 when he became involved in a national Canadian debate over the rights of transgender people, and publicly refused to refer to one student by their chosen gender pronouns.

During October 2016, the Canadian parliament oversaw Bill C-16, a bill which banned discrimination against people based on “gender expression” or “gender identity”. Peterson responded to the bill by releasing a series of YouTube videos where he refused to refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns and decried the bill as a threat to the right to free speech.

Peterson previously visited Australia in 2019 on tour for his bestselling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. This year he is touring his new book titled ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life Tour’, which featured talks on life coaching and “the psychology of religion and mythology”.

Peterson added a second Sydney show on December 3 due to demand.

Activists gather outside show

The protest held outside the venue where Peterson was speaking was organised by Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), a community activist group who have dedicated themselves to opposing the views of far-right fascist ideologies.

A large police presence was stationed as protesters gathered.

Shovan Bhattari chaired the event and condemned the internet celebrity for his conservative and ‘backward politics’, which were full of vitriol towards women, the LGBTQI+ community and the danger of making inflammatory comments on his now-large platform.

“I think that what’s offensive is the language that’s being used in there by people like Jordan Peterson. These bigots say that ordinary people, women, LGBTQI+ people, the oppressed are scum and have no place in society, and I think that we are totally right to oppose those views in whatever language we please,” Bhattari said.

USyd’s incoming Global Solidarity Officer Deaglan Godwin criticised Peterson’s bigotry and his identification with hard right evangelical Christianity.

He asserted a need to confront the far-right through a “mobilising side that demonstrates a left-wing alternative to the dystopia that Jordan Peterson describes”.

Godwin responded to Peterson fans who did a Hitler salute during the protest, calling them out for their “fascism” and declared that the left had to “rebuild a culture where Neo-Nazis cannot do Hitler salutes in broad daylight, to rebuild a political culture which drives these people off the streets whether they’re protesting against lockdowns, against trans rights and abortion rights.”

“Our collective power to fight back against the far-right and fight back against the mainstream right and political establishment whenever they go against the rights of the oppressed or the exploited. Together, united, we make the world run and we can fight back”, Godwin said.

In 2016, Peterson spoke to the Toronto Sun about the proposed federal bill, saying “These laws are the first laws that I’ve seen that require people under the threat of legal punishment to employ certain words, to speak a certain way, instead of merely limiting what they’re allowed to say.”

His vocal opposition to transgender rights and videos on the C-16 federal bill has developed into an online personality where he defends anti political-correctness while campaigning for free speech.

Transphobic speech sees Peterson banned from Twitter

In June this year, Peterson was banned from Twitter after referring to transgender actor Elliot Page by his deadname and suggested that Page “had her breasts removed by a criminal physician”.

Despite the site determining Peterson’s account as having violated the Twitter rules, against hateful conduct, he defended his tweet stating that he would “rather die” than delete the tweet.

He posted a video following the account suspension stating, “Up yours, woke moralists. We’ll see who cancels who.”

Last month Peterson returned to Twitter and has since continued to publish transphobic comments with an ultra-conservative political stance.

One tweet called top and bottom surgery “propagandistic” and “appalling euphemisms” that were “far beyond sickening into the world of radical evil”.

CARF member Owen Marsden-Readford condemned Peterson’s “far-right politics” and his “standing there blaming the oppressed for the crimes of the oppressor and blaming the victims of the system for the crimes of the system.”

“The far-right want to make our system less democratic, worse for women, worse for working class people. Every single instance of oppression is something that Jordan Peterson celebrates,” he  said.

“We have to be ready to oppose the far-right and every single rotten injustice of capitalism because every single act of violence against ordinary people and oppressed people strengthens people like Jordan Peterson,” Marsden-Readford said.